The Perfect Furlough [Strictly for Pleasure] **½ (1958, Tony Curtis, Janet Leigh, Elaine Stritch, Keenan Wynn, Troy Donahue, King Donovan, Linda Cristal, Marcel Dalio) – Classic Movie Review 4546

Understandably, 104 sex-starved US bachelor boy soldiers stationed in the Arctic building a radar base are getting restless, in director Blake Edwards’s fairly amusing but broad and unsubtle 1958 American satirical services comedy.

Tony Curtis stars as a sexy soldier, Corporal Paul Hodges, serving at a remote base, who is chosen by lottery to take a holiday (the original US title’s Perfect Furlough) in Paris in a silly moral-boosting stunt dreamt up by the US Army’s resident psychologist, Lieutenant Vicki Loren (Janet Leigh).

Naturally, since she was then Curtis’s real-life wife and regular co-star, Leigh is the love interest as the psychologist, who chaperones him in Paris and tries to keep him on the straight and narrow with his Argentinian bombshell starlet girlfriend, Sandra Roca (Linda Cristal).

For this the fourth of their five films together, Curtis and Leigh amble along pleasantly enough in this untaxing and unmemorable Edwards picture, which boasts some amusing lines and diverting supporting performances, especially from funny Elaine Stritch and Keenan Wynn.

However, Edwards’s direction is surprisingly clunky and Stanley Shapiro’s screenplay is flabby and patchy, while the movie needs to be tighter and sharper, and Philip H Lathrop’s glossy escapist CinemaScope and Eastmancolor cinematography actually work against it when it should be an asset.

That leaves the delightful Curtis and Leigh as the movie’s main saving graces.

Also in the cast are Troy Donahue as Sgt. Nickles, King Donovan as Maj. Collins, Marcel Dalio, Les Tremayne as Col. Leland, Jay Novello, Gordon Jones, Alvy Moore, Lilyan Chauvin, Dick Crockett, Eugene Borden, James Lanphier, Frankie Darro, Hugh Lawrence, Carleton Young, Scott Groves, Jack Chefe and Roger Etienne.

Linda Cristal won a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer – Female and the film was nominated for Best Motion Picture – Comedy.

The five Curtis and Leigh films are: Houdini (1953), The Black Shield of Falworth (1954), The Vikings (1958), The Perfect Furlough (1958) and Who Was That Lady? (1960).

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4546

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