A Severed Head ** (1970, Lee Remick, Richard Attenborough, Ian Holm, Claire Bloom, Jennie Linden, Clive Revill) – Classic Movie Review 5979

Director Dick Clement’s 1970 sex comedy is an intriguing might-have-been sort of movie. It has all the clever elements it needs to make it work, but strangely it misfires.

Writer Frederic Raphael and the actors try to broaden out the appeal of Iris Murdoch’s extremely fine novel and play about a married couple playing sex games, but all they manage to do is flatten it out.

The sophisticated, ultra-talented cast should be just right for the material – Lee Remick, Richard Attenborough, Ian Holm, Claire Bloom and Jennie Linden – and they are, but somehow they are struggling with their roles and the script.

In the story based on Murdoch’s novel and Murdoch and J B Priestley hit play version, married wine-taster and merchant Martin Lynch-Gibbon (Holm) has a secret affair with his mistress Georgie Hands (Jennie Linden). But he goes into a fury when his shallow, spoiled wife Antonia (Remick) falls for his best friend, psychologist Palmer Anderson (Attenborough), who is involved with his half-sister Dr Honor Klein (Bloom). And then Martin’s brother Alexander (Clive Revill) has a love affair with Georgie.

Future famous TV nurse Nerys Hughes (The District Nurse, 1984-1987) plays a nurse.

Also in the cast are Anne Firbank, Rosamund Greenwood, Constance Lorne, Robert Gillespie, Katherine Parr, Anne Jameson and Yvette Rees.

It is shot by Austin Dempster, produced by Alan Ladd Jr and Elliott Kastner, scored by Stanley Myers and designed by Richard MacDonald.

Remick and Attenborough teamed up again for Loot.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5979

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