Goodbye Again *** (1961, Ingrid Bergman, Yves Montand, Anthony Perkins, Jessie Royce Landis) – Classic Movie Review 9,746

The 1961 romantic drama film Goodbye Again stars Ingrid Bergman as middle-aged French interior designer Paula, who trades in suave, wealthy Roger (Yves Montand) for boyish lawyer Philip (Anthony Perkins).

Director Anatole Litvak’s 1961 romantic drama film Goodbye Again stars Ingrid Bergman as middle-aged French interior designer Paula Tessier, who trades in suave, wealthy, mature, philandering Roger Demarest (Yves Montand), who is abroad on business, for much younger, boyish, immature lawyer Philip Van der Besh (Anthony Perkins), but we learn all about Yves when Montand returns to Paris.

Goodbye Again is a smart ‘woman’s picture’, with Bergman bringing a whiff of truth as well as grace and elegance into the plush proceedings (dresses by Christian Dior, dinners by Maxim) and Jessie Royce Landis fun as Perkins’s mom Mrs Van der Besh, an American society dame, though, by comparison, the men’s performances are phoned in. It is elegantly is shot in black and white by Armand Thirard.

However, Perkins (following up his 1960 success as Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho) won the Best Actor Award at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival and Anatole Litvak was nominated for the Palme d’Or.

Samuel A Taylor’s screenplay is based on Françoise Sagan’s best-selling novel Aimez-Vous Brahms?

The score is by Georges Auric, with additional music by Brahms from the 4th movement from Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68, and the 3rd Movement from Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90.

Also in the cast are Jackie Lane [Jocelyn Lane], Pierre Dux, Jean Clarke, Uta Taeger, Lee Patrick, Diahann Carroll, (as the night club singer), Alison Leggatt, Peter Bull, André Randall, David Horne, A Duperoux, Raymond Gerome, Jean Hebey, Michel Garland, Paul Uny, Colin Mann and Michèle Mercier.

There are cameos by Henri Attal, Paul Bonifas, Yul Brynner, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Sacha Distel, Annie Duperoux, Moustache, Lee Patrick, and Françoise Sagan.

RIP Diahann Carroll, Julia and Dynasty star, who died at 84 on October 4, 2019. Here, as the night club singer, she sings the theme of the third movement of Brahms’ Symphony No. 3 with lyrics by Dory Langdon (later known as Dory Previn).

Goodbye Again is directed by Anatole Litvak, runs 120 minutes, is made by Mercury Productions and Argus Film, is released by United Artists, is written by Samuel Taylor, based on Françoise Sagan’s novel Aimez-Vous Brahms?, is shot in black and white by Armand Thirard, is produced by Anatole Litvak, is scored by Georges Auric, and is designed by Alexandre Trauner.

Scenes were filmed on location in Paris.

Perkins thought Bergman was a ‘little too persistent’ in her attempts to get him to rehearse their kissing scenes. But Bergman later explained: ‘I’m very bad at this sort of intimacy on the screen, especially when the men are practically strangers.’

Litvak thought American film-goers couldn’t handle the title Aimez-Vous Brahms? and chose Time on My Hands as the title for the American release, named after the song selected as the main theme. But, when the song’s publishers sought a $75,000 license for its use, plans to use the song were dropped. Then Perkins suggested the title Goodbye Again from a Broadway production in which his father Osgood played.

Litvak also directed Perkins again the next year in Five Miles to Midnight (1962).

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9,746

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