"Separate Tables" dramatizes several life-changing moments in the lives of characters living in a seaside hotel in England in the late 1950s.
These moments focus on sex -- lots of sex, actually -- drinking, class conflict, and career concerns.
The cast is one of the very best that any movie has ever been blessed with. Each star -- and this is an all-star cast -- is pitch perfect.
The black and white cinematography of the hotel's Victorian interior, and each character, is gorgeous. If you like seeing beautiful images on screen, you may enjoy this film for that reason alone.
For me, the problem was the overbearing nature of the screenplay.
Terence Rattigan, the playwright of the stage play on which the movie was based, was a practitioner of the "well made play." In the 1950s in England, new approaches to drama revolutionized the stage. Big Issues were being presented with New Frankness.
Rattigan adopted some of the subject matter and new freedom of this revolution.
So, you have a well made play that's trying to say something socially daring and important.
The problem for me was that the architecture of the screenplay became the most obvious focus on screen -- not Burt Lancaster's great passion, not Rita Hayworth's seductive beauty, not David Niven or Deborah Kerr's pathos.
Characters speak in full paragraphs, with complete punctuation. Characters who are supposed to be in thrall to great passions and confusions are able to deliver unbelievably well-crafted one-liners that sum up decades worth of life history.
At a point when he is supposed to be being driven mad by passion, Burt Lancaster, portraying a working class, drunken writer, delivers a precise summary of the class and sexual issues at play in his relationship to Rita Hayworth, an upper class fashion model and sexual tease.
Since this style of drama is out of fashion now, its intense stylization interfered with my suspension of disbelief. Lancaster's comments sound as incongruous as a chemistry lecture.
The movie does deliver some genuinely touching moments. Wendy Hiller is never less than fantastic. She's utterly believable as an admirable, self-reliant woman.
Deborah Kerr brought tears to my eyes, in spite of the humorous incongruity of seeing her and Lancaster together on screen here after their famous beach scene in "From Here to Eternity." David Niven was also quite poignant.
May Hallat, as the vaguely lesbian Miss Meacham, was a delightful hoot.
"Separate Tables" is a fascinating film in its depiction of women. The female characters are all paired, with one "good" and one "bad" version of each.
There are two young women, two working women, two older women -- one young woman is twisted (Deborah Kerr), the other is healthy (Rod Taylor's fiancée). There is one mean old lady (Gladys Cooper, who did the mean old lady so very well), and one nice old lady (Cathleen Nesbitt). There is a woman who has gotten through her life on her looks (Rita Hayworth) and one who has gotten through life on her hard work (Wendy Hiller).
These moments focus on sex -- lots of sex, actually -- drinking, class conflict, and career concerns.
The cast is one of the very best that any movie has ever been blessed with. Each star -- and this is an all-star cast -- is pitch perfect.
The black and white cinematography of the hotel's Victorian interior, and each character, is gorgeous. If you like seeing beautiful images on screen, you may enjoy this film for that reason alone.
For me, the problem was the overbearing nature of the screenplay.
Terence Rattigan, the playwright of the stage play on which the movie was based, was a practitioner of the "well made play." In the 1950s in England, new approaches to drama revolutionized the stage. Big Issues were being presented with New Frankness.
Rattigan adopted some of the subject matter and new freedom of this revolution.
So, you have a well made play that's trying to say something socially daring and important.
The problem for me was that the architecture of the screenplay became the most obvious focus on screen -- not Burt Lancaster's great passion, not Rita Hayworth's seductive beauty, not David Niven or Deborah Kerr's pathos.
Characters speak in full paragraphs, with complete punctuation. Characters who are supposed to be in thrall to great passions and confusions are able to deliver unbelievably well-crafted one-liners that sum up decades worth of life history.
At a point when he is supposed to be being driven mad by passion, Burt Lancaster, portraying a working class, drunken writer, delivers a precise summary of the class and sexual issues at play in his relationship to Rita Hayworth, an upper class fashion model and sexual tease.
Since this style of drama is out of fashion now, its intense stylization interfered with my suspension of disbelief. Lancaster's comments sound as incongruous as a chemistry lecture.
The movie does deliver some genuinely touching moments. Wendy Hiller is never less than fantastic. She's utterly believable as an admirable, self-reliant woman.
Deborah Kerr brought tears to my eyes, in spite of the humorous incongruity of seeing her and Lancaster together on screen here after their famous beach scene in "From Here to Eternity." David Niven was also quite poignant.
May Hallat, as the vaguely lesbian Miss Meacham, was a delightful hoot.
"Separate Tables" is a fascinating film in its depiction of women. The female characters are all paired, with one "good" and one "bad" version of each.
There are two young women, two working women, two older women -- one young woman is twisted (Deborah Kerr), the other is healthy (Rod Taylor's fiancée). There is one mean old lady (Gladys Cooper, who did the mean old lady so very well), and one nice old lady (Cathleen Nesbitt). There is a woman who has gotten through her life on her looks (Rita Hayworth) and one who has gotten through life on her hard work (Wendy Hiller).