Schlesinger's direction with its abrupt cuts and odd camera angles screams "sixties" in every frame. Grows quite wearying.
The story is autobiographical in many ways. Like the protagonist Dr. Hirsch, John Schlesinger was both homosexual and Jewish and there is a medical background there, too. His father was a doctor.
As played by Peter Finch, Dr. Hirsch is the quintessence of English middle-class respectability. A sympathetic doctor, a good citizen, well-adjusted, even slightly dull--one never would suspect he is gay--or Jewish. (As proof of the latter he volunteers a closely guarded secret: a fondness for chopped liver.)
It is the straight people around him who seem to have all the problems. A married couple argues loudly and profanely at a party; children are left in the care of an unmarried couple while the parents go off to somewhere.
There are no young or attractive women in the film. The sex appeal is all in the male ingénue/love object played by an androgynous Murray Head.
The story is autobiographical in many ways. Like the protagonist Dr. Hirsch, John Schlesinger was both homosexual and Jewish and there is a medical background there, too. His father was a doctor.
As played by Peter Finch, Dr. Hirsch is the quintessence of English middle-class respectability. A sympathetic doctor, a good citizen, well-adjusted, even slightly dull--one never would suspect he is gay--or Jewish. (As proof of the latter he volunteers a closely guarded secret: a fondness for chopped liver.)
It is the straight people around him who seem to have all the problems. A married couple argues loudly and profanely at a party; children are left in the care of an unmarried couple while the parents go off to somewhere.
There are no young or attractive women in the film. The sex appeal is all in the male ingénue/love object played by an androgynous Murray Head.