Goodbye Again (1961)

User Rating:

6.6/10   

Director:

Anatole Litvak

Writers:

Françoise Sagan (novel)
Samuel A. Taylor (screenplay)

Release Date:

September 1961 (Austria)

Genre:

Drama | Romance

Tagline:

This is how love is...and always will be...

Plot:

In this adaptation of Francoise Sagan's best selling novel, Paula is a beautiful, 40-year old, highly successful businesswoman...

Plot Keywords:

Male Female Relationship | Marriage | Philanderer | Interior Decorator | Dysfunctional Marriage

Awards:

1 win & 1 nomination

Cast

Ingrid Bergman	...	Paula Tessier
Yves Montand	...	Roger Demarest
Anthony Perkins	...	Philip Van der Besh
Jessie Royce Landis	...	Mrs. Van der Besh
Pierre Dux	...	Maître Fleury
Jocelyn Lane	...	First Maisie (as Jackie Lane)
Jean Clarke	...	Second Maisie
Michèle Mercier	...	Third Maisie
Uta Taeger	...	Gaby
André Randall	...	M. Steiner
Peter Bull	...	Client
Alison Leggatt	...	Alice
David Horne	...	Queen's Counsel
Lee Patrick	...	Madame Fleury
Colin Mann	...	Assistant Lawyer

Also Known As:

Aimez-vous Brahms? (France)
Time on Her Hands (USA) (working title)

Runtime:

120 min

Country:

France | USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Certification:

Australia:M | Finland:K-16

Filming Locations:

Studios de Boulogne-Billancourt/SFP - 2 Rue de Silly, Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine, France

Company:

Argus Film

Imperfect Relationships Explored with Gallic Ruefulness But Hamstrung by Perkins

It amazes me to find out that Anthony Perkins won the Cannes Film Festival Best Actor award for his skittish, petulant performance as Philip, the aimless, lovestruck "younger man" in this 1961 Paris-set soap opera about a May-September romance with Paula, a successful, fortyish interior decorator ensnared in a going-nowhere relationship with Roget, an age-appropriate transportation businessman who has casual affairs with young women he dubs impersonally as "Maisie". Naturally, Roget takes Paula for granted, which leaves her vulnerable to Philip's flirtatious advances. However, Perkins is an actor intractably tethered to his definitive role as Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho", and unfortunately in his first follow-up film, he emits such a creepy, obsessive tone that makes you fear more for Paula's life than her heart.

On the upside is Ingrid Bergman's textured performance as Paula, and her mature beauty seems to reflect perfectly her saturnine situation. She is believably matched with Yves Montand as Roget in a performance that seems to echo his real-life situation with wife Simone Signoret when he embarked on a well-publicized affair with Marilyn Monroe the year before. Jesse Royce Landis shows up in her typical role as a pompous society matron, this time Philip's cheapskate mother, while Diahann Carroll shows up in a disposable cameo as a world-weary jazz chanteuse. Director Anatole Litvak paces the film a bit too leisurely and adds some silly but amusing touches like Paula's delusion of rain as she drives during a crying jag, but he creatively uses a circular structure to his plot by beginning and ending the film with almost the same scene. Adapting Francoise Sagan's "Aimez-vous Brahms?", screenwriter Samuel Taylor lends the sort of wry observations he contributed to his scripts for "Sabrina" and "Vertigo". As of March 2008, this film is not available on DVD.