This screening is part of the Kirk Douglas season at BFI Southbank and is also being shown on September 3rd. Full details here.
Time Out review:
Traditional wisdom has Jospeh Mankiewicz as more writer than director, but consider the marvellously cinematic opening of A Letter to Three Wives: shots of a prosperous town and its stately avenues of rich men's houses, all placidly awaiting the start of the country club season, as the venomously honeyed voice of an unseen female narrator (beautifully done by Celeste Holm) begins spinning a web of speculation and suspicion round three married women, shortly to be completed by their receipt of a poisonous letter indicating that the narrator has run away with one of the husbands. With the three wives trapped for the day supervising a children's picnic, flashbacks start exploring their marital worries, perceptively probing sensitive areas of social and cultural unease. Glitteringly funny at one end of the scale (Kirk Douglas and Ann Sothern), dumbly touching at the other (Paul Douglas and Linda Darnell), it's absolutely irresistible.
Tom Milne
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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