Cinema: Suffering on Silk

Back Street (Universal-International).

In her classic cautionary tale of extramarital love, Novelist Fannie Hurst took an exciting peep at the eternal triangle from the other woman's angle, then primly told her readers what, in 1931, they primly expected to hear: it is the man who plays and the woman who pays. But the passing years have made some changes in the sociology of adultery. In this third film version of the book—Ross Hunter's full-color, widescreen. $2,500,000 overproduction in which the bathrooms look like the lobby of the Beverly Hilton—the fallen woman falls, not into...