Cinema: Prudence and the Pill

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This cretinous comedy is 92 minutes long and does not have a single certifiable laugh.

The labyrinthine complications of the script use birth control pills for comic fuel the way French farce uses bedrooms. Gerald Hardcastle (David Niven), an elegant British banker with a cool million and a cooler mistress (Irina Demick), decides that he wants out of his dreary twelve-year marriage. Knowing that his wife Prudence (Deborah Kerr) has hardly been faithful herself, he substitutes aspirin for her birth control pills in hopes that she'll become pregnant by her lover so he can sue for divorce. Meanwhile, the Hardcastle maid decides to yield to her boy friend's advances and swipes Madam's pills for protection . . .

And so it goes. Under the circumstances, it is understandable that the actors all look slightly dazed. In fact, the only survivor of this disaster is Director Fielder Cook, who managed to save himself by quitting before the movie was finished—which gives him an unfair advantage over the audience.