Cinema: Interlude

This bouquet of primrose and bittersweet was clipped in England from the hardy perennial about the middle-aged married gentleman and his young mistress. Here it sheds all the old familiar petals: Go-Away-This-Will-All-End-In-A-Mess, Saying-Goodnight-to-the-Children, the Stolen Weekend, Overheard-at-the-Hairdresser, and even Do -You - Think -You -Can -Look -After Him.

Oskar Werner is the Him—a famous symphony orchestra conductor (instead of a violinist when Leslie Howard played Him in Intermezzo 29 years ago). Egocentric, arrogant and glamorously rich, he purrs out to his country estate in a brown Bentley convertible for impeccably served alfresco lunches between rehearsals. Sprightly, blonde Barbara Ferris is the lissome young newspaper reporter sent to interview the great conductor. From then on, it seems, neither of them gets any work done, but they have a lot of fun twirling about in the vortex of a Technicolor London—little restaurants, antique shops, bed, concert halls.

Barbara Ferris manages her ultimate put-down with a nice poignancy, and Werner plays the self-indulgent artist with the insouciance of a Habsburg bastard. Virginia Maskell, who died last January, is exceptionally beautiful and understated in the thankless role of the wife who is called upon to ask her rival during an improbable three-cornered confrontation in a restaurant, "Do you love music?"