This review is going to be a little lop-sided. I really enjoyed this film when I was younger - and when it was frequently available on television (usually on Channel 9 or 11 on New York City television). It is a "reminiscence" film: the central figure is using his (sometimes her) experiences to explain the ways of the world to a younger friend or relative.
Here Laurence Harvey is Sir Humphrey Tavistock, now a man in his late 60s, who has had a long and distinguished diplomatic career around Europe. He is visited at his home by a young relative who is having marital problems, and who is going off the deep end in roundly condemning all women as false to men all the time, or as totally unscrupulous or totally inconsistent. Harvey calms down his young friend and reviews his own loves over his last half century (which takes him back to pre-World War I's Ottoman Empire. He has had many female friends, and lovers, and they are as varied in their behavior towards him as possible to imagine. Some used him, or were never in a position to be united with him due to diplomatic pressures. One of them became the center of a divorce action brought about by her calculating husband, and ended it by returning to the said husband (who was not counting on that). The happiest relationship was a truly loving marriage, which only lasted three or four years (in the most moving moment of the film, Harvey counts out the exact number of days the marriage lasted) until that wife died the day after childbirth. In short his experience has shown that there is no single truth about all women - it all depends on the woman involved.
It was a skillful little blend of comedy and pathos, and for some reason, since 1976 or so, I have never seen it listed on television listings for the New York Metropolitan area. More is the pity for that. If you should see it listed again, by all means catch. You won't be disappointed at all.
Here Laurence Harvey is Sir Humphrey Tavistock, now a man in his late 60s, who has had a long and distinguished diplomatic career around Europe. He is visited at his home by a young relative who is having marital problems, and who is going off the deep end in roundly condemning all women as false to men all the time, or as totally unscrupulous or totally inconsistent. Harvey calms down his young friend and reviews his own loves over his last half century (which takes him back to pre-World War I's Ottoman Empire. He has had many female friends, and lovers, and they are as varied in their behavior towards him as possible to imagine. Some used him, or were never in a position to be united with him due to diplomatic pressures. One of them became the center of a divorce action brought about by her calculating husband, and ended it by returning to the said husband (who was not counting on that). The happiest relationship was a truly loving marriage, which only lasted three or four years (in the most moving moment of the film, Harvey counts out the exact number of days the marriage lasted) until that wife died the day after childbirth. In short his experience has shown that there is no single truth about all women - it all depends on the woman involved.
It was a skillful little blend of comedy and pathos, and for some reason, since 1976 or so, I have never seen it listed on television listings for the New York Metropolitan area. More is the pity for that. If you should see it listed again, by all means catch. You won't be disappointed at all.