Julien Duvivier was not only one of the best Directors who ever came out of France but also one of the most versatile being more than adept in several genres. Try telling that to Hollywood: Having prevailed upon him to remake his masterpiece Un Carnet de bal as Lydia they next got him to follow it with Tales Of Manhattan and then yet another episodic piece Flesh and Fantasy. To dispense with pedantry first of all; it seems that one reviewer mistakenly attributed the second segment to Noel Coward when it was, of course, the work of Oscar Wilde; in correcting the initial reviewer the person who did so claimed erroneously that both Wilde and Coward were English and gay; only 50 per cent of that statement is true; Oscar Wilde was Irish, a native of Dublin, who settled in England. Stuff like this tends to distract from the film which, in this case, is as good as one might suppose with anything to which the name Duvivier is appended. There are three basic segments linked loosely by Robert Benchley anchored in a Gentlemen's Club more than likely located in Pall Mall. The first segment reunites Robert Cummings and Betty Field who had starred the year before in a similar multi-storied adaptation King's Row; Field plays the Ugly Duckling who convinces Cummings via a little sleight-of-hand that she is a Swan. The second segment finds Edward G. Robinson initially bemused then increasingly terrified by a palmist's prediction that he will commit murder whilst the final segment sees tightrope walker Charles Boyer dreaming of falling from the high wire watched by a Barbara Stanwyck he has yet to meet. None of the segments is especially original but the combination of stylish direction and fine acting lifts it out of the rut.
Review of Flesh and Fantasy
