The film’s title, A Touch of Class, seems to be a bit of a misnomer for the story that unfolds. But considering it is based on a story titled “She Loves Me, She Told Me So Last Night” the title change makes a little more sense. That story’s title is a mouthful and would have been a stumbling block for audiences who needed titles that rolled quickly and easily off the tongue. That doesn’t change the fact that the new title can be read as sarcastic at best after watching the film and doesn’t help make it any more worthwhile. The subject matter can be seen as abhorrent and the characters unlikable and deplorable. This can be considered a comedy of errors but there is little to laugh at and the ending is abrupt, devoid of any humor, and unsatisfying.
Steve Blackburn (George Segal) is an American businessman living with his wife and kids in London. A chance encounter with the divorced Vickie Allessio (Glenda Jackson) gives him the idea to propose the two shuffle off to Spain for a week together on holiday away from his wife. She readily accepts, seeing the opportunity as a means of sexual gratification without the burden of a long term commitment since he readily admits to not wanting to leave his wife. Complications arise almost immediately as, after booking the flight, his wife, who has been out of town, arrives unannounced and insists on going with him. His parents are also coming to stay. Steve manages to manipulate her into not going after all but, upon arriving at the airport, a friend of his, Walter (Paul Sorvino), happens to be on the same flight forcing Steve and Vickie to sit apart to avoid suspicion.
More problems arise once they arrive in Spain. They get stuck with a cramped and finicky rental car, their hotel suite turns out to be less than ideal, and their frustrations with all the setbacks leads to infighting. When they do get down to some physical intimacy he manages to throw out his back and the doctor tells him no more of that until he has healed. While out enjoying the country, Walter and his wife begin to suspect there is something going on between Steve and Vickie; Walter has a sit down conversation with Steve about this but he denies it. After returning home things continue to deteriorate between Vickie and him as he struggles to juggle work, his home life, her work and their illicit relationship. Ultimately it all proves too difficult to successfully balance and things come crashing back down to Earth.
This film tries to be a light hearted comedy about adultery which means it is starting out on uneven ground right out of the gate. For a romantic comedy, or even a drama, to work it needs the leads to be likable characters. We need to feel like we could be friends with them, hang out with them and invite them over to our homes. If we dislike the leads we are immediately stuck in an uphill battle to find anything worth spending time with them. If they never redeem themselves i.e. become better people throughout the course the film, like Rock Hudson in Pillow Talk, than it feels like we just wasted two hours of our time. Character growth is necessary, especially if the characters are unlikable at the start. Even in a film like Two For The Road where we see a couple disintegrating on screen we get plenty of reasons to like them which allows us to feel sad as their relationship falters. There is none of that in A Touch of Class. Steve Blackburn is an unpleasant person in the very first scene and his determination to cheat on his wife with a divorcée only strengthens our dislike for him.
The 1960’s and 70’s were the years of the sexual revolution thanks to advancements in birth control and the flower power movement encouraging free love and fighting against the tradition of marriage. This led into the 1980’s and the AIDS crisis as well as many other STD’s and STI’s. Religious people claimed it was punishment from God for all the promiscuity and others pointed the finger at the religious and called them intolerant and out of touch with modern times. It became a big mess of opinions and finger pointing that still goes on to date. The sanctity of marriage has all but been abandoned with more and more people viewing it as an outdated institution requiring people to sign a contract to do what they can already do without it. They also see it as tying themselves down to a single person and if it doesn’t work out then there is an expensive divorce to deal with. Without marriage they can just bail on a partner if things don’t work out or they find someone else they want to be with. Makes life easier and more free, right?
This sort of callous attitude about marriage didn’t start in the 60’s but it became more prevalent then. Films like Alfie tried to glamorize the swinging lifestyle while also moralizing the potential consequences of such a choice. While Michael Caine’s Alfie was a despicable man, sleeping with women indiscriminately, the married women he slept with were ever worse for having violated the vows they made when they got married in the first place. Those women drop in and out of the narrative, none of them making much of an impression beyond their brief scenes. With A Touch of Class we spend nearly the entire runtime with Steve and Vickie and with neither of them being a likable character that makes for a rather unpleasant viewing experience.
It’s hard to peg what this film is trying to convey. Is it trying to say that adultery isn’t worth all the lying and deceit? Is it just trying to be a comedy of errors as everything seems to go wrong for the adulterous couple until it becomes too much and they break up? What’s ultimately wrong with the narrative is that there is no comeuppance for Steve. I was reminded of Walter Matthau in A Guide for the Married Man. In that film Matthau is seeing his friend seemingly live the high life by cheating on his wife all the time but he, Walter, is redeemed when a close call clues him in on just how much he stands to lose by emulating that lifestyle. No such revelation occurs for Steve. He should have been caught in the act or driven to admit what he did to his wife. The worst thing that happens to him is he breaks up with Vickie and that is just unsatisfying. He is a scumbag of a character that never pays the price for his cheating.
This is a movie that is trying to be two things at the same time. It spends so much of the first hour being a bit of a broad comedy and then the last half hour abruptly shifting into serious territory as if it suddenly has something to say about the subject matter. But it doesn’t commit to that message in the end and with Steve being such an unlikable character that is just a ruinous choice. Glenda Jackson delivers an impressive performance, especially during their big fight scene in the hotel after they unsuccessfully attempt to hop a last minute flight back to London and call it quits. But as good as her acting is it doesn’t overcome the fundamental flaw of being in service to a character who is just as complicit in the affair. Her frustrations with all the mishaps don’t make her any more sympathetic as a character. This is just an all around disappointing film that came out during a year of disappointing films. It is amongst the weakest films to ever be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar and is best viewed as a thing of the past, best forgotten to the annals of time.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: Melvin Frank
Best Actress: Glenda Jackson (won)
Best Original Screenplay: Melvin Frank and Jack Rose
Best Original Dramatic Score: John Cameron
Best Song: “All That Love Went to Waste” by George Barrie and Sammy Cahn
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Release Date: June 20, 1973
Running Time: 106 Minutes
Rated PG
Starring: George Segal, Glenda Jackson, Paul Sorvino and Hildegard Neil
Directed By: Melvin Frank
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