published on January 15, 2024 in blog

Prudence and the Pill

Production: 20th Century-Fox. Director Fielder Cook; Producer Kenneth Harper, Ronald J. Kahn; Screenplay Hugh Mills; Camera Ted Moore; Editor Norman Savage; Music Bernard Ebbinghouse; Art Director Wilfrid Shingleton
Crew: (Color) Extract of a review from 1968. Running time: 92 MIN.
With: Deborah Kerr David Niven Judy Geeson David Dundas Vickery Turner Hugh Armstrong

Deborah Kerr and David Niven team as a couple which winds up married to others.

Deborah Kerr and David Niven team as a couple which winds up married to others.

Hugh Mills wrote the book, and adapted it for films. Basic flaw in the screenplay, which the generally excellent acting and direction cannot entirely overcome, is the rambling from one set of interesting characters to another.

Obvious attempt was to incorporate a lot of unique personalities, all affected by the pill and changing sex customs, but the result is a lack of unity. The whole film, then, is less than the sum of its parts.

Film is more than a one-joke script – the secret switching of birth control pills so that the wrong people get pregnant – and to the credit of the pic, this is not a tasteless recurring incident.

Title art designed by Richard Williams is a great sendoff to the film, in its semi-Victorian atmosphere on which modern characters intrude. The parallel between old-fashioned genteel marriage and contemporary assaults thereon, is drawn most cleverly.

Jump to Comments