Cinema: Bad Manners

"Ambiguous," appropriately, has definitions. It means "capable of understood in two or more senses." also means "uncertain, especially obscurity or indistinctness."

A Severed Head leaps for the category and lands in the second. Novelist Iris Murdoch adapted her farce for the stage with wit and observation. Intelligence shone in scene. The film version, written by Frederic Raphael, transfers some of the but none of the craft. Instead, it presents a plot giggling at itself.

A wine merchant, Martin (Ian caroms from mistress to wife, only find that Mrs. Wine Merchant (Lee Remick) plans to run off with her (Richard Attenborough). Wife shrink plan...

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