The Grass Is Greener

Another film which was always mediocre (and now leaves something of a sour taste), The Grass Is Greener (1960) has a sequence that makes your jaw drop. The back story is that Victor (Cary Grant) and his wife Hillary (Deborah Kerr) are English landed gentry, but pretty impoverished and forced to open up their stately home to American tourists. Charles Delacro (Robert Mitchum), a millionaire tycoon, arrives and promptly falls for Hillary and tries to entice her into an affair. She resists until making a trip to London where she meets him again and they start spending their days together. One night as they walk, Hillary thanks Charles for a lovely time and he says: ‘we’ve been surrounded by people all day long. Let’s try to avoid them from now on.’

2 minutes and 55 seconds into this clip you’ll find the scene that follows: The camera pans along the river Thames through the trees and finds a boat which Kerr and Mitchum aren’t in. Then we see a restaurant with a table for two which they aren’t sat at. By the river again a picnic and hamper have been layed out, but it’s all been abandoned. At the theatre two seats for the performance haven’t been claimed. Neither have the pair gone for some late night dancing. And then finally, as if to ram the point home, back at the hotel, the bedroom door is swiftly shut against us, the audience – for their eyes only, one might say! If we had wanted to feign ignorance and pretend nothing untoward is going on (and we like Cary Grant and we might prefer to think that Kerr and Mitchum aren’t doing the dirty on him), this scene ends our innocence.

It shows how effective films can be when they don’t show us everything; L’Eclisse (1962) reveals the alienation and failure of a relationship by shooting the location of a place at a time where a couple used to meet, but now never will again. Cat People (1942) is more frightening by not showing the monster, but the shadows in which it lurks. And this scene in The Grass Is Greener is actually more erotic than some pornography. Strange how these things work out!