"A Brief Encounter of the council flats" - Jeffrey Richards
"An unmissable rerelease." Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
A decade before kitchen sink cinema became de rigeur, Woman In A Dressing Gown existed as a heartbreaking British melodrama to rival in feeling the women’s pictures of Douglas Sirk and Nicholas Ray.
Intensely claustrophobic, with an almost oppressive filmmaking dynamic, the film is a simmering tale of the impact of adultery on the psyche of three desperate characters in post-war London. As the eponymous Woman, hanging from a thread while the dishes pile up around her, Yvonne Mitchell won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 7th Berlin International Film Festival.
The film is remarkable for its combustible atmosphere, centring around Mitchell’s performance as Amy Preston, the woman beset by the dowdiness she possesses in her husband’s eyes.
Husband Jim (Anthony Quayle) swerves into the arms of pretty young colleague Georgie (Sylvia Syms) but his request for a divorce wrenches Amy into a dark reflection of what her life has become, in what remains as moving a portrayal of repressed desires as you’ll see onscreen.