Yvonne Mitchell, Anthony Quayle, Sylvia Syms
A heart-breaking British melodrama to rival the films of Douglas Sirk and Nicholas Ray.
Intensely claustrophobic, it’s 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 eyes.
Husband Jim (Anthony Quayle) swerves into the arms of his 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 a tremendously moving portrayal of repressed desires onscreen.
Made with kinetic brio by director J Lee Thompson, whose trade in hard edged dramas such as Yield To The Night and Ice Cold In Alex led to his later triumph, the brutal thriller Cape Fear, Woman in a Dressing Gown deploys an innovative social realist approach that hinges on the era’s raw class divisions. It echoes the Angry Young Man wave of British theatre at the time, but with a distinctly feminine edge.
