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Bookmark this pageThe Astonished Heart (1950)
Director: Terence Fisher, Antony Darnborough
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Intriguingly schematic account (based on Coward's own playlet) of a psychiatrist's sexual obsession with a good-time girl (Leighton), and the effect it has on his devoted, self-denying, sexless wife (Johnson) as it ultimately drives him to self-destruct by throwing himself off a high building. In its way it crystallises and criticises the conventional attitudes towards sex prevalent throughout British cinema in the immediate post-war period, and which Fisher was to turn upside-down in his vampire movies, where the neurotic female altruism represented here by Celia Johnson is transformed by the cathartic presence of Dracula into ravening sexuality.Author: DP
Cast & crew
Director: Terence Fisher, Antony Darnborough
Producer: Antony Darnborough
Cast: Noël Coward, Celia Johnson, Margaret Leighton, Joyce Carey, Graham Payn full cast
Duration: 89 mins
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