Themes: Haunted By the Past, Mothers and Daughters, Breakups and Divorces
Main Cast: Rita Hayworth, Deborah Kerr, David Niven, Wendy Hiller, Burt Lancaster
Release Year: 1958
Country: US
Run Time: 98 minutes
Plot
Based on Terence Rattigan's play, Separate Tables is about a number of characters and their adventures at a British seaside hotel. Among the guests are an alleged war hero (David Niven), a timid spinster (Deborah Kerr) and her domineering mother (Gladys Cooper), and a divorced couple (Burt Lancaster, Rita Hayworth) trying to re-ignite their romance despite the presence of his mistress (Wendy Hiller). All of the characters' lives become intertwined in the course of the film as the story examines love affairs and secrets. Separate Tables is a fine, textured drama, filled with terrific performances and was nominated for several Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actress (Deborah Kerr), Best Actor (David Niven), Best Supporting Actress (Wendy Hiller), Best Screenplay From Another Medium, Best Cinematography and Best Music. Niven and Hiller won Oscars for the film. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide
Review
Adapted by John Gay and Terence Rattigan from Rattigan's play and produced by star Burt Lancaster's independent company, Delbert Mann's Separate Tables (1958) showcased the acting talents of its British-American cast in a character study of isolated individuals making tentative connections in a seaside hotel. True to Lancaster and long time producing partner Harold Hecht's preference for off beat material, Separate Tables's then-frank exploration of repression and loneliness involves sexual frigidity, perversion, jealousy, domestic violence and divorce, with the confines of the hotel enhancing the characters' emotional claustrophobia. As an alcoholic writer and his aging beauty ex-wife, Lancaster and Rita Hayworth play against glamorous, potent type; David Niven and Deborah Kerr reveal the considerable turmoil beneath the prim surfaces of a blowhard retired military man and a mother-dominated spinster. More a mature succès d'estime than a popular hit, Separate Tables nevertheless received seven Oscar nominations including Best Picture, Screenplay and Actress for Kerr. Wendy Hiller won the Best Supporting Actress statuette for her resigned hotel manager and Niven added a Best Actor prize to his award from the New York Film Critics. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
Edward Carrere - Art Director, Mary Grant - Costume Designer, Edith Head - Costume Designer, Delbert Mann - Director, Marjorie Fowler - Editor, Charles Ennis - Editor, David Raksin - Composer (Music Score), Harold Adamson - Songwriter, Harry Waarren - Songwriter, Frank Prehoda - Makeup, Harry Maret - Makeup, Harry Horner - Production Designer, Charles B. Lang - Cinematographer, Harold Hecht - Producer, Edward Boyle - Set Designer, Fred Lau - Sound/Sound Designer, Terence Rattigan - Screenwriter, John Gay - Screenwriter, Terence Rattigan - Play Author
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