Unfaithfully Yours

Unfaithfully Yours is a 1948 American screwball black comedy film written and directed by Preston Sturges, and starring Rex Harrison, Linda Darnell, Rudy Vallée and Barbara Lawrence. The film is about a jealous symphony conductor who imagines three different ways to deal with the supposed infidelity of his beautiful wife—murder, forbearance, and a suicidal game of Russian roulette—during a concert of three inspiring pieces of classical music. At home, his attempts to bring any of his fantasies to life swiftly devolve into farce, underscored with humorous adaptations of the relevant music. Although the film, which was the first of two Sturges made for Twentieth Century-Fox, received mostly positive reviews, it was not successful at the box office. Plot World-famous symphony conductor Sir Alfred de Carter returns from a visit to his native England and discovers that his rich brother-in-law, August Henshler, having misunderstood Alfred's casual instruction to watch over his much younger wife Daphne while he was away, hired a private detective named Sweeney to follow her. Alfred is livid, and when August hands him the detective's report he tears it to pieces. Despite himself, the idea of infidelity on Daphne's part hounds Alfred's mind, and he acquires Sweeney's address from August, ostensibly so he can destroy any copies of the report which Sweeney may have kept on file. Sweeney summarizes the report for Arthur: his wife was spied late at night wearing only a nightgown as she went to the hotel room of Alfred's secretary, Anthony Windborn, a man closer in age to her own, where she stayed for thirty-eight minutes. Distressed by the news, Alfred quarrels with Daphne before proceeding to his concert, where he conducts three pieces of classical music, envisioning scenarios appropriate to each one: a "perfect crime" scenario in which he murders his wife with a straight razor and frames Tony (to the Overture to Rossini's Semiramide), accepting the situation and giving Daphne a generous check and his blessing (to the Prelude to Wagner's Tannhäuser), and a game of Russian roulette with a blubbering Daphne and Tony, that ends in Alfred's death with the first trigger pull (to Tchaikovsky's Francesca da Rimini).