Sunday - Movies
The Age
Thursday July 24, 2008
That Touch of Mink (1962)
Fox Classics, 8.30pmThe most powerful moment in Sergei Bodrov's Mongol is when the future Genghis Khan is reunited with his wife Borte, long after she has been kidnapped and made pregnant by a rival chieftain. When told of the forthcoming child, Genghis happily accepts it as his own. Even in the most barbaric of times, the interconnectedness of all human beings proves more important than the dictates of a formalised morality. In the more modern, "moral" America of Delbert Mann's That Touch of Mink, Cathy Timberlake (Doris Day) is splashed by a car belonging to wealthy bachelor Philip Shayne (Cary Grant). Philip wants an affair but Cathy is determined to hold out for marriage. What eventuates is an unpleasant battle of wills over a woman's virginity, the two haggling as if at a street market. Doris Day is one of the great comic actresses but at 40 she is too old for a part that was clearly intended for someone in her 20s. At least the '60s period design is fun (particularly the food automat) and Gig Young works hard in the "gay" part usually given to Toy Randall in the far better Day and Rock Hudson movies. -- SCOTT MURRAY
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