By Love Possessed (1961)

A small town attorney (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.) must deal with several important issues during approximately a 3 day period: his wife (Barbara Bel Geddes) who is unhappy in their marriage, his son (George Hamilton) who is arrested for raping the town tramp (Yvonne Craig), the failing mental faculties of his law partner (Thomas Mitchell) and engaging in an affair with his other law partner's (Jason Robards) wife (Lana Turner). A huge best seller and critically acclaimed upon its publication in 1957, no one reads BY LOVE POSSESSED today nor does (I stand to be corrected) James Gould Cozzens' reputation (he made the cover of Time magazine) enjoy the literary position he had in the 50s and 60s. You'd never know from the film that it was based on anything other than a trashy potboiler. To be fair, the film mutilates the book. Turner's adulterous wife, for example, is a minor character in the book but given prominence in the film. Hamilton's character, who is deceased in the book, is resurrected and combined with another character whose sister is rewritten as his girlfriend (Susan Kohner, in the film's best performance). What's left is a lush imitation of a melodrama that cries out for Douglas Sirk (Sirk's regular cinematographer, Russell Metty, is the film's DP) to come in and rescue it. Instead, it's directed by John Sturges whose best films (THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, THE GREAT ESCAPE, BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK) are testosterone fueled "guy" films that give no indication that he has a talent for glossy melodramas. Elmer Bernstein provides the ripe underscore. With Everett Sloane, Carroll O'Connor and Jean Willes.