Lee Remick is Diane Conti, married to Chicago accountant Ted (Joseph Bologna) but having an affair with architect Paul Rasmussen (George Peppard). Paul meets Diane after he rescues her lost print of Klimt's The Kiss in a snowbound New York airport. Their affair is romanticised by them dancing to a tap dancing record and kissing, with the patrician cool of Remick and Peppard juxtaposed against Bologna's ethnic emotionalism. Diane's procrastination is voiced by Paul's "If you're not going to leave him, why did you tell him?". Remick uses her blue eyes to convey her fear of moving either way. The teleplay by Doris Silverson, based on a story by Rita Lakin and Silverson, is suggested by the pop title song by Peter Yarrow and Philip Jarrell, here sung 3 times, though the writing is above the expected standard. It's a relief that Diane never actually says that she is "torn". The Conti marriage is paralleled with Ted's older brother who has divorced his wife to marry a younger woman, presumably on the wife's instigation, after she became aware of the affair. The treatment gets a few funny lines, with the younger woman's "My friends say he's a father figure but that's ridiculous because I never even knew my father", Ted to Paul "I don't know whether to kill you or congratulate you on your taste in women?", and Ted's mother to Diane "What will I be if I'm not your in-law? An outlaw?". Director Delbert Mann uses the music score by Ian Fraser in counterpoint to the song effectively the time it is sung in the film itself (the other times are in the credits) and Bologna steals in terms of performance, as a non-hysterical Italian.
Review of Torn Between Two Lovers
