’40 Carats’: A Lavish Valentine for Liv

BY SUSAN STARK
FREE PRESS FILM CRITIC

Can a lovely, 40-year old divorce find lasting happiness with a rich, handsome 22 year old man? “40 Carats” takes the typical bit of “tune in tomorrow” stuff and, adding one part class to two parts gloss, manages to make of it a most endearing romantic comedy.

Mike Frankovich’s screen version of the Broadway hit puts Liv Ullmann in the role created on stage by Julie Harris, and surrounds the beauteous Ingmar Bergman regular with the best Hollywood has to offer, from costars to clothes.

Those who witnessed the desecration of Miss Ullmann in Ross Hunter’s “Lost Horizon,” the picture that marked her Hollywood debut, should be especially delighted by the way she comes off in this, her second American film.

We find her, as the film opens, on vacation in Greece, tootling along some dusty road. The car breaks down and she is rescued by a handsome young man on a motorcycle.

He becomes smitten at once, and invokes the heady scent of the myrtle grove, the lure of aqua sea and the unseen presence of the ancient Gods, by the way of stating his case.

After minimal protests, she succumbs and they embark a brief romantic idyll that ends when she slips off, next day at dawn, on a passing fishing boat.

That, in the real world, would more likely than not be that.

But here, as in all self-respecting romantic comedies, the very long arm of coincidence draws the lovers together again. One fine day, he shows up at the door of her New York apartment, sent to escort her 17-year old daughter to a party.

The rest of the film deals with the ardent pursuit and the head vs. heart struggle their relationship sets up within her.

Edward Albert, who came to prominence as the blind boy in “Butterflies Are Free,” heads the supporting cast in the role of Miss Ullmann’s young swain.

He brings sustained energy to the thankless chore of being the only straight man in the company of comic characters that go from Miss Ullmann’s reluctantly gay divorcee to Binnie Barnes’ magnificently arch, meddlesome mother.

Gene Kelley, wearing a touch of too much rouge, has some nice moments as Miss Ullmann’s ne’er-do-well ex-husband, as does the infallibly funny Nancy Walker, who play’s Miss Ulllmann’s secretary.

In the end though, the movie amounts to a lavish but tasteful valentine for its very special leading lady. Mike Frankovich and his staff have accomplished what Ross Hunter botched.