A double Oscar-winning adaptation of Terence Rattigan's West End and Broadway hit, Separate Tables is a beautifully cast ensemble piece, and it is a pleasure to watch seasoned actors playing off each other to such effect.
Set in the Hotel Beauregard, Bournemouth ('Three minutes from the sea, Fine Cuisine, Separate Tables') the guests provide contrasting studies in being alone. Major Pollack, an ex-army man full of bluff and bluster played by David Niven with genuine pathos, is fearful lest it be discovered that he has recently been up before a Magistrate's for a sordid offence. Meanwhile, guest house owner Pat (Wendy Hiller), has begun a relationship with Burt Lancaster's alcoholic writer, shortly before his ex-wife comes to visit - a study in impassive dignity on the edge of collapse from Rita Hayworth.
Mann's direction preserves the immediacy of the play, while the camera is cleverly used to increase the intimacy between characters, making the film a fascinating study in eyes - pleading, questioning, hiding and always revealing far more than their owners are saying.
A mature and beautifully acted drama set in an English B&B (separate tables for dinner). A small item of news in a local paper affects the lives of the residents - the alcoholic writer, the faded star, the bluff major, the domineering mother and her chronically timid daughter (Kerr as unglamorous as it's possible to be). It's Hiller though as the proprietor who takes the acting plaudits for her understated movements through life's little tragedies.
