A lovely young girl who works on a magazine in New York is engaged to a serious and pompous young business executive. He adores her in his fashion, but has a ragtag time smoothing relations between the carefree girl and his stuffy family especially after that night at a champagne reception when she started to disrobe. Now he must be eternally vigilant to prevent any further embarrassing strips. He calls on his uncle, a psychiatrist, for assistance. It seems that, deep down inside, the girl does not love her stuffy fiance; hence her champagne complex. With Donald Cook in the role of the psychiatrist, it’s easy to see why the girl finally settled for his bedside manner.
A young man and woman build a low keyed paradise of happiness within an asylum, only to have it shattered by the intrusion of the outside world. The two characters search, at times agonizingly, to determine the difference between illusion and reality. The effort is lightened by moments of shared love and “pretend” games, like decorating Christmas trees that are not really there. The theme of love, vulnerable to the surveillances of the asylum, and the ministrations of the psychiatrist, a nonspeaking part seems as fragile in the constrained setting as it often is in the outside world.
“Even with the tragic, somber theme there is a note of hope and possible release and the situations presented also have universal applications to give strong effect . . . intellectual, but charged with emotion.” Reed.
CAST
SYLVIA| Deborah Pretat
PAUL | John Walther