Majorthebys Charming and brutal

Whitech It is not only a funny movie, but it allows a great amount of joy for anyone who watches it.

mraculeated The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Keeley Coleman The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Rainey Dawn This isn't a high dollar film with lots of flash, instead it's a pretty interesting B-film that is effective in its story and some of the filming techniques. It's played out in a film noir-ish style.It's about a man, Frank Clemmons, who has a criminal past and instead of jail/prison time he's living in the home of his psychotherapist, Dr. Clive Esmond, at his doctor's request. Dr. Esmond feels he can help cure Frank of his past problems. Dr. Esmond's wife, Glenda, has a "Sleeping Tiger" within herself and that tiger is awakened when she meets Frank. Frank and Glenda start having an affair. The closer to curing Frank, the more crazy Glenda becomes for the Tiger has awakened within her - she is hungry for a wild life that she feels only Frank can give her.The story is pretty good - it gets a bit boring at times because some things are dragged out to long but it's enjoyable to watch overall.6.5/10

evening1 This movie was incredibly compelling until the last half-hour or so. Then it all goes to hell when the Dirk Bogarde character undergoes an unconvincing transformation and the Alexis Smith character turns vampire demon.Despite the unlikely plotting, Bogarde's performance is magnificent (I've never seen him in anything in which he wasn't stellar). Ms. Stewart has an incredible face; I hadn't been aware of her previously and for the most part she's fascinating to watch.The extremely hackneyed and cowardly ending of this film was reminiscent of "Jules and Jim." The latter worked; this one fails miserably. What a cop-out.As wonderfully as this film started out, I can't recommend it.

mukava991 Dirk Bogarde attempts to mug Alexander Knox at gunpoint in a dark London street. Knox overcomes him by twisting his arm. Next, Alexis Smith, Knox's wife, comes home from a trip to Paris, sees Bogarde in her house, assumes he is one of her psychiatrist husband's patients, but is told that he is a criminal who is living under her roof for six months as an experiment in criminal rehabilitation which her husband is carrying out as a humane alternative to sending the young man to jail. She accepts the arrangement with barely a shrug. Bogarde immediately proceeds to verbally and physically abuse the house maid and act rudely toward Smith. Yet for some reason she is attracted to him and soon they are having a hot affair under the husband's nose. And on and on it goes. One startling development after another. There are elements of the overly simplistic psychiatric rehab genre reminiscent of Hollywood classics like Now, Voyager and Spellbound but with a more realistic look and feel. The music is intense and draws attention to itself, from the cacophonous noise that Smith listens to on her home record player to the sizzling live jazz at the Soho dive where she goes to loosen up with her secret lover. Bogarde is supposed to be a low-life criminal but his polished accent and genteel mannerisms seem thoroughly middle-class and this is never explained. Alexander Knox seems made of wood yet is somehow believable as the kind of intellectually preoccupied and unflappable person who just might come up with the idea of inviting a mugger into his home as an eccentric form of research. And Smith, icily self-contained at the beginning, gradually gets a chance to do some dynamic emoting. She's very good in this. The title of the film symbolizes the wild impulses that sleep within us, waiting to be awakened. From the 2007 vantage point there are no important or original social or intellectual insights here but the way the film is edited, photographed and scored are deliberately jarring without distracting from the film's intent. Losey wants to shake us up and he succeeds.

bmacv A more apt title would have been The Sleeping Tigress, for it's Alexis Smith's performance that holds this movie together and lends it erotic friction. Despite her old-money looks and regal carriage, Smith numbered among the many talents which Hollywood mis- and under- used. She claimed attention in two late-forties Bogart vehicles, Conflict (where she was good) and The Two Mrs. Carrolls (in which she was even better, and held her own against Barbara Stanwyck). But most of her movie career consisted of mediocre roles – the ones the star actresses turned down or had to refuse owing to other commitments. (It wasn't until Stephen Sondheim's Follies on Broadway in the ‘70s that her own star shone).In this film from Joseph Losey's English exile following the Hollywood witch hunt, she plays the bored wife of psychotherapist Alexander Knox (and with him pottering around the house, who wouldn't be bored?). Bleeding-heart Knox takes a troubled young man with a prison record (Dirk Bogarde) under his roof in hopes of performing a therapeutic Pygmalion job on him. At first Smith acts snooty, then grows intrigued, and finally throws herself at Bogarde with pent-up abandon. Comes the crunch as Knox, in a three-minute Freudian breakthrough reminiscent of Lee J. Cobb's instant rehabilitation of William Holden in The Dark Past, turns the lying, thieving, abusive Bogarde into a contrite milquetoast. When Bogarde then bids her farewell, Smith careens into dementia every bit as swiftly as Bogarde was healed and feigns an assault in hopes that Knox will defend her `honor' with that gun every therapist keeps in his desk drawer....It's a lame story that might have been more convincing in an American context; the London setting and British conventions (in particular Knox's) stifle it. Bogarde started out playing this sort of charming wrong'un but isn't especially memorable here (except for his towering pompadour that must have been borrowed from Mario Lanza). But Smith's feral feline makes The Sleeping Tiger worth the ticket price.