Movie Info

For its first minutes, The End of the Affair looks like it's going to be a standard "two tortured souls who know they shouldn't be having an af...(read more...) fair but are going to keep on doing it anyway" movie. Fortunately, it gets more interesting than that. Van Johnson plays Maurice Bendrix, an American author in wartime England. While attending a cocktail party of noble civil servant Henry Miles (Peter Cushing), he accidentally catches a glimpse of Henry's wife, Sarah (Deborah Kerr), kissing another man. Fascinated, he arranges to meet her, and the two start an affair. Maurice, unable to get Sarah's previous infidelity out of his mind, gets clingy and suspicious; Sarah tells him they can't meet anymore and goes back to Henry, and that's that. Or is it? Maurice is unable to let go of Sarah, and as he investigates he finds out there was far more to the end of their affair than he thought. Kerr has by far the most difficult job of the film, playing several layers of deception as the coolly efficient civil servant's wife with more than one unexpected passion hiding just below the surface. Peter Cushing also does quietly good work, touchingly playing what could have been a thankless Wronged Husband role. Indeed, most of the usual standards are fleshed out in surprising ways in this strange and earnest little movie. Like its heroine, The End of the Affair takes a grim surface story and gradually reveals the unexpected passions underneath. (Based on the novel by Graham Greene and remade in 1999 with Julianne Moore and Ralph Fiennes.) --Ali Davis

Director: Edward Dmytryk

MPAA: Unrated

Running Time: 105 min.

Release Date: Feb 23, 1955

Cast: Charles Goldner, Deborah Kerr, John Mills, Michael Goodliffe, Nora Swinburne, Peter Cushing, Stephen Murray, Van Johnson