Cat and Mouse

By * Jay Cocks

A TOUCH OF CLASS

Directed byMELVlN FRANK

Screenplay by MELVIN FRANK and JACK ROSE

Husband with a wandering eye meets divorcee who has no current attachments. They fly off together on an illicit holiday, fight and joke with each other, and fall in love. Back home again, they set up a mutually convenient rendezvous, a small, snug apartment. The affair, always frazzled, starts to look a little frayed, worn by convention, threatened by guilt and irresolution.

The formula is certainly familiar, but the reaction, in this case, has unexpected impact. The husband is George Segal, by far the most deft American actor of light comedy, as he proved recently in Paul Mazursky's Blume in Love (TIME, June 25); the divorcee is Glenda Jackson, whose virtuosity and energy dazzle. Together they make an elegant pair of amorous antagonists, their smooth skills bringing great fun and fresh surprise to the sort of material that can always use a good professional refurbishing.

The script is modeled closely on the high-energy comedies of the '30s and '40s. Jackson's Vicki Allessio is the kind of sassy, intelligent woman with a sure sense of her own vulnerability and dignity that Katharine Hepburn played so well. Segal's Steven Blackburn is a role that Cary Grant both defined and epitomized--a man of charm, still susceptible to being tongue-tied and flummoxed by the right woman.

The wit and grace of both performances summons such fond memories, not only makes such comparisons inevitable, but sustains them. When Vicki and Steve make love, they are usually as raucous as they are tender; when they fight, storm warnings are posted. One frantic free-for-all is prompted by Steve's eagerness to have his prowess appraised. "Did the earth move for you?" he inquires (they are in Spain, after all). "It was very nice," Vicki sniffs, sounding a little as if she were recalling the funeral of a distant relative.

Mating seems to offer more time for comedy than resolution, and A Touch of Class ends predictably, with a dash of prefabricated melancholy. Melvin Frank's direction, like the script he wrote with Jack Rose, was apparently devised to give his actors maximum room to romp. A wise choice, since Jackson and Segal are the ones with most of the real style and--yes--class.

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