Autumn Leaves

Millicent lives alone, typing manuscripts at home, and is no longer young. In a restaurant she meets a man much younger than herself. Burt is quick, insistent and attractive; they marry within weeks. Then it emerges that nothing he told her was true, including what he said about his father and his former wife. The subject is not the age gap but accepting that the person you love is ill. Millicent has to choose between keeping him and getting him treated, and treatment carries the possibility of losing him. The film builds that dilemma as a real calculation rather than melodrama. The form darkens as it goes. The first half proceeds like romantic drama, then the tone hardens; Robert Aldrich delivers the violent scene without preparation and the viewer is caught as unprepared as Millicent. Joan Crawford is at the centre, and the part sits outside her usual template in this late stage of her career. The film won Aldrich the best director prize at the Berlin film festival in 1956. The song heard over the opening is sung by Nat King Cole, and the title comes from it. Cliff Robertson plays Burt and Vera Miles his former wife. Who it is for: viewers who like fifties melodrama and Crawford. Who it is not for: anyone troubled by the period's account of mental illness; the film speaks with the knowledge of its time.