The Millionairess (1960) - film review

Under the terms of her father’s will, heiress Epifania Parerga can only marry a man who manages to turn £500 into £15,000 within three months.  When her first marriage proves to be a disaster, Epifania tries to kill herself by jumping into the River Thames.  Although the attempt fails it is not without incident, since it introduces her to Ahmed el Kabir, an Indian doctor with a rundown practice visited only by London’s poorest.   Epifania is strangely attracted to the curious little Indian and feigns illness so she can see him at his surgery.  Whilst he finds Epifania attractive, Ahmed is irritated by her visits, partly because he harbours great bitterness for the misery that her father inflicted on his employees in his pursuit of every greater profits.   Spurned by the man she now intends to marry, Epifania retaliates by building an ultramodern hospital on his doorstep.  The heiress’s hopes that Ahmed will agree to take charge of the new hospital are dashed when the doctor chooses instead to retain his old practice.   Ahmed tells Epifania that he cannot marry her because he promised his mother on her deathbed that he would only marry a poor homeless woman who could make a success of her life by starting out with 500 rupees.   Epifania accepts the challenge and persuades the doctor to attempt her father’s own test.  With her business acumen, the heiress  has no difficulty honouring her side of the bargain.  Ahmed, however, has no idea what to do with the £500 Epifania thrusts into his hands...

The Millionairess was the last of Anthony Asquith’s screen adaptations of celebrated plays by well-known British playwrights.   The film was based on a play of the same title by George Bernard Shaw, whose most famous work, Pygmalion, had also been adapted by Asquith, back in 1938.  In between these two films, Asquith had enjoyed great success with his adaptations of plays by Terence Rattigan and Oscar Wilde, including his triumphant The Importance of Being Earnest (1952).

For all its surface gloss, Asquith’s The Millionairess is a plodding and cumbersome affair, lacking both the elegance and keen satirical edge of the director’s previous adaptations.  Shaw’s vitriolic salvos against the excesses of capitalism are diluted to almost homeopathic proportions, presumably because the producers were too conscious that the film might be perceived as left-wing, pro-communist propaganda in its lucrative American market.  Whereas Shaw’s humour has the cutting edge of a razor-sharp scalpel, the comedy offered by this film impacts with the subtle grace of a badly aimed croquet mallet.

Despite the lacklustre screenplay and Asquith’s less than inspired direction, The Millionairess is worth watching for Peter Sellers’ star turn and some enjoyable supporting contributions from such screen legends as Alastair Sim and Vittorio de Sica.   Here, Sellers is surprisingly convincing as an Indian slum doctor, turning in a serious character performance rather than a mere comedy impersonation.  Sellers is probably the one big-name British actor who could get away with playing an Indian; he would do so again in his subsequent Tati-inspired farce The Party (1968).  Sophia Loren is glamorous but mildly irritating (in the way that pushy self-assertive females often are), although her scenes with de Sica are hilarious.  Alastair Sim very nearly steals the show, but doesn’t he always?      

It was whilst making this film that George Martin, the producer of Sellers’ comedy recordings, suggested a comedy duet sung by Sellers and Loren.  This song, Goodness Gracious Me, was recorded by the two stars but Martin was unable to persuade the producers of The Millionairess to include it in the film.   Instead, the record was used to promote the film and became a hit in the UK singles charts in 1960.  The song’s title would later inspire a successful BBC radio and television series, performed by a talented team of Asian comedians in the late 1990s.

© Derek Adamson 2010

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