By Love Possessed
In many respects, this film is akin to a Douglas Sirk melodrama. Unfotunately, being compared with Sirk's works usually means that By Love Possessed comes off looking second-best, and in so doing, its depth is readily overlooked.
On the surface, the storyline about a dissatisfied well-to-do but drunkard woman who cheats on her impotent husband with one of her colleagues, has the hallmarks of a melodrama.
Lana Turner as the lead female lends to the Sirk-like quality of the film. A young George Hamilton as a law student rebuffing the interests of his childhood sweetheart is quite interesting.
But much of this film is an examination of comfortable, upper middle-class life in America.
Despite their monetary comfort, the characters are compelled to behave the way society expects them to; it takes a brave soul to defy those expectations. Even a minor character in the film (during a scene at a party) is subject to behavioural abidance by her community's expectations of her (to get drunk, take her clothes off and jump in the pool). She even acknowledges it herself.
The conflict between our public and private selves is as persistent now as it was back then, and sometimes, with similarly dramatic consequences.