BILLYBOY-10
Alexis Smith, wife of busy psychiatrist-psychoanalyst-psychotherapist Alexander Knox is sexually frustrated because she is a hot, steamy 33 year old and he's older, and not hot. One day, hubby brings home a young thug, Dirk Bogarde, to rehabilitate who is also hot & steamy and immediately you know the two are going to make steamy together, which of course they do after riding horses and getting all steamed up.Much scenery chewing and steaming later, hubby makes a breakthrough with Dirk regarding mommy, daddy & step-mommy issues and Dirk feels so guilty about steaming it up with his wife that he tells her it's through..over..finished..kaput and leaves the house to start out a new improved life of his own. Well, Alexis ain't taking this sitting down so she jumps in her car, gets him to climb in. Hubby gives chase in his car and several sharp curves and speedometers later, Alexis crashes thru a fence and over an embankment, the car turns over, it's wheels dramatically spinning and Alexis, the wife, is dead Dirk however is alive and the camera pans to the hole in the fence where they crashed thru. Above the hole is a huge poster of a leaping tiger. Ah hah. The movie title of course is Sleeping Tiger and it ends with a leaping tiger. Get it? The tiger! Wow. The End. I liked this movie because it was 50's black and white British and simple, predictable & plausible. Interesting Dirk is suppose to be younger than Alexis and he does look kid like and she is sort of matronly older looking but according to IMDb he was actually 3 months younger than she. I'm gonna give it six points cause it didn't bore me.
blanche-2
Joseph Losey went to England to escape the blacklist and worked under an assumed name. Given the result - 1954's "The Sleeping Tiger," he probably hoped that would never be known.This is a low-budget film that Losey had his set on Dirk Bogarde to star in, and Bogarde obliged. The two would go on to do some marvelous work together later. This isn't one of their better efforts. A psychiatrist, Dr. Clive Esmond (Alexander Knox) takes young criminal Frank Clemmons (Bogarde) into his home as an experiment to see if he can reform him. One look at Bogarde, and we know it's going to be uphill all the way, especially since he still moonlights committing robberies. Esmond's bored wife (Alexis Smith) becomes involved with Frank. Will the good doctor find out? Will the good doctor find out that Frank is still a crook? Will his wife and Frank run off together? This thing is a hodge-podge containing a lot of psychobabble. Bogarde, at the time a huge matinée idol in England, gives an excellent performance as a bad boy, something he was always good at. He went through the early part of his career alternating between romantic leads and snake charmers, until settling into a series of strong roles, first in the controversial film "Victim," and then in more artistic projects directed by Liliana Cavani, Losey, and Visconti. Alexis Smith's role isn't terribly fleshed out, nor do we know a great deal about the character's marriage.For me, seeing Bogarde is always worth it, but this film is kind of a mess.Very uneven and cheap looking. Better Losey can be found in "The Servant" and "Accident," both of which star Bogarde.
writers_reign
Several ironies are involved here not least the two irons playing heterosexual lovers, then there's the writer, Daniel Frye, who was really two other people, first Carl Foreman, who wrote the original treatment and Harold Buchman who gave it a buff job and finally there's director Victor Hanbury, in reality Joseph Losey who, like the two writers had been 'blacklisted' in the states and was thus obliged to work under a John Doe. In 1954 average filmgoers in England cared only that a given film provided ninety minutes of divertisment; terms like 'blacklist', 'HUAC', 'Hollywood Ten' 'Unfriendly Witness' and the like were never mentioned in the film magazines of the day; Picturegoer and Picture Show were little more than PR for the studios, a mixture of painless, positive reviews for even the most banal movie and studio-supplied puffs on the private lives of the stars and upcoming films so that the average film-goer would bask in the knowledge that Alexis Smith was firmly married and Dirk Bogarde a babe magnet who implicitly slept with his pick of the Rank Charm School as and when it suited him. The film itself is pure, undiluted tosh that wouldn't stand scrutiny beneath a Toc H light-bulb let alone a strong light but it is watchable even after a half century.
didi-5
Actually, this film isn't all bad. 'The Sleeping Tiger' refers to Alexis Smith's bored doctor's wife, who decides to throw herself at the bit of rough from the criminal classes (Dirk Bogarde) who her husband is hoping to rehabilitate. I suppose Bogarde's Frank is a British equivalent to the angry young men of Brando or Dean, but being British he is just a bit too mannered to be convincing.Smith's descent into frustration and anger after being rejected is unconvincing and done too quickly, meaning that the end sequences are rushed and unbelievable. Still, up to that point, the film is not bad. The relationship between Smith, Bogarde, and Smith's husband (Alexander Knox), is played out well and the film manages to be fairly engrossing and somewhat ahead of its time.
AD
