Da un momento all'altro

"Moment to Moment" (1966: *** out of ****) is a forgotten gem that has just recently been released through Collecter's Choice video. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy, an old pro from Hollywood's Golden Age, this is one of the best of the glossy guilty pleasures of the 60's, the golden decade of such films. Jean Seberg plays a bored housewife and mother vacationing on the French Riviera with her neglectful psychiatrist husband (Arthur Hill). While Hill is away on one of his frequent long business trips she drifts into an affair with a hunky sailor (played by an actor named Sean Garrison, one of those leading men of the time who get the big buildup, make one or two pictures, then disappear for good). As they motor around the area taking in the sights, they're accompanied by one of Henry Mancini's catchiest title songs. In fact, it is played so often that at one point Seberg asks the bandleader at a café the name of the tune. He ,of course, replies "Moment to Moment." After a bad lover's quarrel Seberg accidentally shoots the sailor and then she and her neighbor (Honor Blackman) drop his body in a nearby ravine. To reveal any more would spoil the unpredictable twists and turns of a deliciously absurd but completely absorbing plot. Suffice it to say that nothing that occurs in the first half of the film is wasted in the second half. Highly recommended for connoisseurs of the "good-bad" movie.