An Affair of the Skin

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An Affair of the Skin
An Affair of the Skin poster.jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Ben Maddow
Written byBen Maddow
Produced by Helen Levitt
Ben Maddow
Starring
CinematographyRoger Barlow
David Shore
Edited by Verna Fields
Distributed byZenith International Film Corp.
Release date
  • 1963 (1963)
Running time
102 minutes
CountryUnited States

An Affair of the Skin (also known as Love As A Disorder [1] ) is a 1963 American drama film written and directed by Ben Maddow and starring Viveca Lindfors and Kevin McCarthy. [1] It is a story of romantic entanglements as seen through the eyes of a black woman photographer.

Contents

Premise

Set in New York, the drama describes the sexual relations of the three main characters, Victoria, Allen, and his wife Katherine, including the problems they encounter as told in three intertwined stories. Victoria is an aging fashion model who is afraid to let go of her young male lover because she thinks she is too old to ever get another man to love her. Allen and Katherine are an unhappily married neurotic couple with problems of their own.

Cast

Production

Maddow is reported as feeling that the initial release of An Affair of the Skin had been rushed for financial reasons..[ citation needed ] In 1973, 10 years after its initial release, Maddow re-edited and released it again under the title Love As Disorder..[ citation needed ]

Reception

The New York Times wrote: "Pretentiousness is the order of the day in An Affair of the Skin, a candid romantic drama that opened yesterday at the Carnegie Hall Cinema. Ben Maddow, remembered for The Savage Eye, has fallen into the trap of clever phraseology that marred the earlier film. His dialogue, instead of functioning to tell the admittedly thin story of five morose New Yorkers immersed in interlocking relationships, concentrates on glib philosophical diatribes and studied quips. Furthermore, as if in love with his own lines, he has directed the drama at a pace slow enough to over-emphasize every syllable in the script. This is doubly irritating, because the New York photography of this moderately budgeted film is outstanding, and the remaining technical credits are thoroughly expert. The acting, too, is uniformly skilled by an eminently professional cast." [2]

Time wrote: "An Affair of the Skin just misses being a first-class parody of the foreign art films that inspired it. Purporting to show 'the realism of grownup, contemporary sex' in America – not in England or France or Italy – Producer-Writer-Director Ben Maddow ( The Savage Eye ) serves up a mannered little pastiche of urban infidelities that is pure counterfeit." [3]

John Hagan wrote: "An offscreen narration by the photographer was added to establish her as an observer: a participant in the action, but also a caustic chronicler of it. As in much of Maddow's work, inner disorder is seen against a background of social unrest as described in a highly imagistic manner by a person who has both emotional involvement and critical detachment." [4]

Critic Woody Haut wrote in 2008: "...a worthy, if not altogether successful, attempt at being an American art movie, a hodgepodge of influences, from Italian Realists, Antonioni and Bergman to US social conscience films and documentarists like Robert Flaherty. Written, produced and directed by former documentarist and Hollywood scriptwriter Ben Maddow, the film was, for the most part, shot on the streets of New York, and memorable for its sensuousness, its street-level camera-work and use of natural light." [5]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "An Affair of the Skin". American Film Institute Catalog. Retrieved January 23, 2026.
  2. ↑ "Ben Maddow's 'An Affair of the Skin' at Carnegie Hall Cinema". The New York Times. November 21, 1963. Archived from the original on April 27, 2013.
  3. ↑ "Dermis, Anyone?" Time , December 6, 1963. Online version retrieved Jan. 31, 2008.
  4. ↑ Hagan, John (2000). "Ben Maddow". In Pendergast, Tom; Pendergast, Sara (eds.). International Dictionary of Film and Filmmakers (4 ed.). St. James Press. ISBN   978-1-55862-449-8 . Retrieved January 9, 2008.
  5. ↑ Haut, Woody (2008). "Ben Maddow: Affairs of the Skin". Archived from the original on July 20, 2008. Blog postings by a film critic who has published several books.
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