Separate Tables and Political Correctness

Last night my wife and I watched the 1958 classic --but scarcely remembered--film Separate Tables. The film won two Academy Awards: one for David Niven for best actor and one for Wendy Hiller for best actress in a supporting role. It was nominated for five additional Academy Awards in 1959, including best screenplay, best picture, and best actress in a leading role.



The story is about residents of the Beauregard, a seaside resort in England. The residents have dropped out of life for disparate reasons, which the film explores.  At the center of the film are two plots about the dynamics between writer John Malcolm (Burt Lancaster) and heiress Ann Shankland (Rita Hayworth) and between Major Pollock (David Niven) and Sibyl Railton-Bell (Deborah Kerr).

The complex relationships evolve in ways that suggest the frailty and uniqueness of individual human beings and the importance of tolerance and respect for human differences. Each character has found their way to life in a remote hotel, often to escape a troubled past, but each has an inner dignity that screenwriters Terence Rattigan and John Gay deftly examine.

The dynamic between Major Pollock and Sibyl--and Sibyl's mother, Mrs. Railton-Bell (Gladys Cooper)--reminded me of today's politically correct hypersensitivity, and it also reminded me that today's feminists, with the support of the state-protected media, have much in common with the Victorian prudes of three-quarters of a century ago. 

Major Pollock is discovered to be a mild sexual deviant when he is charged with the crime of successively sitting next to five different women in a movie theater.  His close friendship with Sibyl, who suffers from chronic anxiety disorder and is emotionally abused by her mother, is strained by the new story, which appears in a local newspaper.

Mrs. Railton-Bell is outraged at his sexual impropriety and mounts a campaign to oust Major Pollock from the hotel. Academics who have seen the witch hunts against male professors who tell dirty jokes or glance at the wrong woman will see the  parallel between the feminist prudes of the modern university and Victorian prudes like Mrs. Railton-Bell.

The acting in the film is brilliant, and some of the credit must go to director Delbert Mann.  Deborah Kerr is brilliant, and watching Lancaster and Hayworth together is thrilling.  The liberalism underlying the depiction of Mrs. Railton-Bell has increasingly been lost, as has the quality of talent.