Skip to main content
A Double Life film image; woman leaning against a man

In this fascinating lesser known George Cukor picture (his first with husband and wife screenwriting team Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin) matinee idol Roland Colman plays a quintessentially English classical theatre actor, Tony John, whose dedication to playing Othello on Broadway leads to jealous fits off-stage, not least because Desdomona is played by his ex-wife (Signe Hasse). The film grinds gears somewhat between jocular backstage drama and tragic noir, with lots of intricately staged Shakespeare in-between.

While it’s intriguing to imagine the movie with Laurence Olivier in the lead, as Cukor initially hoped, Colman picked up the Academy Award for Best Actor for his troubles. The film is also notable for a pivotal supporting role from the young Shelley Winters, who reportedly based her character on her roomie of the time, Marilyn Monroe.

Miss Gordon and Mr. Kanin, in collaboration with William Shakespeare, have whipped up a modern drama which thoroughly employs the screen to demonstrate the strange excitement and the deathless romance of the theatre.

Bosley Crowther, New York Times (1947)

It captures the pulse of the New York theater to an extraordinary degree, inherently as well as because some of it was shot there; it is adult, outspoken and subtle, and it has shaken Mr. Colman free of most of the repressions imposed upon him by years of effete grand seigniory in Hollywood.

Philip K Scheuer, Los Angeles Times (1947)

Director

George Cukor

Cast

Ronald Colman, Signe Hasse, Shelley Winters, Edmond O’Brien

Credits
Country of Origin

USA

Year

1947

Language

English

Awards

Academy Award, Best Actor

19+
104 min

Book Tickets

This event has passed.

Credits

Screenwriter

Ruth Gordon, Garson Kanin

Cinematography

Milton R. Krasner

Editor

Robert Parrish

Original Music

Miklós Rózsa

Production Design

Harry Horner

Art Director

Harvey Gillett, Bernard Herzbrun

Also in This Series

Getting Real charts the evolution of screen acting in American film from 1945-1980, diving into the psychological realism which took audiences somewhere deeper and more authentic than ever before.

The China Syndrome

Dir. James L Bridges
122 min

Jane Fonda is a lightweight local news anchor sent to film a puff piece about clean, limitless energy at a nuclear power plant with cameraman Michael Douglas. As luck would have it, they witness chaos in the control room and an emergency shutdown.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Little Big Man

Dir. Arthur Penn
139 min

Dustin Hoffman ages a century in Arthur Penn's epic picaresque anti-western, the tall tale of 121-year-old Jack Crabb, a white man rescued and raised by the Cheyenne, a one-time snake-oil salesman, gunslinger, and mule skinner under General George Custer.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Husbands

Dir. John Cassavetes
142 min

Men behaving badly: reeling from the death of a friend, three middle-aged buddies go on an epic drinking binge. It's not enough. They roll home, collect their passports, and take off for a weekend of gambling, women and booze in London.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre
Nashville
Nashville film image; large group of people posing by a podium

Nashville

Dir. Robert Altman
159 min

With 26 actors getting more-or-less equal screen time and half of them singing their own tunes, Robert Altman's state-of-the-nation satire on bicentennial USA is a movie that repays multiple views.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Scarecrow

Dir. Jerry Schatzberg
112 min

A bittersweet, touching buddy movie with Gene Hackman as a volatile tramp, Max, and Al Pacino as "Lion", a drifter now set on returning to the wife and kid he abandoned years ago. Hackman's favourite of his own movies.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

The Missouri Breaks

Dir. Arthur Penn
126 min

This exuberant, wild and wooly western from Arthur Penn features a brazenly transgressive performance from Marlon Brando, while Jack Nicholson underplays masterfully as the cattle rustler he's been hired to eliminate.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Raging Bull

Dir. Martin Scorsese
129 min

In the throes of a near-fatal drug problem Martin Scorsese made what he believed could be his last movie. Its subject: the Bronx Bull, Jake La Motta, a graceless but indomitable boxer who never quits beating himself up. De Niro has never dug deeper.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema