Separate Tables (1958)
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Separate Tables Movie Review
Separate Tables is a 1958 drama film directed by Delbert Mann and starring Rita Hayworth, Deborah Kerr, Burt Lancaster, David Niven and Wendy Hiller. It’s a stellar, smart film.
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“The very sight of you is perhaps
the one thing about you I don’t hate“
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The film is set in a hotel and it follows a bunch of the guests there who lead their separate lives and rarely interact together. The film showcases the coldness of people, their distant behavior, repressed sexuality and especially the alienation that some feel in society and it does portray all of those themes beautifully. I especially connected with the last theme as I personally feel like that so watching this movie was very relatable to me and also quite moving.
Separate Tables is one of those very talkative, theatrical movies in a sense that it’s somewhat stagey and obviously based on a play. Although sometimes that was too evident, I mostly really liked that as I personally love dialogue-driven, sophisticated films such as this one. Although obviously paling in comparison to another 1958 dialogue-driven classic ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’, it’s still very much a terrific, successfully adapted for the screen story.
The film has a huge, amazing cast of actors and actresses and although excessive in that regard as the runtime is too short and thus not all of them get great character development, most of the characters are so well established and realized nonetheless.
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Rita Hayworth gave one of her best performances here in a rare very serious role for her. She portrayed this complex, broken woman so well and her relationship with Burt Lancaster’s character is the romantic highlight of the film. Burt himself is also excellent and very nuanced.
David Niven is very good in what is the most intriguing, brave role here. Rarely do we see sexually repressed characters portrayed in the fifties period, but here they did that really well and Major Pollock surely is such a moving, again relatable, very complex character. Niven’s performance is excellent, but him winning an Oscar for Best Actor is somewhat not deserved as he belongs more in the supporting category in my opinion.
Wendy Hiller also won an Oscar for her supporting role and I think she deserved it as she’s quite powerful with the little role that she’s got. Gladys Cooper is great too. She portrays a familiarly cold, but still effective old woman. And Deborah Kerr is probably the finest in terms of the performances here as she had a very difficult role to play and she played timid, alienated Sybil wonderfully.
Separate Tables received whopping seven Oscar nominations and I would actually say that all are very much deserved. Kerr deserved her nomination undeniably and maybe even should have won, the Best Picture nod is quite deserved and the screenplay is also deserved as the film adapts its play superbly into a feature film. Naturally the dialogue is amazing and the best part of the film.
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The score and cinematography are also incredibly deserved. Yes, the movie may feel stagey at times, but mostly it felt cinematic thanks to those two stellar aspects. The score is so moving, elegant and accompanying all of the emotion on screen deftly, but the cinematography is even more striking as it’s beautifully shot with some amazing takes and particularly effective, gorgeous imagery in a couple of wallpaper-worthy sequences.
Separate Tables is at times a bit stagey and it has too many characters, but most got their proper development and the film has such an amazing ensemble cast of great actors and actresses with the highlights being seductive Rita Hayworth, Oscar winner David Niven and especially terrific Deborah Kerr who played the most endearing, complex character wonderfully. The film is beautifully shot with gorgeous imagery, it’s also superbly scored, quite emotional, thematically rich and with a particularly memorable, rewarding ending. This dialogue-heavy, sophisticated drama thus entirely deserved its whopping seven Oscar nominations.
