Adapted from the novel Letter to Five Wives by John Klempner
A group of friends gathers, expecting its not-very-secretly despised final member. Instead of her presence, they receive a letter indicating that she is running away with one of their husbands, not specifying which one. The remaining women spend the entire day reflecting on their marriages and wondering.
This is a difficult adaptation to evaluate because the book and the movie are so incredibly different, yet both are, if not good, certainly well done. I didn't particularly like the story, and resented many of its implications about women, but it was intriguing and very well-executed in both versions, despite their many differences. The five wives in the book are Deborah, Gerry, Lora May, Martha, and Rita. Gerry and Martha are eliminated from the movie entirely, and the other three are altered so much that they're barely recognizable. In both versions, Rita's a writer, Lora May married her boss, and Deborah doesn't understand what her husband ever saw in her, but most of the details of their lives are completely different. The husband thief's name changes from Addie Joss to Addie Ross, and though I don't want to spoil anything I feel I have to mention that she steals a different woman's husband in the movie than she does in the book. In both versions, Addie is constantly mentioned, but we don't really see her. However, parts of the movie are narrated by Addie, which I thought was a very interesting choice by the filmmakers, and one that worked surprisingly well.
Both the book and the movie switch back and forth between the present and past as the wives reflect, but even the way they do that is different. The book's flashbacks focus on one small incident at a time, so each wife has several flashback sections, with those of other wives in between. The movie gives each wife one big flashback section that tells her entire story. I don't think one way is better than the other: the way the book does it increases the suspense, but the movie's way is definitely less confusing; I kept getting the characters in the book mixed up at first. But by the end of the book I felt like I knew all the wives, whereas in the movie by the time the third wife's flashback was finished, I'd almost forgotten about the first. If they had tried to do one big flashback at a time with five, the movie would have been ridiculously long and no one would remember the first one by the end. The film's flashback format definitely works better for fewer characters.
In general, the changes are such that the reduction from five to three wives is almost completely seamless. If one didn't know that there were originally five, I doubt one would suspect that anybody was missing (sorry Gerry and Martha). There is one part of the film when Rita is talking to Lora May and says something like, "You're just as scared as the rest of us," which seemed a little strange because you don't usually say "the rest of us" when you're talking about yourself and one other person, but that was the only remnant of the two eliminated wives that I noticed. Maybe it was there intentionally to pay tribute to them. Or maybe I'm thinking way too hard about this. Not that that's something I'd ever do.
Joseph L. Mankiewicz also directed this film, and won the Best Director Oscar for it as well. The following year he also won both Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, becoming the first person to win a second adapted screenplay Oscar. This was, of course, for the Best Picture winning (and depending on whom you ask, possibly should have been Best Actress winning) All About Eve, based on the short story "The Wisdom of Eve" by Mary Orr.
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