My First Wife
Clip 3: ‘Women are like eskimos’
3 min 2 sec
Taken from the feature My First Wife (1984)
Original title classification not known – this clip chosen to be PG
Availability of the complete title
Curator’s clip description
Helen’s mother (Betty Lucas) tells her daughter (Wendy Hughes) not to be selfish – she should go back to her husband. In the hospital where he’s recovering from an overdose of pills, John (John Hargreaves) endures a visit from the psychiatrist, Dr Hirschfeld (Ron Falk). Helen arrives to take John home.
Curator’s notes
Cox is a talented humorist, although his sense of humour is often very subtle – as in the characterisation here of the psychiatrist as a peeping tom, before he enters the ward. There is humour too in the dry way that John responds to his questions. Everyone in the film is at very low ebb at this point, beyond anger. The humour returns in the script after the emotions have been exhausted. So too does a sense that life, after all, must go on.
Paul Byrnes, curator
