Excellent but underrated film

This is an astonishing documentary that will wring your heart while it bends your mind

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

In one of his few flings at light comedy Zachary Scott plays the macho husband of Alexis Smith and he believes woman's place is in the home. No wife of mine will earn any of the money while I'm master of the house. Make sure that dinner is on the table when I get home from the breadwinning.But later on when he hires Veda Ann Borg at his job and Smith gets that mixed up which earns Scott a sock on the jaw from Douglas Kennedy her husband. After that poor Scott spends the film trying to reconcile.Zachary Scott displays a flair for comedy that was not often seen. His typical role was set in his debut film where he's the serpentine and devious man Dimitrios Macropoulos in The Mask Of Dimitrios. Unfortunately One Last Fling was definitely one last fling at comedy for Zachary Scott and most lightweight material.But Veda Ann Borg is here and she's worth watching in anything.

This "light" comedy sinks like a lead weight, but interestingly enough it conveys a great deal about American post-war social mores and trends. Scott and Smith ( both better cast elsewhere in stylish noirs)are immediately identified with some contempt as exemplars of "those stubborn people who insist on inhabiting large urban centers (like New York) just to prove it can be done." Smith is a frustrated housewife immensely bored, unable to think of anything to do but go back to work which her husband won't allow despite her demeaning wheedling. If he would allow it, people would think he is unable to support her. Meanwhile he is trying to get a former female military friend appointed as his assistant manager. When Smith, the wife, happens upon the two at a business luncheon she automatically assumes her husband has been having an ongoing affair with the woman. The ensuing reversals of unfunny awkwardness has both husband and wife alternately whimpering childishly for forgiveness or spitefully and childishly thwarting/disowning the other. It's easy to see why these two have no children and it has nothing to do with their Hays code separate beds. They are just too busy being children themselves. This unattractive pattern of married life was immortalized in the 50's on TV with the moronic baby-talking Lucy vs. the hotheaded petty tyrant Desi, a formula which long outstayed its welcome if not its popularity. Doubtlessly when this rather slavishly conforming couple joins the imminent exodus to what will become the stultifyingly homogenous suburbia their offspring, if any, would be among the first refugees heading for Haight-Ashbury.

The title seems slapped on. It doesn't have much to do with the frenetic acting and tired plot. Who's having the fling? Entrepreneur Zachary Scott or his wife, Alexis Smith, who wants to go back to work? Probably it refers to Scott, who has made overtures toward hiring a female military buddy for the job Smith wangles.Smith is always a likable performer but has little to do here. And Scott, excellent as a villain or as an oily ladies' man in other movies, is just awful here. He may have had a flair for comedy but if so, he was very ill served by this director. He comes across as whiny and weak.The plot is passable. It's painless. But it aims for screwball and falls far, far short.