Satyr Satire

A Guide for the Married Man is an illuminated lecture on How to Commit Adultery that happily has more illustrations than text. It begins with an irreverent quote from Oscar Wilde: "The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties." It ends with a pious bromide: "Midst pleasures and palaces, there's no place like home." Sandwiched between the two views is a sprightly scenario that makes this the most sophisticated sex comedy of the season.

Its success is all the more remarkable because it is virtually plotless. A suburban husband (Walter Matthau) decides that the grass is greener and the lass keener in the other fellow's backyard. A colleague with a wandering eye (Robert Morse) nominates himself as Matthau's instructor in the arcane rules of high-infidelity. Like most modern teachers, Morse goes in for visual aids: every time he makes a pedantic point the screen lights up with a lively sketch from life, featuring 13 stars in cameo roles as "technical advisers."

In one of the funniest episodes, Art Carney demonstrates the simplest way to get away from a wife (Lucille Ball) for an evening with a mistress. He criticizes her cooking ("Pot roast? It tasted more like the pot than the roast!"), waits for her counterattack, then, acting wounded, stomps into the night on the town. In another, Joey Bishop is discovered in flagrante delicto by his outraged mate. "What bed? What girl?" he replies. While his wife shrieks, he calmly cleans up the room, whisks the girl out, then settles down to read in the living room. Faced with his bland denials, the wife begins to wonder whether it was all an illusion, weakly wilts "What do you want for dinner?"

Eager to learn by doing, Matthau finally entices a voluptuous victim (Elaine Devry) to a motel; as she stands before him, stripped down to her black lace foundation, he decides that he prefers a wifetime of dreaming to a lifetime of scheming. Nervously he shows his date pictures of his family and prays for any interruption that will end the affair that never began. Moments later, deliverance comes when detectives break into a neighboring room and discover a couple in bed. The man: that satirical satyr Robert Morse. Gratefully, Matthau and the movie chicken out and head for home.

Director Gene Kelly has guided Guide flawlessly, making it as crisp and catchy as one of his old dance routines. But it is hard to see how any moviemaker could have gone wrong with one of Hollywood's ultimate weapons: Walter Matthau. Underplaying the male norm pondering the female form, Matthau creates a triumph of taste in a role that could have been merely low-down and dirty--proving once again that the person who plays the common man must be an uncommon actor.

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