Separate Tables (1958), directed by Delbert Mann.
A superior soap opera set in a seaside hotel. Some permanent residents, some visitors. All have different types of loneliness, often expressed in sexual difficulties:
David Niven is the cheery, probably phony major who is trying keep everyone from seeing the local newspapers. He was arrested for "insulting" women in a darkened theater. I'm not exactly sure what was happening: groping? Flashing? Masturbation? He later says "It has to be with strangers, in the dark".
He is loved by the timid Deborah Kerr who is totally dominated by her dragon-lady mother, Gladys Cooper. The young woman is so repulsed by and terrified of sex that she can't even say the word. (This is great switch for Kerr who is usually so sexually confident).
Burt Lancaster loves hotel keeper Wendy Hiller, last seen in Pygmalion (1938) and I Know Where I'm Going! (1945).
He is flustered by the appearance of his ex-wife Rita Hayworth, whose confident sex-appeal is a weapon to cloud men's minds.
Rod Taylor is in the background as a comic relief medical student whose studies are always interrupted by the voracious needs of his girlfriend.
From two one-act plays by Terence Rattigan, always performed together. As always in theater adaptations, it is dialogue heavy, but his dialogue is good.
David Raksin score, photographed by Charles Lang. Edith Head did some of the clothes.
Available on Blu-ray from Kino, with subtitles and a frank commentary track by the director.
Lancaster was one of the producers but never pulled rank on him. Hayworth was nervous to be in such esteemed company.
He was promised there would be no "Separate Tables" theme song over the credits. When he heard the Bobby Vinton ballad he broke his contract and never worked for the producers again.