The End of the Affair (1955)

Adaptation of Graham Greene’s classic 1951 novel. During World War II, writer Maurice Bendrix (Van Johnson) goes to the party of London civil servant Henry Miles (Peter Cushing) and soon after begins an affair with his wife Sarah (Deborah Kerr). But when Bendrix is injured in a bombing, Sarah mysteriously removes herself from his life. 

This clever melodrama toys with becoming a noirish, Hitchcockian thriller – there’s an endearingly silly detective played by John Mills – but is really a film about religious faith and morality. 

A few things stand out as odd:

• The couple seem to go from meeting to being obsessively in love in no time at all, and yet there’s no real chemistry between them. What do they have in common? It’s as if a scene or two is missing, as their apparent attraction is never explained.
• When Bendrix first sees Sarah, she’s kissing another man. Who is he and why is this additional affair not explored further? Was it simply there to indicate that she was unhappily married?
• If Bendrix is American, why is he writing a book about the English civil service?

It was remade in 1999, with Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore in the lead roles.