| The Man Who Had Power Over Women | |
| Director: | John Krish |
| Producer: | Judd Bernard |
| Music: | Johnny Mandel |
| Cinematography: | Gerry Turpin |
| Editing: | Thom Noble |
| Studio: | Kettledrum Films |
| Distributor: | AVCO Embassy |
| Runtime: | 89 minutes |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Language: | English |
| Gross: | $11,400 (US)[1] |
The Man Who Had Power Over Women is a 1970 British comedy film directed by John Krish and starring Rod Taylor, Carol White and James Booth.[2] A successful talent agent grows disenchanted with his life and begins an affair with his best friend's wife.
Peter Reaney is a successful public relations executive, managing pop singer Barry Black, a difficult client. Peter's neglected wife Angela leaves him, taking most of their money, and he begins an affair with Jody, the wife of his best friend Val.
Peter finds out that Black has made a fan called Mary Gray pregnant, and is shocked that his agency is arranging a clandestine abortion.
When Jody and Peter go to see Val to tell him of their affair, they find Val in bed with Jody's friend Francis. The next day, Val is killed in an accident. Jody and Peter decide to stay together.
Peter learns that Mary has died. He resigns from his job and assaults Black in front of a crowd of his fans.
The original director was Silvio Narizzano who left the project prior to shooting. Unhappy with subsequent changes, screenwriters Chris Bryant and Allan Scott requested their names be removed from the film.[3]
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "A straightforward, not to say inanely obvious and sentimental message seems to underlie this story of the spiritual guilt and cowardice bred by commercial compromise. Everything in the development of the film ... solidly emphasises the moral lesson. Perhaps because the film's centre seems such a heavy platitude, some vestige of interest only begins to develop, by simple opposition, on the periphery. The title is the first incongruous note: there is not a male in the film to whom it could apply. The only positive quality of the two characters caught in a world they both despise is their friendship, on the level of drunken pranks, mock-homosexual badinage and obvious affection. But once the solemn affair with Jody begins, this amusing interplay disappears – only surfacing in such odd sick jokes as Val's death under a deluge of lavatory bowls and the line in his will bequeathing his love to Reaney and his body to "science or the glue factory". The theme is finally never more than half alive, with a tawdry existence in the margins of a superficial film."[4]
The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 1/5 stars, writing: "This awful, cringe-inducing story about a public relations executive and his obnoxious pop star client was filmed at the fag end of the Swinging Sixties, and it has dated very badly. Although the film toys around with the moral issue of abortion, it never achieves more than a glossy vacuity."[5]
British film critic Leslie Halliwell said: "Fashionable wallow in guilt and luxury, not very convincingly done."[6]