Love Has Many Faces movie storyline. Married couple Kit and Pete are questioned by the Acapulco police when the body of Billy Andrews, a beachboy, washes ashore. Kit had an affair with Billy, and Pete accuses Kit of causing Billy’s suicide because she ended their affair. Pete is a former beachboy who married Kit for her money and is now having second thoughts about his way of life.
When Carol Lambert, Billy’s fiancée, arrives in Acapulco, Pete becomes attracted to her, and Kit, meanwhile, consoles herself with a bullfighter. At the ranch of Don Julian, where they are watching the testing of the bulls, Kit overhears Carol demand of Pete that he choose between herself and Kit. Upset, Kit rides her horse into the bullring and is gored by a bull, but Pete jumps into the ring and diverts the bull’s second charge. Kit is rushed to the hospital; Carol returns to the States; and Pete and Kit are reconciled.
Love Has Many Faces is a 1965 American drama romance film directed by Alexander Singer, and written by Marguerite Roberts. Nancy Wilson sings the title song and Edith Head designed Lana Turner’s clothes. The film stars are Lana Turner, Cliff Robertson, Hugh O’Brian, Ruth Roman, Stefanie Powers, Virginia Grey, Enrique Lucero, Fanny Schiller, René Dupeyrón, Cynthia O’Neal and Patty Hobbs.
Film Review for Love Has Many Faces
Starring 44-year old screen diva Lana Turner at the height of her mature glamour. The steamy action is set in sun-drenched Acapulco amidst the amoral la dolce vita milieu of the jaded idle rich, where tanned half-naked gigolos ply their trade on the beach to sex-starved affluent society matrons. (In this realm, it’s women who buy the services of male prostitutes, not other men). The hedonistic idyll is abruptly interrupted when Billy Andrews, one of these beach boys-for-hire, washes-up dead on the shore. Was he murdered? Did he commit suicide? A bracelet on his wrist (engraved “Love is Thin Ice”) links him to married 40-something heiress and playgirl, Kit Jordan (Turner).
Pete (Cliff Robertson) and Kit (Lana Turner) pouting through the pain aboard their yacht. Note Robertson’s safari leisure suit – so atomic-era. Note too the glasses of brandy: this duo continuously knocks back brandy (in the blazing heat on the beach!) as if their lives depend on it. Taking a sip each time they do would be a fun drinking game. Interesting: In real life Turner was reportedly a hard drinker, but onscreen her drunks scenes are wildly unconvincing.
The all-star cast screams “1965”: buff Cliff Robertson as Turner’s ex-hustler husband (Robertson, of course, tormented another older diva – Joan Crawford – years earlier in Autumn Leaves), gravel-voiced Ruth Roman (she gives Love’s earthiest, most nuanced performance as a horny middle-aged tourist.
Years later she would make a vivid impression as the butch, growling bewigged mother in freaky exploitation film The Baby), god-like furry-chested Hugh O’Brien as wolfish veteran gigolo Hank (he spends most of the film virtually naked and is a sight to behold. His motto is “Always treat a tramp like a lady and a lady like a tramp”) and Stefanie Powers in her early ingenue starlet years.
Mainly, though, Love is a star vehicle for Turner: as troubled socialite Kit, she gets to suffer, emote and hide a painful secret, drink and smoke too much, wear sunglasses, dramatically ascend and descend a spectacular staircase, impatiently snap orders at servants in Spanish and repeatedly changes clothes (her garish Edith Head-designed wardrobe was one of the film’s major draws and cost an estimated $1 million). Turner’s fellow actors’ close-ups are in crisp normal focus, but when the camera cuts to Turner, the lens is abruptly misty with Vaseline or gauze. No one over-acts quite like Lana Turner. Is she awful or majestic? She’s certainly always undeniably compelling.
Seen today, the unapologetic and overt focus on bronzed and oiled male flesh is eye-popping. Love needs to be embraced by modern audiences as an LGBTQ camp classic! While all the romantic interludes depicted are strictly hetero, it’s difficult to imagine a queerer movie emerging from mainstream Golden Age Hollywood. (Well, considering this is 1965, this is Golden Age Hollywood in its protracted agonizing death throes).
In fact, there’s so much outrageously homoerotic beefcake worship in Love Has Many Faces it suggests Bob Mizer of Athletic Model Guild was some kind of consultant or adviser! In addition to women looking to luxuriate in a weepy deluxe melodrama, I suspect the audience was full of connoisseurs of firm male flesh and “confirmed bachelors.”
Love Has Many Faces (1965)
Directed by: Alexander Singer
Starring: Lana Turner, Cliff Robertson, Hugh O’Brian, Ruth Roman, Stefanie Powers, Virginia Grey, Enrique Lucero, Fanny Schiller, René Dupeyrón, Cynthia O’Neal, Patty Hobbs
Screenplay by: Marguerite Roberts
Production Design by: Joseph C. Behm
Cinematography by: Joseph Ruttenberg
Film Editing by: Alma Macrorie
Costume Design by: Edith Head
Set Decoration by: Noldi Schreck
Art Direction by: Alfred Sweeney
Music by: David Raksin
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures
Release Date: February 24, 1965 (New York City)
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