Goodbye Again (1961)

Goodbye Again (1961)

Taglines: Love has many faces… and this is the motion picture that reveals them all!

Goodbye Again movie synopsis. In this adaptation of Françoise Sagan’s best selling novel, Paula is a beautiful and highly successful 40-year-old businesswoman. She is deeply in love with Roger, her mature consort of five years. Roger is a very charming gallant who loves Paula but is too selfish to give up his freedom to be promiscuous.

When Paula meets Phillip, the 24-year-old immature lawyer son of one of her rich clients, he falls hopelessly in love with the glamorous, sympathetic older woman and insists that the age difference will be no barrier to a romance. Paula resists the young man’s persistent advances, but she finally succumbs when Roger initiates yet another affair with one of his young Maisies. An affair begins, and society does not approve.

Goodbye Again (released in Europe as Aimez-vous Brahms?) is a 1961 American romantic drama film produced and directed by Anatole Litvak. The screenplay was written by Samuel A. Taylor, based on the novel Aimez-vous Brahms? by Françoise Sagan. The film, released by United Artists, stars Ingrid Bergman, Anthony Perkins, Yves Montand, and Jessie Royce Landis.

Goodbye Again (1961)

About the Production

Litvak and others thought “Aimez-vous Brahms?” would be a confusing title for U.S. audiences, and initially chose Time on My Hands as the title for the American release, after the song of that name they had selected as the main theme; when the song’s publishers insisted on a $75,000 license for its use, they dropped plans to use the song, and the production team settled on “Goodbye Again” as the title, a suggestion from Perkins that he had taken from a Broadway production in which his father Osgood had had a role.

Scenes were filmed on location in Paris. During principal photography, Perkins thought Bergman was a “little too persistent” in her attempts to get him to rehearse their kissing scenes; Perkins later said “Bergman would have welcomed an affair with him”, but Bergman had a different explanation in her 1980 autobiography, saying it was her shyness and tendency to blush: “You see, although the camera has no terrors at all for me, I’m very bad at this sort of intimacy on the screen, especially when the men are practically strangers.”

Uncredited “stars” of the film were the automobiles: as Time magazine pointed out, Goodbye Again “is thoroughly French. That is to say, all of its important scenes take place in restaurants or automobiles.” The score is by Georges Auric, with additional music by Brahms. The Brahms motifs are the 4th movement from Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68, and the 3rd Movement from Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90. Film critic Bosley Crowther called the score “almost as elegant as the settings, which are the most respectable things in the film.”

The soulful theme of the third movement of Brahms’ Symphony No. 3 is heard repeatedly, including as the tune of a song (“Love Is Just a Word”) sung by the night club singer (Diahann Carroll). Lyrics to the film are by Dory Langdon (later known as Dory Previn). The soundtrack was released by United Artists Records (UAS 5091) in “electronic” (i.e., simulated) stereo.

Goodbye Again Movie Poster (1961)

Goodbye Again (1961)

Directed by: Anatole Litvak
Starring: Ingrid Bergman, Anthony Perkins, Yves Montand, Jessie Royce Landis, Pierre Dux, Jocelyn Lane, Jean Clarke, Michèle Mercier, Alison Leggatt, Uta Taeger, Diahann Carroll
Screenplay by: Samuel A. Taylor
Production Design by: Margot Capelier
Cinematography by: Armand Thirard
Film Editing by: Bert Bates
Costume Design by: Jean Zay
Art Direction by: Alexandre Trauner
Music by: Georges Auric, Johannes Brahms
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: United Artists
Release Date: June 29, 1961

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