Recently watched: Of Love and Desire (1963). Tagline: “If you
are an adult in every sense of the word, you will probably understand about
Katherine and Paul – and why there were so many men in her life!” I’m using
this period of enforced social isolation to explore the weirder corners of
YouTube for long forgotten and obscure movies. (My boyfriend is accompanying me
only semi-willingly).
When smolderingly handsome American civil engineer
Steve Corey (Steve Cochran) lands his private plane in Mexico City to work for
the mine owned by wealthy industrialist Paul Beckman (Curd Jurgens) and his half-sister
Katherine (Merle Oberon), Bill Maxton - the man Corey is replacing - is quick
to tip him off about Katherine. "All you have to do is touch her! She goes
off like fireworks!” he leers. “There were plenty of guys before me - and
there'll be plenty after me." After encountering her at a chichi cocktail
party (complete with a mariachi band and female guests all wearing bouffant
Jacqueline Kennedy-style helmet hair), Corey is indeed sucked into Katherine’s
voracious sexual web. Maybe it’s the dramatic way she descends the staircase,
or how she inscrutably murmurs, “I may look like champagne – but deep down I’m
scotch and soda.” Their first date, though, is cataclysmic. When it comes for
the goodnight kiss, Katherine lunges at Corey’s mouth, pawing him while
hungrily gasping, “Please! Please!” then takes offence at his startled response.
“Did I give in too fast for you?” she demands. “Didn’t I play the game right? I
didn’t set the stage right, did I? I should have turned off the lights! Put on
soft music! I should have pretended longer, but just how much longer? One hour?
Two?! Just what do you need to make you feel like I’m a conquest?!”

Despite Katherine’s whiplash mood swings,
transparent neediness and “scarlet” past, gallant Corey is no slut shamer and finds
himself genuinely falling in love with this troubled temptress. “I like you,”
he assures. “I think you deserve to be treated like a woman.” (Is Katherine
glamorously neurotic? Neurotically glamorous? You be the judge!). The sun rises
and church bells toll as they make love for the first time. But what’s the deal
with Katherine and Paul’s oddball relationship? At the party, Paul had
leaned-in and sniffed Katherine’s perfume, inquiring, “Black orchid?” in a most
unbrotherly gesture. And why is he taking such an unhealthy interest in Corey
and Katherine’s burgeoning romance?
Today Merle Oberon is best remembered for
portraying Cathy opposite Laurence Olivier’s Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights
(1939) and for her secretive origins (during her lifetime the Bombay-born
Anglo-Asian Oberon concealed her biracial identity, allegedly passing-off her
sari-clad mother as her maid). In the thirties and forties Merle Oberon had
been hailed as one of golden age Hollywood’s great beauties. By the early
sixties, movie offers had sputtered to a halt (she hadn’t made a film since
1956) and she was residing in Mexico as a jet-setting socialite with her
Italian millionaire husband. Perhaps
surprisingly, Oberon decided to resume her film career aged 53 and the result
was this bizarre comeback vehicle / vanity project. Of Love and Desire is a candy-hued, lushly
appointed melodrama in a similar vein to the deluxe soap operas that producer
Ross Hunter was then concocting for aging screen divas like Lana Turner and
Susan Hayward. Sammy Davis Jr croons the bossa nova-tinged opening theme tune
over the opening credits of lush tropical flowers. The travelogue-style footage
of mid-century Mexico is gorgeous. All the key players are well into in their
late forties or fifties. Oberon’s close-ups twinkle with flattering Vaseline and
gauze, she sports a fabulous wardrobe (including – memorably – a bikini) and
she may well be wearing her own jewelry collection. Many of the interior scenes
were reportedly filmed in in Oberon’s own sumptuous Mexican hacienda.
But what’s most unique about Of Love and
Desire is its prurient focus on incestuous attraction and the agony of
nymphomania. This was the era when popular culture was titillated by “oversexed
women”, treating the topic as both a genuine psychological condition and an
alarming social issue. In her romantic lead heyday Oberon’s roles were mainly
decorative and ladylike. While her tremulous performance here isn’t “good” by most
standards, there’s something undeniably gutsy about how Oberon commits to the messy, sexually insatiable Katherine. It helps that she’s partnered with rugged film
noir tough guy Steve Cochran. Who couldn’t be “oversexed” near Cochran’s
pheromones? A 46-year-old DILF here, Cochran is a soupçon beefier and
fuller-faced than he was in the forties and fifties, but his allure is most
definitely undimmed (and we get to see him in revealing swimming trunks).

Anyway, for enthusiasts of camp Of Love and
Desire teems with moments to treasure. Prepare for overwrought dialogue like,
“Oh, darling! I wish I were as young as you make me feel!” Corey had commented
of Katherine’s long opulent upswept beehive coiffure (clearly a wiglet): “I
can’t run my fingers through it …” In response, Katherine spontaneously
instructs a barber to lop it off into a perkily youthful shorter ‘do (a
makeover sequence shamelessly swiped from the Audrey Hepburn film Roman
Holiday). “Now you can run your fingers through my hair any time you want!” she
simpers. Watch for a bathtub sequence in which Oberon daringly reveals a
surprising amount of tanned naked flesh. Best of all, in a climactic moment, Katherine
is overcome by self-loathing and has a psychological freak-out while in public.
Running through the street and then a hotel lobby, she is horrified that everywhere
she looks there are MEN ogling and approaching her (and they’re saying things
like “Hey, lady!” “Is something wrong?” and “Que pasa?”). Hilariously, it
culminates with Katherine becoming trapped in a revolving door. In closing:
extramarital sex and female desire lead to nothing but heartache, but don’t
judge nymphomaniacs – they have their reasons.
Watch Of Love and Desire here.
Further reading:
Stunningly ageist and misogynistic contemporary review of Of Love and Desire in the New York Times.
Amusing analysis (with some great pics) in the reliably great Poiseidon's Underworld blog.