The Constant Husband (EOTWS)

End Of The Week Shorts #24 extract: The Constant Husband (1955)

A fairly entertaining British comedy, one that plays on the old "amnesia" trope to see a rich man wake up one day and discover that he has seven fairly unhappy, though certainly not as infuriated as you'd expect, wives. 

Playing out primarily as a comedy, this narrative doesn't take itself very serious at all. However, there are rather striking allusions to ideas of our amnesiac becoming a different person once he wakes up; which suggests his sly, corrupt and plain wicked behaviour were the actions of a different human being. As this is argued in court, this stance becomes ever more ludicrous until the amnesiac cannot retain it, and thus admits that he is the same man, even though he has changed, that cheated and lied to so many people. This plays out in a Nuremberg Trial-esque manner, and begins to suggests that this film is about monsters living inside seemingly normal people who, though they can adapt to civility, should not be freed of their past doings. 

Alas, this commentary is a loose side-note in an otherwise ok, somewhat anarchistic and sometimes flippant, film.