--- title: "A Touch of Class" year: 1973 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/a-touch-of-class" fi1m_score: 66 critics_reviews: 1 published: "2026-09-20T05:46:52.656483+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T05:47:08.893569+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # A Touch of Class (1973) Directed by Melvin Frank · 1h 46m · MPA PG · Comedy, Romance **Fi1m score: 66** · Critics: 1 of 6 reviews so far *In a sentence:* A no-strings weekend undone by a friend on the same flight, a very small hire car, twin beds and a bad back > Melvin Frank’s comedy about an affair arranged like a business trip is sharp for an hour, and Glenda Jackson is sharp for all of it. Then the film decides it has a heart, and the jokes get quieter without anything taking their place. ## Synopsis London, early 1970s. Steve Blackburn (George Segal) is an American insurance executive with a wife, two children and a comfortable house, and a firm intention of getting something on the side. Vicki Allessio (Glenda Jackson) is a divorced dress designer with two children of her own, who copies Paris fashions for the rag trade and has no patience for men who waste her afternoons. They collide over a taxi in the park, share it, and he proposes an affair. She agrees, on conditions: a proper weekend away, in a hotel, in the sun. He books Málaga. At the airport his friend Walter Menkes (Paul Sorvino) and Walter’s wife Patty (K Callan) turn up on the same flight, and the weekend that was meant to be simple starts to require a great deal of lying. ## Review Melvin Frank, who wrote, produced and directed, starts from a small hard idea. Two adults agree to have sex with no feelings attached, set the terms like a contract, and fly to Spain to execute it. For about an hour *A Touch of Class* is a well-made comedy of logistics, of flights, hire cars and hotel bookings going wrong, and it is funny in the way things are funny when clever people are made to look stupid. Then Steve and Vicki come home, take a flat, and the film discovers it is a love story. It is much less sure of itself from there, and it shows. Jackson is the reason to watch. She plays Vicki dry and quick, with a look that tells Steve she has heard the line before and is deciding whether to let him have it anyway. Frank and Jack Rose have written her the best dialogue, and she says the rudest of it in a level voice, as if reading him a bill. She is a designer who copies other people’s frocks for a living, and she has the same practical attitude to the affair: it is a job, it has a schedule, and she expects it done properly. When she loses her temper in the Málaga hotel room it is a full performance of rage, and it is the funniest stretch of the film. Segal works harder and is given less. Steve is a man who thinks he is charming and is mostly persistent, and Segal plays that honestly, all grin and no listening, which is the right choice and not always a comfortable one to sit with. He is good at physical misery, and the film gives him plenty: a back that goes at the wrong moment, a car with no room for his legs, a flight with the wrong people on it. Paul Sorvino’s Walter is a warm, nosy, useful presence who keeps the Spanish half moving, and K Callan’s Patty does a lot with a raised eyebrow. Nadim Sawalha has one scene as the hotel’s night manager and gets a laugh out of every line. The craft is modest. Austin Dempster shoots London in flat grey daylight and Málaga in flat bright daylight, with no interest in either beyond getting the actors in frame, which suits a talking comedy and does nothing for the romance. Terence Marsh’s hotel room, with its two narrow beds and hard tiled floor, is the best set in the film because it is built for an argument, and the Soho flat the couple later takes is cramped in the right way. Ruth Myers dresses Jackson in clean lines that look like a working woman’s own cutting and Segal in the slightly too-loud suits of a man who has just been paid. Bill Butler cuts the quarrels fast and the tender scenes slow, which is the correct instinct, and John Cameron’s score keeps out of the way. The theme song does not; it turns up like a relative and stays. Here is what we felt. We laughed hard in that hotel room, at the beds and the back and the two of them shouting terms at each other, and we were surprised by how hard. Then, somewhere in the second half, watching them cook and bicker in the flat while Steve’s other life ran on unseen, we went quiet and stayed quiet. That is partly the film working. It is also the film running out of things to do. The scenes in the flat repeat one situation, a man trying to be in two places, and the situation does not change enough between repetitions to earn the time. The question underneath, whether two people can have a sensible affair, is a good one, and the film’s answer is the one everybody knows before the credits. What it does not do is look at Steve’s wife, who is barely on screen, so the cost of the arrangement is felt by one party only. [*The Apartment*](https://film.one/film/the-apartment) (1960) understood that a comedy about adultery has to hurt somebody we can see. This one keeps the hurt offstage and hopes we will not miss it. It is 106 minutes, it opened in Britain on 25 May 1973, and it is worth an evening for Jackson, for the Spanish hour, and for a script that still has more good lines than most comedies made since. Come for the first half and be patient with the second, and do not expect the ending to tell you anything you had not already worked out on the flight home. *Fi1m score 66, published 20 September 2026.* ### Reviews we read (1) - **Time Out**, CPe (65/100, inferred): The romantic comedy largely succeeds despite its title and theme song, thanks to sharp dialogue and George Segal's strong performance. It starts promisingly but soon settles into routine formula. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/a-touch-of-class) ## Details - **Director:** Melvin Frank - **Director:** Melvin Frank - **Writer:** Melvin Frank, Jack Rose - **Cinematography:** Austin Dempster - **Editor:** Bill Butler - **Music:** John Cameron - **Production design:** Terence Marsh - **Costume design:** Ruth Myers - **Producer:** Melvin Frank - **Cast:** George Segal as Steve Blackburn; Glenda Jackson as Vicki Allessio; Paul Sorvino as Walter Menkes; K Callan as Patty Menkes; Cec Linder as Wendell Thompson; Michael Elwyn as Cecil; Mary Barclay as Martha Thompson; Nadim Sawalha as Night Hotel Manager - **Runtime:** 1h 46m - **Certificate (MPA):** PG - **Release (the US):** 20 June 1973 - **Genres:** Comedy, Romance - **Box office:** $18 million ## Where to watch in the US - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, sd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $19.99, sd *Checked 2026-09-20.* Also available in: US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1974: Best Original Dramatic Score (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Writing, Original Screenplay (nominated); Best Actress (won) ## If you liked this - *The Apartment* (1960), Fi1m 91: Adultery as an office comedy, and it lets the hurt be seen. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-apartment.md) - *Two for the Road* (1967): A marriage told out of order on French roads, funny and sore. - *Sunday Bloody Sunday* (1971): Jackson again, in a triangle nobody shouts about; sadder and finer. - *Same Time, Next Year* (1978): One weekend a year for decades; the scheduled affair taken to its logical end. - *Shirley Valentine* (1989): A Liverpool housewife goes to Greece and talks to the wall; warmer and wiser. --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/a-touch-of-class