Review of That Touch of Mink, directed by Delbert Mann

Despite being someone who minored in film studies in college and has worked as a film critic for so long now, I am ashamed to admit that I had never watched a Cary Grant movie before now.

Honestly, when I was young and naive as an undergraduate starting out my academic career, I had a grudge against any movie that was released before the year 2007.

Why I had picked 2007 is unknown to me even now, but I refused to watch movies released before then. Obviously I had to get over this pretty quickly for school, as I was taking film classes, but I never watched a lot of the older classic movies because of this for a hot minute.

I ended up watching this movie specifically because I was on my little bored tangents and was looking for something to do instead of doing my homework.

So I did what I do best as a tired critic who’s also in graduate school: I opened up Kanopy and played the movie equivalent of Russian Roulette to pick what I was going to watch today.

And I landed on A Touch of Mink, which had supposedly just been added to the catalogue, and I pressed play after getting comfortable.

Here’s my review of the movie.

A woman looking for a job gets tied up with a business executive.

Our protagonist in this movie is Cathy (played by Doris Day), a New York City boss babe who is trying to get a job so she can continue her lifestyle in the city.

While this won’t be the sixties version of Sex and the City for now, the movie starts with her trying to find a job and coming to the unemployment office so she can get a check.

After the clerk starts hitting on her, it becomes increasingly obvious he just wants to get in her pants, effectively making her uncomfortable with the situation at hand.

But when a business executive named Philip accidentally splashes her dress with mud while she’s trekking to a job interview, he feels really bad about what has happened and wants to make it up to her. They meet, and sparks are already flying from the beginning.

They begin dating and seeing each other, and while Philip wants to expedite the process and sleep with her, Cathy says she wants to save it for marriage.

They’re going out every single night, going to baseball games and some of the nicest restaurants on the town.

Everything is nice and dandy until Philip offers to take her to Bermuda, where she then becomes anxious at the thought of having sex to him while in the Caribbean.

She gets a rash and Philip is unable to sleep with her then and there, and, not long after that, he proposes another trip to Bermuda.

We get a random B plot in the middle of this where Philip’s coworker goes to a therapist and admits he’s helped Philip get quite a few women, but the therapist believes this is all a gay coverup. Back on the main plot, Cathy plans to make Philip jealous by going to a motel with Beasley, and Philip is indeed jealous.

They then get married after acknowledging their relationship for what it is, and the movie ends with Cathy and Philip walking through a park with their baby and Roger, the financial manager.

Overall Thoughts

I will say, this is definitely a sixties movie. You have to have a particular sense of humor to enjoy this one, as a big joke is about how the female lead is a prude who won’t have sex with the man until she feels ready for it.

I get his frustration and why he might be mad about it, but, at the same time, it shouldn’t feel like a joke at times.

Now, I don’t watch a ton of sixties American movies, but from my historical knowledge of the period and what movies came out, it’s interesting that such topics were freely discussed in this movie, especially considering this is still in the Hays Code period.

I don’t regret watching this, as I found it fascinating in this way, but I didn’t enjoy it particularly either.

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