The Robert Burns poem "To a Mouse" contains the famous stanza that roughly translates into "the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry". Countless film-makers have utilized this expression literally to demonstrate that crime doesn’t pay; the most meticulous plans to murder or steal fail to deliver the perfect crime almost every time. But few have given as much screen-time to the original plan as those responsible for Unfaithfully Yours (1948) and Gambit (1966). A remake of the former comedy was released in 1984 (a couple of years before the producers of TV’s Dallas decided that their season without Bobby was all a dream) and the latter is slated to be remade by the Coen brothers within the next two years.

By the time writer-director Preston Sturges produced Unfaithfully Yours in 1948, his creative energy had all but disappeared. After writing several essential comedies in the early 1940's, many of which he directed (a few that he produced), Sturges effectively burned out and was attached to barely a handful of projects before his death by heart attack in 1959. After contributing to twenty films in ten years, Sturges’s first real writing success was Mitchell Leisen’s Remember the Night (1940), starring Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray (a darker than usual romantic comedy which Jeff detailed before it premiered on TCM last December). His directorial debut was a political drama I’d love to see again some day, The Great McGinty (1940), featuring Brian Donlevy in the title role. Using a company stocked with memorable (now endearing) character actors, Sturges then wrote and directed a string of unique and satirical hits including Stanwyck’s The Lady Eve (1941) and two featuring Joel McCrea – Sullivan’s Travels (1941) & The Palm Beach Story (1942) – followed by two featuring Eddie Bracken, The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944) & Hail the Conquering Hero (1944).

Unfaithfully Yours (1948) is about the conductor (Rex Harrison) of an orchestra who suspects that his much younger wife (Linda Darnell) is having an affair with his secretary (Kurt Krueger). While conducting a concert, he imagines murdering her with an elaborate plot that includes the secretary being framed, convicted and sentenced to death, for the crime. This entire scene is played out onscreen in a dreamlike sequence such that, when Harrison’s character subsequently attempts to perform same, all of the plan’s failings combined with his mistakes are hilariously realized. In this original, the symphony conductor actually imagines three different scenarios. Unfaithfully Yours (1984) features Dudley Moore in the Harrison role, Nastassja Kinski as his young wife, and Armand Assante as his protege with whom he believes she is having an affair. Writing this reminded me of the Alfred Hitchcock thriller Dial M for Murder (1954) with Ray Milland plotting to kill his younger wife Grace Kelly, though there’s no attempt to frame her suspected lover Robert Cummings; it’s no comedy and there’s no fantasy sequence, but it too was remade more than thirty years later as A Perfect Murder (1998).

The makers of Gambit (1966) also devoted much of its total running time (twenty-five minutes!) to the imagined realization of a crime, though it was for the theft of a valuable piece of art versus a murder. Michael Caine plays Harry Dean, who follows a Eurasian tea room dancer (played by Shirley MacLaine) that bears a remarkable resemblance to a priceless ancient bust owned by the richest man in the world. While sitting with another gentleman at her place of work in a Hong Kong, Harry reveals the details of his plan to steal the valuable bust from this Ahmad Shahbandar (Herbert Lom) by using the dancer. However, the sequence showing the caper – during which MacLaine’s character doesn’t speak – is interspersed into the film in such a way that its audience should be surprised when Harry concludes his description of it with "and that's the way the whole thing will work" (vs. believing that they’d seen its perfect execution). The first indication that things won’t go exactly as planned is when the previously silent dancer speaks; the irony is that what she has to say helps Harry to realize that his plan is not foolproof. According to reports, Colin Firth is to play Harry in the remake while Ben Kingsley would play Shabandar; both Jennifer Aniston and Lisa Bonet have been mentioned. However, like the 2006 planned remake of Sturges’s comedy I Married a Witch (1942), it may never happen; Ethan and Joel Coen have been busy with other projects.