BILLYBOY-10 Alexis Smith, wife of busy psychiatrist-psychoanalyst-psychotherapist Alexander Knox is sexually frustrated because she is a hot, steamy 33 year old and he's older, and not hot. One day, hubby brings home a young thug, Dirk Bogarde, to rehabilitate who is also hot & steamy and immediately you know the two are going to make steamy together, which of course they do after riding horses and getting all steamed up.Much scenery chewing and steaming later, hubby makes a breakthrough with Dirk regarding mommy, daddy & step-mommy issues and Dirk feels so guilty about steaming it up with his wife that he tells her it's through..over..finished..kaput and leaves the house to start out a new improved life of his own. Well, Alexis ain't taking this sitting down so she jumps in her car, gets him to climb in. Hubby gives chase in his car and several sharp curves and speedometers later, Alexis crashes thru a fence and over an embankment, the car turns over, it's wheels dramatically spinning and Alexis, the wife, is dead Dirk however is alive and the camera pans to the hole in the fence where they crashed thru. Above the hole is a huge poster of a leaping tiger. Ah hah. The movie title of course is Sleeping Tiger and it ends with a leaping tiger. Get it? The tiger! Wow. The End. I liked this movie because it was 50's black and white British and simple, predictable & plausible. Interesting Dirk is suppose to be younger than Alexis and he does look kid like and she is sort of matronly older looking but according to IMDb he was actually 3 months younger than she. I'm gonna give it six points cause it didn't bore me.

didi-5 Actually, this film isn't all bad. 'The Sleeping Tiger' refers to Alexis Smith's bored doctor's wife, who decides to throw herself at the bit of rough from the criminal classes (Dirk Bogarde) who her husband is hoping to rehabilitate. I suppose Bogarde's Frank is a British equivalent to the angry young men of Brando or Dean, but being British he is just a bit too mannered to be convincing.Smith's descent into frustration and anger after being rejected is unconvincing and done too quickly, meaning that the end sequences are rushed and unbelievable. Still, up to that point, the film is not bad. The relationship between Smith, Bogarde, and Smith's husband (Alexander Knox), is played out well and the film manages to be fairly engrossing and somewhat ahead of its time.

Hitchcoc It's just a bit too much. The good doctor is attacked at gunpoint. He disarms the bad guy, then brings him home to dinner, where his high strung wife spars with the guy. Of course, the two eventually begin a movie long tryst. Dirk Bogarde is a bad boy who is a bundle of anger. He usually gets what he wants but carries more baggage than a porter at an airport. Alexis Smith is the femme fatale. She is older and bored with her psychologist husband, who is determined to resurrect the lad. He is willing to allow this man to do whatever he wants: bringing women to the house, bossing around the help, robbing jewelry stores and businesses. He is pursued by a cop who is on to him but has respect for the doctor and backs off on an arrest. It's hard to believe that this man should give a rip about Bogarde, but somehow he's willing to withdraw. The weakest part of the movie is when it all falls into place. It's so pat. A contemporary film would have built the house a card at a time; this happens in milliseconds. Then we have the denouement which I will not spoil. Let me just say it was a disappointment. The movie is visually sharp and the acting is pretty good. I never really like Alexis Smith much and she is a little grating here. Still, it's a decent performance and the subject is a little ahead of its time.

bmacv A more apt title would have been The Sleeping Tigress, for it's Alexis Smith's performance that holds this movie together and lends it erotic friction. Despite her old-money looks and regal carriage, Smith numbered among the many talents which Hollywood mis- and under- used. She claimed attention in two late-forties Bogart vehicles, Conflict (where she was good) and The Two Mrs. Carrolls (in which she was even better, and held her own against Barbara Stanwyck). But most of her movie career consisted of mediocre roles – the ones the star actresses turned down or had to refuse owing to other commitments. (It wasn't until Stephen Sondheim's Follies on Broadway in the ‘70s that her own star shone).In this film from Joseph Losey's English exile following the Hollywood witch hunt, she plays the bored wife of psychotherapist Alexander Knox (and with him pottering around the house, who wouldn't be bored?). Bleeding-heart Knox takes a troubled young man with a prison record (Dirk Bogarde) under his roof in hopes of performing a therapeutic Pygmalion job on him. At first Smith acts snooty, then grows intrigued, and finally throws herself at Bogarde with pent-up abandon. Comes the crunch as Knox, in a three-minute Freudian breakthrough reminiscent of Lee J. Cobb's instant rehabilitation of William Holden in The Dark Past, turns the lying, thieving, abusive Bogarde into a contrite milquetoast. When Bogarde then bids her farewell, Smith careens into dementia every bit as swiftly as Bogarde was healed and feigns an assault in hopes that Knox will defend her `honor' with that gun every therapist keeps in his desk drawer....It's a lame story that might have been more convincing in an American context; the London setting and British conventions (in particular Knox's) stifle it. Bogarde started out playing this sort of charming wrong'un but isn't especially memorable here (except for his towering pompadour that must have been borrowed from Mario Lanza). But Smith's feral feline makes The Sleeping Tiger worth the ticket price.