Relaxed Wife, The (1957) * 1/2 (out of 4)Ultra low-budget "educational" film about a husband who comes home to a noisy house and nothing puts his mind to rest. He's constantly worried about one thing or another so finally his lovely wife makes him get into bed and she reads him a book about stress.
Interesting to note that this anti-stress "educational" short from the late 1950s was funded by Pfizer. Are they pushing diazepam (Valium)?
In many ways, this looks like a surrealistic version of one of the Richard Bare-George O'Hanlon 'Joe McDoakes' shorts that flourished in the 1940s and early 1950s at Warner Brothers -- although instead of being from Warner Brothers in Hollywood, it's from 'A Relaxed Organization' in Princeton.The fact that it seems to be serious about its issues, that it is in color and the neutral-voiced narrator speaks in rhyming couplets renders it a bit pompous and dull, but it does try to take its message lightly, and for a ten-minute short is not too onerous for the viewer.
This short is basically one of the first pharmaceutical commercials - a long one. In it there is the narrative of the tense husband plagued by insomnia and his "relaxed wife" who tries to teach him how to let go of his mental and emotional nervousness so he can sleep.
I was relaxed when I started watching. But ten minutes later, I was ready to throttle Mr.
