Expert: Mel - 8/10/2007

Question
I'm 55 and when my sister and I were still in junior high school (or maybe high school), we saw a black and white movie with a song entitled, (I think), "From Moment to Moment". So this had to be in the 60's. I will do my best to give you information from what I remember. A woman's husband was in the war. She took him to the airport and there was something about a missing puzzle piece from his young son's puzzle. Then another very handsome soldier came into play and ended up at the woman's home while the hubby was away. The visitor had the puzzle piece and he ended up having an affair with the woman. The little boy drew the man's picture (believe me, it was WAY too good for the skills of a 7 or 8 year old) and was an exact likeness. During their affair, he took her to an outdoor restaurant and there were hundreds of swirling doves. During this part of the movie, the song was playing. He told her to watch - they are white doves, but when they turn into the sun, they turn golden. Later in the movie, I think the woman was trying to end the affair and the handsome soldier got the bullets out of a cookie jar that was on a top shelf in the kitchen, loaded the pistol and killed himself. She called her best girlfriend and they loaded him up in the trunk of the car, drove him to a cliff late at night and dumped his body. All was well and then the hubby came home from the war. He didn't have a clue that something had been going on. Then he finds the drawing that the little boy did, plus he noticed the puzzle was complete.  So he put two and two together and figured out what had happened.  This is all I can remember and, hopefully, I'm not mixing two different movies.  For YEARS, I've tried to figure out the name of the movie so I could find it and have even Googled what I think is the title of the song. I have no idea who the actors were.  PLEASE help if you can. This has been a mystery to me for 40 years!
Thanks

Answer
Hello Becki,

There was a film made in 1965 called "Moment To Moment". This was also the title of a song by Henry Mancini that played throughout the film. I think it is close enough to the way you remember it to be the film you are looking for.

Jean Seberg played a bored housewife and mother vacationing on the French Riviera with her neglectful psychiatrist husband (Arthur Hill). While Hill is away on one of his frequent long business trips she drifts into an affair with a hunky sailor (played by Sean Garrison).

As they motor around the area taking in the sights, they're accompanied by the Mancini title song. In fact, it is played so often that at one point Seberg asks the bandleader at a café the name of the tune. He, of course, replies "Moment to Moment." And then there are, of course, the doves flying up into the sunset.

After a bad lover's quarrel, Seberg accidentally shoots the sailor and then she and her neighbour (Honor Blackman) drop his body into a nearby ravine. Then the suspense begins.

As one reviewer said, "This is a good movie, much in the Hitchcock vein, in which small details form the key to intense pathos. Will the husband notice the thing she mentioned in passing? Will her child inadvertently play with the wrong toy? Will the best friend keep the story straight? It takes a tangled web of lies and omissions to keep silent an impulsive affair -- and a possible murder --when everything is so interconnected."

http://uk.rottentomatoes.com/m/moment_to_moment/about.php


Glad to be of help. Cheers.........Mel.