The Prestons are an apparently happy household made up of wife Amy, husband Jim and teenage son Brian, living in a cramped flat on a London housing estate. However, tensions soon become clear. Though she has a breezy, loving character, Amy is a disorganised housewife, and finds it difficult to concentrate enough to tidy or cook properly. Jim is having an affair with a colleague, Georgie, who threatens to break it off unless Jim divorces his wife and leaves his family. He promises that he will do so, and eventually demands a divorce. Amy is shocked and distraught, while Brian becomes angry with his father. Amy invites Jim and Georgie back to the Prestons' flat to try to convince Georgie not to take her husband away. In preparation, she gets her hair done, buys whisky for her husband and tries to organise a meal, paying for it all by pawning her engagement ring. However, on leaving the hairdresser's she is caught in the rain, ruining the hairdo. At home, after discussing the matter with a neighbour, a young unhappy wife, who persuades Amy to have a drink to calm her down, Amy becomes drunk and falls asleep on the bed, again ruining her plans. After a confrontation she orders Jim and Georgie out of the flat. Jim leaves, but has second thoughts, returning to his wife and son, who cautiously accept him back.
The film was based on a 1956 ITV Television Playhouse play written by Ted Willis.
Reception
Box Office
The film was one of the most popular at the British box office in 1957. J Lee Thompson later said the film lost money but was well received by critics.
Critical
Variety said it "had good b.o. possibilities." The New York Times said "Paddy Chayefsky would love it." Jean-Luc Godard wrote "One really has to rack one’s brains to find anything to say about a British film. One wonders why. But that’s the way it is. And there isn’t even an exception to prove the rule. Especially not Woman in a Dressing-gown anyhow, in spite of its acting prize? at the recent Berlin Festival. That just goes to show that the Germans have no idea either.... From beginning to end the film is an incredible debauch of camera movements as complex as they are silly and meaningless." On the film's rerelease on in 2012, Peter Bradshaw, in a five star review for The Guardian wrote that the films "proto-kitchen-sink drama goes all the way where Brief Encounter loitered hesitantly....and unlike David Lean's film, this one shows people saying the relevant things out loud. An unmissable rerelease." While Melanie Williams for the BFI Screenonline noted "an important reminder that postwar British realism did not begin with the New Wave, and that the 1950s were not devoid of socially engaged cinema, as is sometimes suggested. Indeed, in the field of gender politics, one could argue that this film is considerably more progressive than the New Wave that superseded it, in its focus on the travails of a middle-aged housewife rather than those of a virile young man."
