I watch a lot of television shows on Hulu and lately I’ve been seeing ads for “The Criterion Collection,” a collection of films that are supposed to be the best from all over the world.

I took a film class in college and since then have been interested in seeing films that other members of my family probably wouldn’t take the time to watch.

I decided to look up the Criterion Collection and see which ones were on the Netflix instant queue. I found a bunch and decided to watch one every Friday and blog about it.

Today’s entry is Unfaithfully Yours with Rex Harrison and Linda Darnell.

If you’re like me and assume, even after taking the film class, that classic movies considered “the best” are, by definition cerebral and dull or slow moving and only for the over educated or elitists – watch this movie.

It’s funny, romantic and surprising.

Rex Harrison plays a world famous conductor and Linda Darnell is his wife. They live a glamorous life, living apparently in a hotel surrounded by staff, family and hangers-on (who live in other hotel rooms). One night before a performance, Rex is approached by the husband of his wife’s sister – a boring bean counter of a man. Rex on the other hand is a passionate, romantic man and his wife’s sister often points this out to her husband.

Anyway, at some point, Rex had gone out of town and asked the sister’s husband to “keep an eye on my wife.” BTW, said wife is much younger, and frankly a little simpering and wishy-washy for my tastes, but whatever.

The bean counter guy takes this request seriously and since he can’t watch Linda Darnell all the time, he hires a detective. He’s come to Rex to give him the report, which apparently has something in it Rex might want to know about.

At first, Rex is insulted and rages against the hiring of said detective and nearly sets the hotel on fire when the house detective finds the pages he’s thrown out and brings them back. In an effort to show that he doesn’t care, he tried to burn the report and ended up burning the curtains.

Suspicion grows, even though Rex isn’t totally sure what’s in the papers, and he decides he has to find out. He meets the man who was hired to tail his wife and finds out that she spent 38 minutes in his male secretary’s room, in her negligee (!), while he was gone.

The rest of the movie revolves around his imagining ways to deal with the situation as he conducts his concert and what happens when he decides to put his plans into action.

I enjoyed this movie thoroughly and highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys romantic comedies.