Prudence and the Pill is a 1968 British sex comedy starring Deborah Kerr and David Niven.
Kerr and Niven star as Prudence and Gerald Hardcastle, an unhappy British couple who are seeing other people: Gerald has a French mistress named Liz and Prudence is seeing her doctor Alan Huart. Both know of the other’s affairs and are eager for a divorce, but they want to catch each other in the act and thus get the necessary grounds (better if the divorce is the other person’s fault than your own). Thus, both Prudence and Gerald employ a birth-control pill called Thenol to give each other pregnancies that will be incontrovertible evidence of unfaithfulness.
The film contains examples of:
- Animated Credits Opening: Done by legendary animator Richard Williams, the titles feature Cupid fighting with birth-control pills. It can be seen here
. - Babies Ever After: Thanks to the birth-control pills going around.
- British Stuffiness: Prudence and Gerald Hardcastle, towards each other. They are more gracious and open with their own lovers.
- Could H Ave Avoided This Plot: If the Hardcastles had been less proud and more reasonable, they’d have arranged an amicable separation that would have been without trouble. Of course, there’d have been no comedy either.
- Moral Myopia: Prudence and Gerald want a divorce, but they want it on their own terms: they both want to expose the other’s infidelity so that they can walk away with their head held high, and so they both scheme with birth-control pills to cause unwanted pregnancies and the perfect grounds.
- Pyrrhic Victory: Gerald wins with Prudence conceding that he can divorce her, but Liz has had enough and left him, so he grudgingly agrees to do so. But Liz comes back to him, so he becomes happier and more agreeable to the proposal.
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Values Dissonance: The film actually invokes this, with the film taking place in the 60s, an era of culture clash and social conflict. The Hardcastles are a repressed upper-class couple and their friends are somewhat younger and more carefree with their relationships. The title sequence highlights the clash between Cupid (the ancient god of love) and the modern medications of childbearing.
