A Letter to Three Wives | Full Movie | Movies Anywhere

There's a lot more focus on the development of the women while the men in their lives are really just window dressing. It's this angle that makes the film most intriguing.

Writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz's riveting melodrama is set up like a whodunit, only instead of a murderer, the guilty party is a philandering husband.

If this were a comedy it might be considered a comedy of manners, because it's all about the social customs of an age-and all the actors do a fine job of bringing the age's nuances to their characters.

"A Letter to Three Wives" remains a very poignant and universal story today, giving you the feeling that it could take place anytime and anywhere. Of course, it also helps that it's just a good old fashioned and entertaining experience.

Mankiewicz's plot device is brilliant and intriguing: On the way to an annual picnic, three housewives learn through a letter that the town's most desirable woman had run off with one of their husbands--flashbacks reveal the state of their marriages.