The Passionate Stranger

Judith Wynter (Leighton) is a novelist who pens torrid escapist romantic fiction for the popular women's market, although in real life she is a respectable, unassuming woman, happily married to husband Roger (Richardson). She uses people she knows and situations she encounters as the raw material for her fictional flights of fancy. As Roger recuperates from an illness which leaves him temporarily immobile, she pens the rough draft of her latest novel, a lurid tale of a bored and unsatisifed woman with a pompous disabled husband she despises, who embarks on a wild affair with her chauffeur and finds herself expecting his child. The husband dismisses the chauffeur, who vows revenge, and matters escalate melodramatically towards a deadly conclusion. The Wynters' new chauffeur Carlo (Carlo Giustini) stumbles on the manuscript, reads it, and jumps to the conclusion that it is wish fulfilment on Judith's part. Assuming that she harbours a repressed passion for him, he begins trying to signal to her that he knows and understands. To Judith's bewilderment and horror, he starts to attempt to recreate situations and conversations from the novel. Feeling extremely uncomfortable, she brushes off his attentions and he becomes confused and angry. Meanwhile, Roger, fully aware of the situation, revels in the amusement of his wife's excruciating embarrassment and Carlo's absurdly misinformed assumptions.