The Passionate Stranger (U.S. title A Novel Affair) is a 1957 British drama film, directed by Muriel Box and starring Margaret Leighton and Ralph Richardson.

She 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 who has been stricken with polio that leaves him immobile.

Judith is working on her latest novel titled The Passionate Stranger, a lurid tale of a bored and unsatisfied woman, with a pompous, disabled husband she despises, who embarks on a wild affair with her Italian chauffeur.

He eventually reaches the pub where Judith has taken them rooms for the night, but she refuses his invitation to leave and attend a local dance, and so he goes alone.

When they arrive home next day, Judith tells her husband that the pub landlord spotted Carlo wandering around the garden in the dark, and wants him to dismiss him, but Roger insists there must have been an innocent explanation.

Box stated that the film was intended "to debunk the sentimental novel...a mild satire on romance as opposed to reality, and the unhappy consequences of confusing the two".

"[5] New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther wrote: "A thin and even tedious bit of kidding is being done in A Novel Affair ...

Thanks to adroit performances by Miss Leighton and Sir Ralph, first as the simple, homely couple and then as the tinted lady and the peer, this little bit of nonsense from Muriel and Sydney Box is not quite as flimsy and pretentious as it may at first sound ...