(That’s odd, I reviewed this six years ago this month and forgot all about it).
110 minute running time so 10 minutes too long, but this is a wonderfully weird movie. I thought it was a Sirk film given the “blazing Technicolor,” but the director was John M. Stahl (born Jacob Morris Strelitsky).
That beautiful blue sky above the “lake cabin in Maine” was actually shot in northern California. The movie stars Gene Tierney, her overbite, and her face-in-a-trance. She’s beautiful, she’s rich, she’s politically- and socially-connected, she has impeccable manners, she is beautifully dressed (for the 40s), and she is a complete psychopath. It’s a lot of fun. Weird fun.
She marries a Harvard man (editor of the Lampoon) named Dick, after unceremoniously dumping Vincent Price, the District Attorney. Dick is close to his younger brother Danny, whom she calls a “cripple” in a moment of indiscretion (maybe he has polio?). Spoilers ahead: she doesn’t like Danny around so she drowns him. See what I mean about this movie being fun?
She gets pregnant with Dick’s baby, but ends up hating the “little beast” inside her, so she throws herself down the stairs to induce a miscarriage. Let me remind you that this movie was made in 1945, the height of American myth-making in Hollywood, the opposite of the dark truths put on display here.
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Dick loses interest in her after this, and spends more time with her “sister” Ruth (actually a cousin), and he even ends up dedicating his latest novel to Ruth, which leads Gene Tierney and her overbite (spoilers ahead) to kill herself while attempting to frame Ruth for “murder.” High comedy!
There’s some really great writing in this movie, great lines and dialogue. I loved everything about it. What’s weird is that it is not on ANY must-see movie list, including John Farr’s, which is a real surprise. But I strongly recommend seeing this movie, it’s wonderful, green-go!
(How could Fox’s largest-grossing movie of the ENTIRE 1940s be so unknown today?!? i think it’s because the movie is so dark, so perverse, that normal people don’t want anything to do with it… similar to Angel Face or Nightmare Alley.)