(Originally posted on 03/31/15)
Who doesn’t enjoy a tale of incest and inertia? Here we have George Sanders playing a big-name-in-small-town living with three overbearing women in the household, two sisters and a servant. The depression has shaped this family’s childhood.
He is clueless to his place in the emotional landscape of women around him and vice versa. In comes a NY girl to upset the small town order as upheld by this family. I won’t spoil it for you but the climax is typically noir, i.e, the femme fatale gets her revenge from beyond the grave (like Leave her to Heaven etc.)
In the penultimate scene (which, without the MPCC code, would have been the original climax), we get the kernel of relations in families who had to fend for themselves – the dependent wants to prove that he/she is deserving of the care of the provider. They pretend to share moments, taste and understanding but the lie is short-lived. Eventually, the provider just wants his/her freedom from blood obligation but the dependent has entrapped the provider through the gesture of self-sacrifice.
There is also the element of Americana which drew me to it as reviewed by Croce here:
“Trafficking in sabotaged relationships and perverse awakenings, the ironic farce is couched in snapshots of provincial America as fond and sardonic as any in Shadow of a Doubt: The coed softball match, the barbershop quartet, the ice-cream parlor for biddies, all the Nabokovian delectations that modulate toward the image of the poison in the cup of hot chocolate.”
You can find this movie streaming here. Its only a little longer than an hour. Can’t lie, I got hooked due to Ella Raines. Check out her posture. I wilt like a goddamn rosebud around women like this. mmm…
faroutreview 