Sep 221941
 
three reels

Philip Monrell (Robert Montgomery) is the charming son of a wealthy steel family and good friends with the good natured playboy Ward Andrews (George Sanders). Well, that’s how it appears. Actually Philip is a paranoid psychopath who is jealous of Ward and recently escaped from an insane asylum. The pair visits Philip’s sickly mother who has taken on a beautiful young companion, Stella Bergen (Ingrid Bergman). Ward and Stella have an immediate attraction, but after he leaves, Philip and Stella get-together and marry. Philip’s paranoia appears in his mistreatment of Stella and his cruel and stupid handling of his company.

I wouldn’t call this Film Noir, but simply a thriller, but enough people label as Noir that I figure I can review it. It has beautiful, high contrast cinematography, though I’d call it classic Hollywood instead of Noir.

The acting is the strongest factor. Bergman is in fine form, glowing as she often did in the ‘40s, and Sanders is believable playing against type. They both are sympathetic and engaging. The surprise is Montgomery, who I generally dislike. Montgomery didn’t want to be in the film and wanted out of his contract, so gave what he considered to be an odd stilted performance, which was exactly what the part needed. I doubt Montgomery could have pulled it off if he’d tried; he didn’t have the talent. But purposefully acting peculiar makes Philip ooze insanity.

This is a tense, sometimes unpleasant film. Philip is so petty and cruel, and as Ward and Stella act more like real people than action heroes, they do little about it and just take the abuse. It’s rough as films have trained me to want one of them to just shoot him by the end of the first act, but they suffer through.

The script is midlevel. The dialog is good but there’s a few coincidences that are hard to accept, which ends up making this a good, midlevel kind of film.

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