I caught this little film noir on a Finnish television just the other night. It's a slightly enjoyable suspense story starring Loretta Young as the disturbed housewife of a crippled man (Barry Sullivan) who begins to think Young is trying to kill him for his insurance money.There are some implausibilities in the plot, and Loretta Young's behaviour when she tries to get back the letter his husband sent to the district attorney is pretty much all over the place, but this still fits in with the phenomenon I've dubbed "female noir". I think "domestic suspense" used by Sarah Weinman in her upcoming anthology is actually better for this. The images of Loretta Young under her sociopathic and bitter husband are pretty disturbing.
That said, the ending of the film should've been infinitely stronger. The director was Tay Garnett, the screenplay was by Mel Dinelli, who specialized in film noir. See also the Wikipedia article for the film.
More Overlooked Movies here.
Or, as Joanna Russ titled her essay on the "supermarket gothics" of the latter 1960s and early 1970s (that took after Daphne DuMaurier and Joan Aiken), "I Think Someone's Trying to Kill Me, and I Think It's My Husband"...
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ReplyDeleteYeah, that's a good moniker as well.
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