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James Whale has a potent overture to kick things off, a darkening précis: The satiny beauty (Gloria Stuart) sneaks into her lover's Art Deco bungalow (a black cat lurks amidst champagne and candles), the cuckold (Paul Lukas) brings a pistol to the nude silhouette by the window and calls the police on himself afterwards. (Hitchcock's Elstree Calling sketch is recognized, the effect of the blonde dispatched early on looks ahead to Psycho, naturally.) "For some strange reason, women don't like being killed." The public prosecutor has no taste for Faust, a favorite of the counselor (Frank Morgan) defending the accused. His own wife (Nancy Carroll) acts much like the slain adulteress, beautifying herself for somebody else and flinching from her husband's kiss, the multi-panel vanity table captures the tell-tale gesture. "There's murder in the heart of everybody..." Suspicion, reflections, strange and baleful urges, just the elements of the farce of marital normalcy. Prison is filled with conjugal avengers, happy and woeful, the flashback from one confession makes the screen quiver through a distorted lens. Doubling and transference suit Whale's visual storytelling, the outsider-observer is the lady lawyer (Jean Dixon), "a new kind of woman?" The camera that becomes the protagonist's pointing finger, a circular pan during his peroration is punctuated by a revolver out of the pocket in his robe. Eager public and sardonic media in the courtroom, "the jury is having boiled beef and beer, to help them see the truth more clearly." Reunion before the shattered mirror, with tangible consequences for Sturges (Unfaithfully Yours) and Bergman (From the Life of the Marionettes). With Donald Cook, Charley Grapewin, Walter Pidgeon, Wallis Clark, and May Boley. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |