Ehebruch

THE UNFAITHFUL (1947), is director Vincent Sherman's 1947 loose remake of the 1940 William Wyler/Bette Davis classic, THE LETTER.

Glamorous Ann Sheridan stars as a woman who kills an intruder in her home, and then tries to hide the fact that the man had once been her lover from her husband and the police. There's one problem; the dead man had been a sculptor, and his widow has possession of a bust he had sculpted which Sheridan had obviously modeled for.

Sheridan is excellent as the loving wife who, out of loneliness during her husbands tour of duty in WWII, gave into temptation and an adulterous affair, then with her attorney (Lew Ayers) makes a desperate effort to retrieve the incriminating object before her husband (Zachary Scott) finds out the truth.

Neither Ayers or Scott have ever set the screen on fire for me, and that holds true here as well. But they're both always competent actors, and they give fine support to Miss Sheridan's gutsy performance in one of her better Warner Brothers star vehicles.

Eve Arden also has several memorable scenes as a gossiping relative.

It's not the classic film that THE LETTER is, but still a well made and highly entertaining Hollywood drama worth seeing.

This combination of a murder mystery and post-war reclamation of Family life is Film-Noir at its definition but not in its execution. It is handled quite regularly and straightforward, aside from some very effective L.A. street scenes that evoke Noir overtones.

It's most effective in its "new" Hollywood discovering of extramarital affairs brought on by quick vows and hasty deployment by our Military. Predictably some of these quick, for convenience Marriages could not hold true, especially for the left alone "War Widows" who had little time to fall deeply in love with their Husbands.

The mystery and courtroom part pales in comparison to the social drama and infidelity conundrums, and it is the deconstructing psychology of this unfortunate situation that compels this to above average Cinema. Eve Arden's accurate understanding insight and delineation speech is quite a mid 1940's welcome revelation to Movie audiences. It was this very seldom open discussion about private affairs that elevates this one and moves it to the periphery of Film-Noir.

The 1940 William Wyler/Bette Davis, based on a Somerset Maugham story, is a top-notch romantic thriller (a 1929 version starring legendary Jeanne Eagles is apparently even more sizzling). So a 1947 remake set not in the rain-forest plantations of the British Empire East of Suez but in postwar Los Angeles - building boom and all -- seems a stretch. It is, but it's not a bad movie, once you accept wholesome and throaty Ann Sheridan as the fallen woman (in this version she's not quite the cold-blooded killer of the earlier versions). Instead of a letter, we have a bust of Sheridan sculpted by the dead artist who became her R&R while hubby Zachary Scott was overseas fighting the good fight. The story is well-told and helds interest most of the way through, until it melts down into a routine marital crisis (quite a world apart from the vengeance by an Asiatic Gale Sondergaard in the 1940 telling). The most memorable performance here comes from Eve Arden, as the tart-tongued in-law Paula.

Strange that the credits make no mention of the fact that this Warner Bros. melodrama is based on "The Letter"--instead proclaiming to be an original screenplay. The smart performances of Ann Sheridan, Lew Ayres and Zachary Scott make this a fashionable enough, updated remark with Sheridan's unfaithfulness being blamed on her loneliness during World War II.

Her character is much softer and less intense than the one Davis played and she is not quite as impressive despite Vincent Sherman's firm hand on the direction. Lew Ayres as a lawyer friend and Zachary Scott as her husband are quite effective. Marta Mitrovich is good as the wronged wife of the man Sheridan kills, but not nearly as compelling or strong in her portrayal as Gale Sondergaard was in the original film.

Steven Geray is excellent as an art dealer who owns a piece of sculpture he knows the police might be interested in. Eva Arden delivers her tart dialogue with her usual skill as a gossipy friend, very good in her final scene with Scott where she gets serious and tries to steer him into making the right decision.

A very watchable melodrama--just don't expect another triumph like "The Letter".

The unfaithfulness referred to in the title reveals itself with a fair amount of intrigue as the film rolls on. However, by the end it has been sanitized to fit into the supposed audience expectations of the day. The story moves along fairly well with the details coming out after wife Ann Sheridan kills an intruder who had forced his way into her upper middle class home she shares with real estate developer and WW2 vet husband played by Zachary Scott. Who the intruder actually was and other aspects get doled out leading to a trial with aggressive DA played by over the top but interesting Jerome Cowan facing off against family friend and high class divorce lawyer Lew Ayres. Ayres has significant screen time and makes for an interesting 1940's LA divorce lawyer. The best scene goes out of the studio and on location in LA as the intruder's wife reads about her husband's death in the paper while she's taking a trolly down a steep street somewhere in 1940's LA. The intruder turns out to have been an interesting guy and it's good that the film can weave his story into the plot so well.