Doble vida

Colman gives one of his greatest performances of his career and won an Academy Award as a Shakesperean actor whose off stage life imitates his theater role of Othello where he kills a woman he believes to be Desdemona. Electrifying suspense, laced with crackling dialogue and melodrama. Winters, in one of her earliest roles, is divine as the victim of Colman's madness. This film gives new meaning to the phrase "disappearing into a character."

An awesome movie from the opening frames to closing credits. It deals with a successful stage player , Ronald Colman, but things start to look really bad when he is cast in the role of cursed Othello playing with actress Signe Hasso and whose despair when the character he plays start to seep into his personal life and take over . It leads him to fateful consequences : to commit a grisly crime . But Signe Hasso and Edmond O'Brien soon discover his propensity for violence.

This one was the first of Cukor's string of fruitful collaborations with screenwriters marriage Ruth Gordon, Garson Kanin about a Broadway matinee actor including a grand ending of on-stage retribution. Adding the theatre scenes that are richly and brilliantly observed. Over-the-top interpretations , as Ronald Colman is top-notch, giving a real recital as the the gifted stage actor whose unsettling personality and murderous moods come from performing the lead in Shakespeare's Othello . Colman acting is absolutely fascinating and deservedly won an Academy Award for this difficult character . Shelley Winters' first movie break after a hit on stage , it stars as a blonde buxom , a sultry waitress who is attracted to the married thespian. Along with Signe Hasso, Edmond O'Brien, and other secondaries as Ray Collins , Joe Sawyer, Whit Bissell, Philip Loeb , Millard Mitchell , all of them give excellent interpretations .

It contains an atmospheric and dark cinematography in black and white by great cameraman Milton Krasker . Furthermore, the moody soundtrack garnered aother Oscar for Miklos Rosza .The motion picture was compellingly directed by George Cukor , though it has some flaws . Cukor was one of the best Hollywood filmmakers , shooting a number of successful and classic movies with penchant for melodrama , comedy and musical , such as : David Copperfield , Margarita Gautier , Little Woman , Adam's Ríb , Born Yesterday , The Women , Philadelphia Story , Corn is Green, Dinner at Eight , Gaslight , A Star is Born, Les Girls , Holiday , Heller in Pink Tights , I Should Happen to you , What price Hollywood ? , Woman's Face and this A Double Life . Rating 7/10 . Worthwhile seeing . Essential and indispensable watching for Ronald Colman fans .

If you like "Othello," you'll love this flick since half the movie revolves around the stage production of the play.

The film has a great cast with Signe Hasso and Shelley Winters as the women in Colman's life while Edmond O'Brien plays the enterprising press agent.

A couple of the supporting players I particularly liked were Millard Mitchell as the grizzled reporter who finds an angle and Joe Sawyer, the 1940's answer to Drew Carey, who plays the cop on the case.

Great raw moments in this one with noir realism throughout.

Films like people age very differently from one another. Some are almost unwatchable due to the complete difficulty in sympathizing with outdated modes of thinking. The truly great films of course are timeless and leave you instead with a marvel for their wonderful freshness. Colman's Oscar winning portrayal of a stage actor who loses his grip on reality, while great to watch for the actor's work, is sadly wrapped inside of a rather poorly constructed film. None of it very believable, and the characters muster zero sympathy from us. The relationship lines are vague and confusing, and for the most part unimportant. The whole story is uncommonly weak, what you will remember most are the hammed up but effective scenes from Othello. Colman's genteel whisky cured voice, and aristocratic affectations you can tell are in him the genuine articles. He though also dated, is interesting to behold, and thought provoking as you get a feel for what was considered the best acting 60 years ago, and how different it is today. The film includes a couple of rather daring and explicit sexual innuendos, unusual for its time.

While COVID-isolated, I binge-watched Ryan Murphy's "Hollywood", a hypothetical look at what US entertainment could've been had people stood up to racism and homophobia in the 1940s. A couple of episodes depict George Cukor, and one episode mentions "A Double Life". A few days after watching that episode I saw the movie in question. It's an intense one, with Ronald Colman (in an Oscar-winning role) as a thespian who lets his performance gain too much control of his existence. It's impressive how, in these movies focusing on stage performances, the play can sometimes come across as more intense than the person's life, as happens in this movie.

It's not a masterpiece, but Colman puts on one of the most haunting performances of all. I definitely recommend it