Motivo de alarma

The film deals with a husband who believes his wife with the help of his doctor are trying to kill him. The wife was a nurse at a veterans hospital where they met and fell in love. The doctor was an old friend of the husband. The husband is so convinced of their plot that he writes a letter to the District Attorney stating all the facts and evidence pointing to the murder plot. The wife not knowing the contents of the letter gladly mails it for her husband who is confined to a bed. The entire story deals with her trying to recover the letter which implicates her and the doctor in the husband's death. This film moves at a good pace and most likely is one of those overlooked films because it lacks the flash and glaze of a big Hollywood film. Great little film that accomplishes what it intended. Lastly, you begin to feel sorry for the wife.

In addition to a really good performance from Loretta Young as the increasingly desperate Ellen Jones, I give great credit to director Tay Garnett for the very effective build-up of suspense, which shifts gears partway through the movie but doesn't miss a beat in doing so. As Ellen, Young is playing a woman trying to nurse her gravely ill husband back to health. Unfortunately, George Jones' poor health has led him to become increasingly paranoid, and he's come to the conclusion that Ellen and his doctor are in love and trying to murder him. Ellen tries her best to "put on a happy face" as she deals with her increasingly difficult spouse, and then discovers that a letter she mailed for him was actually directed to the District Attorney, and accused her and the doctor of planning his murder. (As an added complication, George actually dies after the letter is sent.) The movie then shifts from George's paranoia to Ellen's desperation, as, after George dies, she frantically tries to get the letter back before it reaches the DA, but with every more desperate attempt to get the letter she seems to set herself up as more guilty. Where and how will this end?

It's a very well done movie, with a lot of little things that gave it a feel of authenticity: the nosy neighbours, and the neighbourhood kid who pretends to be Hopalong Cassidy showing up at Ellen's house looking for cookies. The opening scenes, explaining how George and Ellen met and their mutual relationship with Dr. Graham, went on perhaps a bit too long. Then, at the end, there is an expected twist (because you always expect a surprise twist in a movie like this) but the expected twist wasn't the twist I was expecting, and it provided a somewhat humorous (and perhaps, therefore, slightly out of place) ending to an overall very enjoyable film.

"Cause for Alarm" isn't a great film but it captures the noir cinematic scene of the postwar period fairly well. Loretta Young's frenetic pursuit through hot suburban California streets to retrieve a dangerous missive is well done. Is anyone really convincing in a story of a WWII pilot working in the insurance industry and detouring into paranoia while stricken with a cardiac condition? Nah, probably not. But the movie is a nice visit back to the fifties.

Early in the film Loretta Young walks out to her driveway and encounters - a celluloid ME. Attired in the exact same garb I wore in '51, a black cowboy outfit with two six(cap)-guns and riding a trusty trike, a not particularly adept child actor passes himself off as the one-and-only Hopalong Cassidy (as we grew older he became "Hopalong Catastrophe" but in the early fifties he was our unsullied hero). This kid even has the same toy I remember treasuring.

All that nostalgia aside, this short film is diverting albeit not the finest example of noir cinema. Loretta Young was as beautiful as she was talented. Barry Sullivan is appropriately nuts and most of the rest of the cast give dependable color to their roles.

This film definitely belongs in any noir retrospective.

After picking up a cut-rate DVD box set containing 100 "mystery" films that have lapsed into the public domain I came across this thriller from 1951 about a dutiful housewife who watches her bedridden husband slip into paranoia. Whether the film possesses film noir bona fidas is not the question; the answer is that the film is quite effective at stirring up Hitchcock like thrills for the picture's final reels. The filmmakers even inject a note of ambiguity at the film's conclusion enough to make you wonder if the film's climax could perhaps be viewed from a different perspective.

Like so many films of the era there are several things that do raise humorous eyebrows these days. At the onset Loretta Young is doing "housework"; struggling with an unruly vacuum cleaner while wearing an elegant dress that would be more than appropriate attire for a four star restaurant. It really wasn't that long ago that millions of women would have killed for Young's sedate upper middle class existence as a "housewife." The idea that a doctor would make a house-call (let alone two house-calls in one day) is a humorous artifact of a bygone era. Redgardless of the anachronistic humor, "Cause For Alarm" is a pleasant diversion.

CAUSE FOR ALARM boasts a fine leading lady in the talented Loretta Young who is believable in the everywoman role she plays here. Barry Sullivan as her sick and mentally unbalanced husband George Jones hits just the right note as well. While the film is somewhat dated in terms of the here and now, it has some very gripping and suspenseful moments especially involving the very real panic surrounding the letter George sent the district attorney due to his psychotic delusion that his wife and his doctor (her old friend) were plotting to kill him. In fact the ending here does cast a little doubt in the viewer's mind making this film even more intriguing. Any fan of suspense thrillers should enjoy this one.