El abrazo de la muerte

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.

I was astonished at how good this picture was - Ronald Colman's scenery chewing was great, as well as the script and all supporting performances, as well as it being one of George Cukor's better but least seen works. It is a very disquieting film, almost in a Hitchcockian sort of way, and perhaps that accounts for its obscurity. Besides, an early Shelley Winters film is all right by me (carumba!) Hopefully you can find a better print than the one I saw on cable which looked like it was culled from a 16mm positive. C'mon, film preservationists, get on it!

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."

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 Some are almost unwatchable due to the complete difficulty in sympathizing with outdated modes of thinking.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.

Ronald Colman is actor Anthony John, who finds himself leading "A Double Life" in this 1947 film directed by George Cukor and written by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin.

There are mutterings in the beginning of the film about some problem with "Tony" (Colman) the last time he took on a serious role, such a bad problem that his wife, fellow actress Brita (Signe Hasso), could no longer stay with him. When Tony is finally convinced to do the title role in "Othello," we begin to see what the problem is. He disappears into his role and acts it out offstage as well as on -- and pretty soon, his onstage performances become pretty terrifying.

The elegant Colman is terrific as Anthony, particularly the offstage Anthony, who believes he's Othello and searches for a Desdemona to murder. His actual Othello is good but slightly old-fashioned. The trend today is more naturalistic. Nevertheless, for the times, he had the speaking voice and the style.

Shelley Winters has an early role as a victim - she's very young and pretty.

Recommended -- see it for Colman's Oscar-winning performance.