La mentira candente

Barbara shines as the deceiving wife and does so much with her eyes. Jane and John are also very good. Strong script and not too overly sentimentalized for its era. A very enjoyable soaper with a great supporting cast. Gee, I miss all those great bit players of the thirties and forties. They added so much sparkle and credibility and a type of reassurance not seen in today's movies. Bravo to the entire cast in this little gem.

...and I say that with the highest form of flattery. This nail-biter is tightly directed, moves along at a nice swift pace and never drags for even a moment. Barbara Stanwyck gives one of the finest performances I have seen by her and the rest of the cast is all around excellent as well. After Helen Ferguson is left pregnant and penniless by her jerkoff of a boyfriend (the dreamy and steamy Lyle Bettger), a series of events leaves her mistaken for the widow of a rich man. The family takes her in and the brother of her alleged widow (played by handsome John Lund) falls in love with her and everything is hunky-dory - that is, until the jerkoff ex-boyfriend comes back and starts all kinds of trouble. The cherry on top of the whipped cream here is a lovely and sympathetic performance by Jane Cowl as the mother-in-law. A classic soapy film noir!

I love this film. I first saw it when I was 10 and always remembered the story and feel of it. This is wonderful noir, with the kind of plot that keeps one enthralled until the final frame.

All the performers deliver: Stanwyck moves from a tragic character with little hope, through loss, the turmoil of deceit to happiness. This was a strong performance for her; John Lund perfectly portrays a man in conflict. Jane Cowl and Catherine Craig are almost a perfect sparing pair as the mother and the maid, their sarcasm to each other provides the humour scattered through the film.

The atmosphere and mood of the latter part of this film is perfectly captured in black and white. It makes you realize the role shooting a film in black and white played in this genre.

If you have not seen this film, do yourself a favour AND SEE IT.

Leave it to Barbara Stanwyck and John Lund to make this film noir soap opera work on every level. Stanwyck, pregnant and unwed, meets another woman and her husband on a train, a wealthy woman going home to see her family. When the train is wrecked and the woman and husband killed, Stanwyck assumes her identity since the man's parents have never met her nor even seen a photograph of her. The plot gets thicker once Stanwyck assumes the dead woman's identity.

The picture combines the suspense of a film noir with some soap opera touches but Barbara's strong performance makes it all work. John Lund, Jane Cowl, Phyllis Thaxter, Richard Denning and Lyle Bettger are all fine in support. It's all based on a Cornell Woolrich novel called "I Married A Dead Man" with the usual touches of irony found in his work.

It's one of director Mitchell Leisen's better films (he did "To Each His Own", "Hold Back the Dawn", and many other interesting films.) Absorbing and well worth watching. Not a well-known film but it's one of Stanwyck's best.

Top notch performances from Barbara Stanwyck and Jane Cowl make this film worthwhile. The plot's a bit silly - but these two extraordinary actors make it all seem utterly convincing. Moody cinematography and strong direction help too. Interesting to see the same story turn up a few years ago as "Mrs Winterbourne" with Ricki Lake and Shirley MacLaine in the Stanwyck and Cowl roles respectively. A less serious treatment, but also less successful.