Amargo desquite

Caught this film by accident some years ago in a hospital waiting room. It's a soap, for sure, but I was unexpectedly impressed by the acting and the direction, which made the teary script work far better than it had a right to. A thoroughly, impressively professional job all around!

Boy what a potboiler.

Robert Cummings stars with Lizabeth Scott and Diana Lynn in "Paid in Full" from 1950.

Cummings plays Bill Prentice, who works side by side with Jane (Scott) in the advertising section of a department store. She's in love with him, but he is in love with her gold-digging sister, Nancy (Diana Lynn). He has bought an engagement ring for Nancy and wants to propose.

If you thought Veda Pierce was bad, Nancy has her beat. Right after a millionaire gives her the kiss-off, Bill proposes, and Nancy accepts. You can tell right away there are going to be problems - he wants a wedding with just Jane and a couple of other people present. She wants a $500 wedding gown (almost 6,000 in today's money) that her sister gets for her. The wedding turns into a packed church affair with bridesmaids.

Nancy is terribly unhappy - Bill doesn't pay enough attention to her. She makes him miserable. Jane, meanwhile, still in love with Bill, is dating. Since her mother died giving birth, there's apparently a genetic problem, and Jane won't be able to have children. It is her great sorrow.

Nancy has a baby but is jealous of the attention Bill gives her, is angry with Jane for decorating the nursery, and winds up cutting off Jane and doing what she can to keep her husband away from the baby.

I won't tell you the rest - it's the stuff of soap operas. Lizabeth Scott is lovely, but no one is that good a person. Diana Lynn plays her role beautifully, she's a terror. Cummings, as the man in the middle, doesn't have much to do, but he's always likeable. Eve Arden, as a coworker of Jane's and Bill's, is an outspoken riot.

This is a woman's picture, all right, the kind Kay Francis did in the early '30s.

We love Lizabeth Scott when she's bad. She isn't bad in this, the script and the rest of the cast is. Bob Cummings should stick to light comedy and the other leading lady is so bland I can't remember her.

The overwrought accident that causes all the guilt and melodrama is as ludicrous as the sacrifice made at the ending.

A pregnant woman drives a car up to a hospital, passes out at the wheel, is brought in for immediate surgery, she says she is a Mrs Milligan and has a reference to a doctor Winston, and when the hospital calls this doctor up, he has no knowledge of any Mrs Milligan. As she lies on the operating table between life and death, telling the doctors to rather save the baby's life than her own, her life passes by for her in her memory, which is shared with the audience. That's how it starts.

Her life with her sister appears to have been totally self-sacrificed for her younger sister, as she feels responsible for her, as their mother died at her birth, and she herself is well aware that she cannot have children without risks to her life. All this information of course raises some concern with the audience about her condition of giving birth. The younger sister marries Robert Cummings, a dashing young upstart ready for a career, and they have a daughter, but the marriage is not a success, as she never really loved him, while the one who really loved him was Lizabeth Scott. There's the intrigue.

The story is authentic, it was found in "Reader's Digest" and made a decent film of directed the accomplished William Dieterle, who presents another of his invaluably sensitive creations, with appropriate romantic music by Victor Young sung by Dean Martin - the finest scene of the film before everything falls asunder, - so it is not really a noir which usually was Lizabeth Scott's acting realm, but rather a psychological drama about motherhood. The most interesting scenes are the discussions with the doctor of the sisters, who is perfectly aware of all the details of the case of the sisters and their mother, but who is powerless against the ways of destiny. It leads up to a meltdown, you keep hoping until the end, but at least there will always be a continuity.

Following an opening salvo of schmooze fest bonhomie and lighthearted romance, perpetuated by Eve Arden's irrepressible, razor sharp wit, Paid in Full hints at both film noir and psychological drama, prior to falling flat on its face, wallowing in the worst excesses of mawkish afternoon soap.

The movie confronts some delicate and distressing personal issues, but in such a contrived and gauche fashion that the events, traumatic as they are, feel like they have been grafted on to the narrative for maximum emotional mileage, rather than as natural and integral aspects of the story.

Paid in Full may have scored heavily on the 'not a dry eye in the house' ratings at the time of its release, but disappointingly wastes the talents of its three leads, the aforementioned Eve Arden and the hugely undervalued Kristine Miller. Overlong, overblown and overwrought, this turgid tearjerker now seems stodgy, dated and largely implausible.