Retrato en negro

"Portrait in Black" is another of Ross Hunter's late '50s-early '60s productions for Universal-International. Like his others, this is a beautifully realized film with an excellent budget and meticulous attention paid to every detail, ensuring the cast looked their best and the story was brought about with taste and credibility.

I've always liked this glossy, good-looking movie. However I must say I personally don't think Anthony Quinn was right for the role of the doctor. Gregory Peck, with his noble features and polished manner, would have brought an interesting dimension to that part.

Beautiful sets, hair styles, clothes, cars, manners and language. A delight to behold. Enjoy.

Oh the heartache and troubles rich people suffer through. Take Sheila Cabot (Lana Turner) for example, an attractive, middle-aged woman married to a wealthy, but ailing, shipping tycoon, Matthew Cabot (Lloyd Nolan). They live in a San Francisco mansion overlooking the Bay, and have multiple servants. But Matthew is gruff, verbally abuses his wife, and generally treats everyone like dirt. It's enough to make Sheila ... well ... cry. Making matters infinitely worse, Sheila has a lover on the side. And she's desperate to exchange the gruff hubby for the lover. However will she manage?

That's the setup for this melodrama-mystery combo, a story that involves passion, suspicion, deception, and ultimately murder. The film's easy to follow plot gets a needed boost when a card addressed to Sheila arrives in the mail. All the card says is: "Congratulations on the success of ..." That scene sends the plot hurling into mystery territory. Who wrote the card, and why?

The script's two main characters behave in ways that do not seem credible, given their circumstances. And the idea that a grown woman living in California has never learned to drive is a tad dubious.

The film's overall look and feel is that of a typical 1950s melodrama. Elegant, expensive clothes, dreamy violin background music, and melodramatic acting conjure up visions of some sudsy 1950s film directed by Douglas Sirk. I don't recall any scene in which Lana Turner is not wearing an expensive dress and, in some scenes, a full-length mink coat.

Color cinematography is acceptable, if unremarkable. Casting favors well-known actors. And they perform well enough. I was pleasantly surprised by the performance of Sandra Dee.

If you're looking for a believable story, look elsewhere. If you're looking for a sudsy melodrama and/or mystery, "Portrait In Black" will appeal. I could have done without the pretentious suds of these very rich people. But the plot puzzle provided enough mystery to keep me hooked.

Lana Turner plays Sheila Cabot. She's unhappily married to a mean, old and rich man who treats her like that. She's having a secret affair with his doctor (Anthony Quinn). They plan and inject a lethal air bubble into her husband killing him. She gets all his money. They think they've gotten away with it till Turner receives a note in the mail saying, "Congratulations on the success of your murder". Who knows it and what do they want. A young Sandra Dee and John Saxon are mixed up in this.

The plot is OK, it LOOKS great and Turner is always dressed to the 9s but this fails utterly. It has terrible dialogue--truly laughable. The acting doesn't help, Turner--a wonderful actress--gives a lousy performance. Quinn is seriously miscast and out of his depth. Saxon and Dee are good but are hardly in it. There's also a totally ridiculous but fun plot twist at the end. This was (understandably) a box office failure but is now considered a camp classic. Proceed at your own risk.

Adultery, murder, blackmail, and Lana Turner, what more could one ask of a Ross Hunter production? Perhaps a good script, but that would spoil the fun. "Portrait in Black" will have lovers of camp in stitches at dialog that makes daytime soaps seem Shakespearean. The overwrought emoting and melodramatic scenes are often unintentionally funny, and the plot requires Olympian leaps to cross the credibility gaps.

Lana is having an affair with Anthony Quinn, the doctor who is attending her terminally ill husband, Lloyd Nolan, a shipping magnate. Nolan's company, Cabot Lines, is evidently quite successful, because Lana's daily expenditures on wardrobe, coiffures, and makeup would likely sink a ship. The couple's palatial San Francisco home is a Ross Hunter fantasy whose upkeep could sink yet another Cabot Line vessel. Nolan's daughter from a first marriage, Sandra Dee, evidently has her stepmother's taste in clothes and manicure, while the son from his marriage to Lana has to make do with a toy airplane. Throw in a greedy business associate played by Richard Basehart; Dee's suitor, John Saxon; a chauffeur, Ray Walston; and a housekeeper, Anna May Wong; and you have a delicious cast of potential suspects to populate an Agatha Christie mystery. However, "Portrait in Black" is not a whodunit, but rather a "who knows they dun it."

Lana is the ultimate drama queen, and she is in peak form. She suffers, she screams, she cries; she is the empress of high camp. Anthony Quinn, who should have read the script before he signed the contract, plays down to his part and seems to know he has had and will have better parts. Sandra Dee appears to be studying for future Lana Turner roles, while Walston and Wong play their parts with the necessary ambiguity to keep viewers guessing their secrets.

However, despite the overacting, bad writing, and soap opera direction, "Portrait in Black" is great fun for those who love their melodramas with big budgets and great style. Even the obligatory mirror smashing has been incorporated. The movie is enormously entertaining for its sometimes howlingly funny situations, absurd lines, and the sheer pleasure of watching Lana looking and emoting at her best.

A beautiful, but faithless woman(Lana Turner) plots with her handsome, but brooding doctor-lover(Anthony Quinn) to murder her sickly husband(Lloyd Nolan). No, there's nothing overly fancy about this suspense melodrama, in fact in content it's quite ordinary. But the movie is given Hollywood's full treatment with striking photography, splendid costuming and decor, and good performances by a capable cast. Trivia: this film reunited IMITATION OF LIFE producer Ross Hunter with that movie's stars Lana Turner and Sandra Dee. Having played mother and daughter in that film, Turner and Dee are stepmother and stepdaughter this time around.