Le médaillon

Having recently watched John Brahms' two preceding movies, both centring on psychologically disturbed men (killers in fact) in period features, here the director presents us with an emotionally unstable woman in a contemporary setting. I enjoyed the two earlier films "The Lodger" and "Hangover Square" and I enjoyed this one too.

The lead character is played by Laraine Day, whose beauty attracts men like honey to a bee, although little do they know that she is a closet kleptomaniac with slippery fingers around rich folk's jewellery, her condition traceable to a childhood incident when she covets an expensive locket given to her by the rich little girl whose house her mother serves, but taken back away from her by the girl's mother as too good for her. When the locket later goes missing she is menacingly if mistakenly accused by the mother and given to believe that her shame at this has coloured her future conduct as an adult. Not only do her good looks attract the interest of deep men like Robert Mitchum's artist and Brian Aherne's doctor, it all climaxes in a super-charged betrothal scene to her third beau, the very rich Gene Raymond whose mother's nuptial gift to her of a locket finally unlocks years of denial and guilt on her part.

I'd have to say that the plot certainly overdoes the Freudian associations of Day's Cassandra-like obsession with jewellery. I also couldn't quite imagine Mitchum firstly as a tortured artist and secondly taking the extreme action he does as he gives up Day to Aherne, while the final coincidence of the other locket was just a bit too much to swallow.

Nevertheless, it was again stylishly directed by Brahm with strong performances by Day as the beguiling magpie Nancy, as adept at stealing men's hearts as old folk's jewellery, Aherne as the duped doctor and even Mitchum, miscast as he was. The layered flashbacks I found intriguing while the use of dramatic lighting, staging and music added greatly to the suspense.

1940's Hollywood movies were awash with psychologically disturbed individuals in films from Citizen Kane on down and while this particular feature overdoes the angst more than a bit, it was none the less entertaining for all that.

I give full credit to this little treat for introducing me to the world of noir cinema when I happened to stumble onto it on AMC. (Oh, that AMC showed films of this caliber lately!) Laraine Day gives a beautifully understated performance, handling what would now perhaps be called a tragic case of posttraumatic stress disorder resulting in a life of twists and turns with truth, no scenery chewing. Brian Aherne strikes just the right clinical note as the sadder-but-wiser exhusband, and Robert Mitchum gives a memorable performance as the first (at least the first chronicled in this tale) man to fall victim to Nancy's fatal charms. As Norman, he certainly delivers a farewell present to Nancy's physician spouse, and by extension, to Nancy, that they won't soon forget. The denouement at the mansion while wedding guests await fair Nancy is gripping cinema. Watch for a great performance by the mother of Joan Fontaine and Olivia Dehaviland as the cruel woman responsible for Nancy's childhood trauma. Worth the while!

I'm correcting a mistake in the previous post by Limsgirl of Massachussetts. That was NOT the mother of Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine who played the cruel woman who gives Nancy (Laraine Day) the locket. That woman was actress KATHERINE EMERY who played many "evil" or mean women in supporting roles. Lilian Fontaine had a brief nondescript role as a wealthy woman and made no impression whatsoever--she never had a really good role on screen, appearing briefly in THE LOST WEEKEND (Jane Wyman's mother) and IVY (as Joan Fontaine's friend, Lady Flora). LET'S GIVE CREDIT WHERE IT'S DUE--and applause for Katherine Emery as the cruel woman who has an immense effect on Nancy's life.

Just before his wedding to the beautiful and carefree Nancy, John Willis is visited by Doctor Harry Blair who informs him that he knows the real Nancy and warns the doctor not to make the same mistake as him by marrying her. He tells her the story of how he had just married Nancy when a man called Clyde turned up in his office and told him a story about how he had met Nancy and had got drawn into her world of deception.

Shunning conventional structure is always a risk and in this film it is one that it takes as we have a story being told by Blair that is basically about him being told a story by Clyde. This makes for an interesting approach especially since the stories are both told by her dumped lovers. In this regard we're not sure what is true and what isn't and, while the stories engage on one level, I was conscious of the fact that they were telling and not necessarily facts (a trick Usual Suspects would later repeat to great praise). Existing within the minds of the characters, the story is interesting and is all the better at the end for it. For many viewers the story-telling approach will be a little slow and I times it did drag a bit but mostly it comes together and works as something different and interesting.

The cast are roundly good although they take second fiddle to the script and the ideas of director Brahm (who produces some clever ideas in Nancy's bridal march). Aherne is a bit too stiff in the role where really I wanted him to display a bit more range. Mitchum is good in his role but it wasn't the sort of thing I was used to seeing him in and he has been much better elsewhere. Day takes the main role of Nancy and does well with it – she is part of the reason we're not sure what is true and what isn't and she convinced me that she didn't know either. She has plenty of nice touches as well as one or two very strong moments. Like I said though, this wasn't a great actors film but nobody was less than good.

Overall this is an interesting and different film that takes a risk by stepping back to flashback within flashback but mostly pulls it off. The story format might be a little testing on the patience (hearing about something implies a lack of action in the time where we are – after all the audience spent the film in the Willis study) but the material is worth it and, once back in the present, everything comes together nicely. Worth seeing for being a different style of drama from the period.

Brahm's intricately constructed film is based on the obvious conceit of a locket: in psychoanalytical terms, it symbolises repressed memory and of the 'opening up' of hidden psychosis. In a filmic sense of course, The Locket itself is a cinematic 'locket', the flashbacks within flashback structure reflecting the secret enclosure typical of such a piece of jewellery.

In fact I can't think of another film that takes this much commented narrative technique to such extremes. Mitchum of course was well used to playing heros faced with abnormal feminine psychology. He faces similar femme fatales in Preminger's 'Angel Face' for instance and in Farrow's 'Where Danger Lives' - all made at around the same time (end 40's, start of 50's). This may reflect something of the obsession that Hollywood had with cod Freudianism just as much as noir convention, but there is no doubting that Mitchum's peculiar manner as an actor, his doe-eyed sleep-walking acting style, made his starring excursions into the dangers of the subconscious peculiarly effective.

Brahm, one of Hollywoods most neglected directors at least for the work that he did at this time in his career, makes the somewhat over- stretched structure of the film work, pun intended, like a dream. Nancy's final walk to the altar, immediately before her mental and psychic collapse, although necessarily melodramatic, is very effective version of a personal calvary and she seems stunned and trance like. In retrospect, of course, it is easy to see how the whole of the preceding film has been leading up to this sequence, (just as how the flashback structure of the film reminds one in passing of 'Citizen Kane') but the sound and vision montage is still powerful.

By setting the bulk of the film in flashback, Brahm places it in the past - or, more precisely, in the imaginatively reconstructed past, and it is this dream-sense that retains a powerful grip on the viewer as events unfold. This almost hallucinatory sense, together with a feeling of 'drifting with fate', marks out some of the greatest noirs and B-mysteries made at this time and is what makes this film still very watchable today.

A 'Locket' well worth looking into.