An Act of Murder

This film's relentless plotline marches straight-ahead forward as you squirm, fascinated, in your chair. The story is the familiar one about the onset of terminal illness within a solid American family of the 1940s. Never mind that it delves into MGM-style sermonizing; the great real-life husband/wife team of Fredric March and Florence Eldridge portray the couple whose once-comfortable lives are now being separated by an unstoppable and fast-advancing disease. The helpless husband, the uncomplaining wife, and their final attempt to recapture happier days with a doomed weekend outing is the stuff of deep film drama indeed. The sense of onrushing darkness is tangible through the film-noir camera shadings of Hal Mohr (Captain Blood, Phantom of the Opera [1943], The Climax), and Daniele Amfitheatrof's rich musical score. "An Act of Murder" makes a profound statement on the value, and the fragility, of life.

Preachy moralizing on a downbeat subject, "An Act of Murder" is somewhat redeemed by outstanding performances by Frederic March and his actress wife, Florence Eldridge. A strict judge is faced with a moral dilemma, when his wife of 20 years is struck with a fatal disease that is incurable and increasingly painful. Most of the film's running time deals with the judge's home and work life, his daughter's relationship with an attorney the judge dislikes, and visits to a doctor, who is a personal friend of the couple.

Movies about terminal illness are often cloying TV fodder and difficult to endure; few are entertaining and tolerable like "Dark Victory," in which Bette Davis overcame a dire prognosis by sheer force of her personality. Directed by Michael Gordon and adapted from a novel by Ernst Lothar, this low-budget film does avoid maudlin moments and is no tearjerker. Eldridge as Catherine Cooke faces her crisis with courage and dignity, even while her symptoms worsen and her health declines. March's Judge Calvin Cooke stoically witnesses his wife's pain and addresses the imminent loss of his partner without self pity. However, the story reaches tedious sermonizing during a climactic courtroom scene. Edmund O'Brien, who plays the daughter's improbable love interest, steps into the court proceedings to make a point, after which a judge, portrayed by John McIntire, delivers a lesson about heart in the law, and March closes the film by declaring himself a changed man.

To say that "An Act of Murder" is entertaining is a bit of a stretch given the subject matter. To say that the film's moral teaching is groundbreaking would be untrue for most people. However, the sensitive portrayal of a loving couple facing loss after twenty years of marriage acted out by a loving couple after twenty years of their own marriage is reason enough to endure the sermonizing.

Caught this tough 1948 drama on TCM, which seems to have been out of circulation for a while. It's about a tough, by-the-book judge (Fredric March) who discovers his wife (Florence Eldridge, March's real-life spouse) has a fatal, painful disease, and rather clumsily plots a mercy killing. This means that for much of the film's length we have to watch Eldridge suffer, suffer, and it's quite uncomfortable viewing. There are plot conveniences that one other poster lists, and also the debatable position posed by the family doctor (Stanley Ridges, also good) that Eldridge should be lied to about her prognosis. Hal Mohr's photography thrusts itself deep into the Marches' anguish, and plot and subplot are contrivedly merged when Edmond O'Brien, as the liberal attorney who's romancing the Marches' daughter (Geraldine Brooks), injects himself into March's murder trial. Then there's some unconvincing, unsolvable philosophizing about euthanasia, and fadeout. I find a number of faults: Daniel Amfitheatrof's hyperactive musical score, which needlessly underlines everything, and was there ever a less appealing juvenile than pudgy, charmless Edmond O'Brien? But the issues are real, the debate is tense, and Mr. and Mrs. March are superb. Now if only TCM would find a way to show their other excellent co-starring vehicle from back then, also Universal and also directed by Michael Gordon, "Another Part of the Forest."

I watched "An Act of Murder" because I love the actors Frederic March and Edmund O'Brien. Both were Oscar-winning actors who were not exactly handsome (especially as they aged) and managed to give one impressive performance after another over the decades. Sadly, however, despite having two excellent stars, the film lost its momentum towards the end.

When the film begins, March plays a tough-as-nails judge and O'Brien a bleeding-heart defense attorney. The two don't like each other all that much--and late in the film, O'Brien's character comes to the judge's defense when he's on trial for a mercy killing. In between is the part of the film I loved most--and which is totally obscured by the ending which is filled with speechifying and some bizarre behavior by March's character. It's a shame, as the idea of mercy killing and medical ethics are really interesting topics and it's pretty amazing to see them talked about in the 1940s, as usually films deliberately avoided this back in the day.

There's something quite remarkable at the heart of this honest and direct portrayal of a very human crisis. The leads here - Frederic March and Florence Eldridge, real-life husband and wife - are completely and thoroughly a middle-aged couple and depicted as such, in all their wrinkles and folds and reflections on lives that have been lived. It's a reminder that the two kinds of people we see in movies are the very young and beautiful and the very old. The Cookes here are seemingly fully filled in, a husband and wife with grown children, in the midst of real lives, inhabiting their marriage with the deep love that is far beyond the romantic love that's the staple of motion pictures. This isn't the dashing Frederic March of the 1930s but a mature, restrained father and husband. It's a bit melodramatic at times - director Michael Gordon is a journeyman professional and not William Wyler, director of the great film of that era starring March, The Best Years of Our LIves. But watch for the details, such as the sharp, discordant strings stabbing along as windshield wipers swipe across the screen. I think I saw that in another movie made a few years later.