La double vie de Lorna Blake

In this British film, a struggling widow with two daughters has taken to extorting money out of rich folks. She uses her daughters as shills...saying she needs money because they are ill or the like. The film then jumps ahead ten years and Mama is still up to her same old games...bilking folks so she and her daughters can live a fancier lifestyle. What's to become of this family? And, what's to become of the daughters?

I noticed that most of the reviewers loved this movie, though I felt quite differently. While the acting was generally very good, the story itself really often didn't make a lot of sense. There are simply too many instances to point out just one or two. So the story is undermined and for me it just didn't work. Watchable...nothing more.

I loved the opening shot of the film. The camera is placed on the second floor of a grand house, overlooking the staircase and foyer. The opening credits roll, and as they taper off, there's a knock at the door. The butler answers, then retreats through the foyer to the door of the drawing room and announces the visitor to the lady of the house. The scene is perfectly framed; the audience is eavesdropping, desperately wants to know more about "the woman in the hall", and there's an overall sense of dread in the air.

Ursula Jeans is dressed in rags, as is her daughter. She tells the wealthy woman in the house a sob story about how her husband abandoned her and her children, and her youngest daughter is ill, and she doesn't have enough money. . . The wealthy woman believes her, writes her a check, and sends her on her way. The woman and the daughter go home, and the woman announces to her friend how successful her workday was. It's all a scam, and her sole source of income.

The story continues, with many twists and turns, and it's fascinating. Ursula Jeans gives an excellent performance in a perfect Joan Crawford role. She's icy, deceitful, but something burns beneath it all. . . Jean Simmons is gorgeous and troubled, a characterization she perfected in the previous year's Great Expectations. And it was thrilling to see Cecil Parker in a rare romantic role! This is a great movie with an interesting story that shows the hurts children carry with them as they grow up. The Woman in the Hall is very exciting and I highly recommend you watch it with a bunch of your friends on the next stormy weekend!

It is quite unusual to find Ursula Jeans in a leading role, and she does it rather well in this rather twisted story of a women who makes her way in life by lying and deceit. She must raise her two daughters, and does so by various means of extortion and malversation. As her daughters grow up, they cannot distinguish between right or wrong, nor truth and lie - so when Jeans finally dupes poor old Cecil Parker into marriage, the years of dishonesty and duplicitousness finally begin to catch up with them all. Jean Simmons and Jill Freud are both competent as the daughters - Simmons (only 18 here) has yet to quite work out how to own the camera in the way she later became natural at - and the eagle eyed might spot a very early outing from Susan Hampshire. The story has it's moments, but it does drag rather - and the lack of any characters with whom we might empathise (save for Jeans' constant flow of gullibles) brings a certain "who cares" to the story... It is a well made piece of cinema, though - just nothing particularly noteworthy.

Splendid concoction of the complications women sometimes end up with in their difficult dealings with reality as a tricky means of survival if once the men are out of their lives. It so happens that two men oblige these three drifting women with actually offering them their support and even marriage, which certainly no wise man would do in this case. The mother is a professional cheat, and her daughters are ruined in the trade, one of them (Jean Simmons) actually stealing from her employer and benefactor not realizing it is wrong, since she uses the money only for the good of others. Cecil Parker marrying the cheat is as awkward as ever, he never seemed to get any character right, but here at least he succeeds in turning a bleak story to almost a comedy. I love the scene in the restaurant, when suddenly the cheat of a mother together with her newly wedded husband (Cecil Parker) is confronted with the vengeful brother of the man who once deserted her and now intends to marry her daughter, who is also present, with her godmother, one of the benefactresses the mother has cheated. All these victims of her artfulness never seem to mind her tricks much but are pleased to recognize her swindle for what it is and make the best of it, to ultimately direct her out of her trade. The final court drama is a wonderful climax to this spicy confusion of intrigues and people involved in them, and the judge seems to enjoy it. Fascinating film, resembling no other, and it's an especially interesting study of women.

Ursula Jeans is marvellous in the straightness of her unhesitating continuous deceit. Note the very young Susan Hampshire as Jay in the beginning as a small girl.

The title led me to anticipate a candlelit Victorian drama, but it's actually very contemporary. That wartime and postwar austerity Britain were both rife with low-level criminality was regularly reflected in the feature films of the era, as when Will Hay found himself in the dock for writing begging letters in 'My Learned Friend' (1943).

This adroit melodrama adapted by Gladys Bronwyn Stern from her pre-war novel anticipates Basil Dearden's equally neglected 'Only When I Larf' (1968), which set its trio of confidence tricksters against a backdrop of swinging 60's affluence. One watches with appalled admiration the perennially quick-thinking amorality of Ursula Jeans in the title role as a seasoned confidence trickster who rather resembles Mary Astor (with her perpetual look of feigned wide-eyed innocence in 'The Maltese Falcon'), although she stops short of murder. Her career of lies and deception spans ten years and an hour and a half which has lovingly prepared you for a knockout closing line and close up.

As the more innocent of her two daughters a button-eyed ten year-old Susan Hampshire in her film debut ages satisfyingly into a radiant Jean Simmons. The rest of the cast are up to the usual high standard one expects of British films of this period, enhanced by skillful production design by Peter Proud.

Recommended.