The Lost Moment

This little film is bursting with atmosphere, brooding, wistful, corrupt, overflowing with decay, betrayal and regret. A studio better known for its westerns and horror movies is here responsible for a major gem of delicacy and suggestion.

What makes all this remarkable is that the screenplay is a classic example of Hollywood's idiotic dumbing-down of a major work of fiction, Henry James's novella "The Aspern Papers" (based in turn on the life of Lord Byron). To compare James's brief story with the film is so sad it's almost painful, yet the movie survives and succeeds through sensitive style and sturdy professionalism.

The studio sets are evocative of a time before Venice became an international theme park, and the director's experience in radio drama provides a more finely-judged soundtrack than was the norm.

If your nerve-endings are not already terminally blunted through today's cinematic overkill, this film will prove richly rewarding.

Robert Cummings and Susan Hayward star in "The Lost Moment" also starring Agnes Moorhead, Joan Lorring, and Eduardo Cianelli.

Cummings plays Lewis Venable, a New York publisher visiting Venice with the goal of getting his hands on the love letters of a poet from the 19th Century, Jeffrey Ashton. The passionate letters were betwen Ashton and Juliana Bordereau.

Venable, under an assumed name, rents a room in the Bordereau house, a kind of grand guignol, dark place. Juliana (Moorhead) by this time is 105 years old and a recluse. She is being cared for by a niece, Tina, a woman who never smiles and is very strict. She obviously does not want Venable in the house. However, the family needs the money.

One night he hears music from somewhere in the house. Walking through the garden, he finally traces it to the embodiment of the young Juliana, a graceful woman with beautiful red hair falling around her shoulders, and she is wearing a beautiful gown It's Tina, who somehow steps into the past and becomes Juliana when she enters the room. To her, he is Jeffrey.

The family priest (Cianelli) warns Venable to ne careful rather than distroy Tina's loose hold on reality. But Venable wants those letters; he wants to know where they're hidden, and he plans on taking them.

I really enjoyed this. Robert Cummings is a lightweight and wrong for this - I would have loved to have seen Tyrone Power do it - but Susan Hayward was excellent in a dual role, and very beautiful.

"The Lost Moment" is one of the strangest films of the 1940s I have seen. I am not saying it's bad--just very, very different. The film is based on a story by Henry James ("The Aspern Papers") although like MOST films they liberally change the story. One of the most obvious is the character played by Susan Hayward. In the original story, she's described as plain and unattractive--something you could never have said about Hayward. In this film, she is gorgeous and is paired with an odd choice for a leading man, Robert Cummings. Now I am not complaining or saying Cummings was a bad choice--just an odd one since he was a bit older and not the dashing leading man you'd normally expect in a movie.

The story was originally based on a notion that some love letters from Percy Shelley were hidden somewhere and literary folks were drooling to find them. Here in "The Lost Moment", they use a fictional name for a guy who was clearly modeled after Shelley. But, unlike Shelley, this poet was an American and he simply disappeared in his prime! The only possible clue to his disappearance is the same woman who was in love with this man--and who supposedly has these love letters. But, she's an ancient recluse and has thus far resisted talking about her old lover and has refused to allow people to read these letters....if they even still exist.

Cummings plays a newspaper writer and an opportunist. His plan is to somehow get into this home with the old lady (who is now 105--played by Agnes Moorehead under a ton of makeup). When he learns she is greatly in need of money, he offers to rent out one of her rooms. While they receive him VERY coolly, he is able to secure a room and soon notices just how oppressively dismal the place is. It's like a morgue and a strong brooding sense of doom is well conveyed in the film. I won't discuss the plot any more--it would ruin the suspense. However, to me the plot, though interesting, isn't as important as the mood--which is really excellently conveyed. An interesting film--as there just aren't many like it.

'The Lost Moment' is worth watching - not too bad of a film. It's a romantic-drama (with a bit of a mystery and with a dash of thriller). I was hoping for a bit more with the ending I guess because I was left with a disappointed feeling at the end of the film.

Lewis Venable (Robert Cummings) is a publisher and he is after the love letters of an early-19th-century poet, Jeffrey Ashton, to his beloved Juliana Borderau (Agnes Moorehead). Lewis pretends to be a writer and rents a room from Juliana Borderau in hopes to gain the love letters. Juliana has a niece named Tina Bordereau (Susan Hayward). Tina has a split-personality: her real self, Tina, and that of her aunt Juliana. Tina thinks she is her aunt Juliana from time to time. Lewis finds himself in a mystery surround Juliana, Tina, and the love letters of Jeffrey Ashton.

I enjoyed the film - I was just disappointed with the ending because we never got a real explanation about Tina - an explanation for the split in her personality.

7/10

This turned up on tv and, having recently seen another James adaptation, The Innocents, I thought I'd take a look. This is quite a sweet little film, despite its sinister content and ghostly images of Venice. Cummings, Hayward and Moorehead are all excellent. "Venice" looks as good as the real thing, and the film has that watchable quality which sits with the very best of the 40s. One I'll certainly go back to.