Beware, My Lovely

Beware My Lovely originated from a play written by Mel Dinelli who apparently liked writing about frightened women. His first and best effort was the screenplay for The Spiral Staircase. He also did a Loretta Young suspense thriller Cause For Alarm a couple of years earlier. The play Dinelli wrote was originally entitled The Man and it ran for 92 performances on Broadway during the 1950 season. It was Dinelli's only effort on Broadway and it starred Dorothy Gish and Richard Boone.

The roles that Gish and Boone played are taken by Ida Lupino and Robert Ryan. For whatever reason RKO thought to eliminate the age difference. Dinelli himself rewrote his play for the screen so I'm wondering what he thought about that. Certainly the frailty issue was eliminated completely from the story.

That wasn't the only thing that was eliminated. The people are all wearing period clothing from around World War I yet there's no reference at all to the time this story takes place in. I thought that strange and later on when the telephone company repairman comes to Ida Lupino's residence, I noticed his truck was a vintage one of the same era.

The film is almost entirely set within Ida Lupino's home where she's hired an itinerant stranger in Robert Ryan as a handyman. The film is a great object lesson in not hiring strangers without reference. It turns out that Ryan is a schizophrenic who imprisons Lupino in her home for about a day.

Both the leads do fine jobs even with the changes made. Films like Beware My Lovely are the stuff that a small studio like RKO did best. If this were done at MGM or Paramount the glossy trappings would have overwhelmed a solid story.

Mel Dinelli , whose contributions to the movies include the intelligent scripts to the minor classics "The Window " and "The Spiral Staircase" wrote a play called "The Man " which ran on Broadway and provided the source material for this entertaining minor thriller . Ida Lupino plays a widow in small town middle America ,shortly after World War one ,who gives a job as house cleaner to a vagrant ,played by Robert Ryan ,unaware that he is a psychopath ,with a tendency to memory lapses ,and a history of killing his former employers as well as having a major persecution complex. It is not too long before she is being held prisoner in her own home and in mortal fear of her life .

Crisp direction from Harry Horner and two coiled spring performances by the estimable leads keep interest and tension high . Only a strident and conventional score ,replete with skittish strings and discordant brass ,plus a somewhat rushed ending mitigate against a higher rating.

Gripping and enjoyable all the same with both stars confirming how undervalued they still are.

I can see that the ratings for this film aren't all that high for this film, so I must be in the minority for liking this film so much. Well, I am right and everyone else is wrong (just kidding). I guess I like it because I am a psychology teacher and I really liked the brooding character played by Ryan. While he truly is dangerous as well as VERY menacing, you can't exactly hate him because he is clearly mentally ill and probably suffering from some sort of brain trauma. And wow did Ryan do a really good job portraying this man! You really find yourself feeling for Ida Lupino as he destroys her life. So with such intense acting and menace, why is the movie rated relatively low? Well, probably because it isn't exactly believable,...but boy is it entertaining and creative. Give it a try and don't believe the score of 6.4--it's a lot better than that!

Beware, My Lovely is an experimental studio film from the early fifties and was directed by a man, Harry Horner, better known for his set designs. Robert Ryan plays a handyman who is hired by Ida Lupino to do some housework for her. The problem is that he is a psychopathic murderer and doesn't know it. Miss Lupino is an empathetic soul and tries to win Ryan over, to little avail. He is not the sort of man compassion could help or cure. Thus we have an interesting situation of two people who basically mean well, but one of them can't do well because there is something wrong with him. He suffers periodic blackouts during which he commits acts of violence, which he later forgets.

Essentially the effect Ryan has on Lupino is that of the hunter and his prey, or in another sense a sadist. The audience finds out early on that Ryan is a mad killer, but it takes Lupino much longer. Thus we must live with this knowledge as we watch poor Miss Lupino try everything in her power to 'win' Ryan over in order to make things work, get the job done, get on with life. But getting on with things isn't in Ryan's makeup, as he is incapable of any but the most rudimentary forms of normality, and as soon as there is an opening his paranoia asserts itself.

As a study in mental illness the movie isn't too impressive. What it's superlative at is showing the effect of major mental illness, with dangerous psychopathology in the mix, and its effect on a normal person. In this regard the film is realistic and compassionate, though relentlessly logical in that we know Lupino can't 'fix' Ryan, yet we want her to. The result is that, if one is willing, one can get extremely involved in this film emotionally if one can put aside, so to speak, its melodramatic structure.

Horner shows us, gradually, the layout the Lupino house , a forbidding gothic monstrosity that never feels like a home. We become familiar with staircase, kitchen and pantry; and we come to know which windows Miss Lupino can use for an escape and which ones she can't.

I saw this film yesterday for the first time, and I guess it shows that one's opinions of beauty (and the caliber of acting) really are in the "eyes of the beholder." I decided to write this "review" for one primary reason: The writer of the first review referred to Ida Lupino's role as that of "a homely widow." Homely? If Ida was "homely" in this film, then my taste in women must be flat ass backwards. I thought she was gorgeous, quite possibly the best I've ever seen her look. The other reviewers with whom I strongly disagree are those who criticized the acting. Say what you will about the film (it undeniably had it's flaws as well as its strengths), IMHO, the acting of the two principals was absolutely spectacular. Robert Ryan's expressions changed almost by the second as he slipped into, and out of, reality. And Ida was magnificent from beginning to end. I agree that the ending was a major disappointment. My immediate reaction to it was to say to myself, "THAT'S the end?" Nevertheless, the experience of watching those two performers play off each other for an hour and a half is definitely one that I would strongly recommend.