Sleep, My Love

This thriller starts off with Claudette Colbert asleep on a speeding train and screaming soon after awakening because she has no idea how she got there. At home husband Don Ameche is being interviewed by the police after he calls them because of her disappearance the previous evening. This will be just the first in a series of bizarre circumstances for Colbert.

This film is nicely photographed and has some impressive sets. It also features Robert Cummings as a nice young man Colbert meets who becomes interested in her, George Coulouris in thick horn rimmed glasses playing a creepy guy, something that came very naturally to George Coulouris, and Hazel Brooks, looking very seductive and slinking around, much as she had recently done in another independent production of considerably more fame today than this one, Body and Soul.

Once you realize, however, that this is another Gaslight-type thriller (and it gives its hand away fairly early), it all starts to seem like territory a little too familiar. It also gets more than a little silly when the husband puts a sleeping potion into his wife's hot chocolate at night which seems to make her highly susceptible to any suggestion that he may whisper into her ear once she falls asleep.

For myself, recalling the charm that Colbert and Ameche had brought to the screen almost a decade before when they appeared in director Mitchell Leisen's sly, sophisticated comedy bauble, Midnight, I was a little dismayed to see them together again under these Gaslight circumstances. Still, Sleep, My Love, while far fetched at times, is an adequate thriller for fans of the genre.

Sleep, My Love is Douglas Sirk's crack at Gaslight. Dabbling in drugs and Mesmerism, Don Ameche rigs up psychotic "episodes" starring his wife, Claudette Colbert, so he can inherit her money. Befriended by Robert Cummings during one of these arranged "fugue" states, she unwittingly enlists an ally whose affections, and suspicions, grow. (The film takes on inadvertent Charlie Chan overtones when Cummings goes sleuthing with his blood-brother Keye Luke, who often played the Honolulu detective's eldest offspring.)

Unlike Cukor's claustrophobic Gaslight, with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer, Sleep, My Love is less psychologically nuanced and more plot-driven. It benefits from Hazel Brooks, delivering an icily stylized vamp turn as The Other Woman; she appeared in one other noir, Body and Soul, during her disappointing brief career. George Couloris (the guardian in Citizen Kane) adds color as a confederate of Ameche's, while Raymond Burr is wasted as a minion of the law.

That leaves the three principals as well as some problems. The amicable Ameche can't summon up the cold, controlling menace that Boyer spread through Gaslight; his adversary, the equally amicable Cummings, succumbs to terminal blandness. Colbert is more problematic. Unlike the languorous, instinctive Bergman, she made her name in part due to her quick wits; you can't buy her as a submissive wifey who hasn't cottoned on to her husband's philandering -- at the very least -- without having it spelled out to her by Cummings, whose acumen seems as low-wattage as his star power. (On the other hand, she was to find herself in a similar pickle the next year in The Secret Fury.) Sirk's direction here, as in Lured, lacks the distinctiveness he showed in his other noir, Shockproof, and was to develop lushly in the haut-fifties melodramas like Written on the Wind for which he is justly renowned.

In maybe the only time he was a villain on screen Don Ameche uses his dapper charm against type playing a coldblooded man who is trying to drive his very rich wife Claudette Colbert out of her mind. Ameche has been thoroughly seduced by a sultry Hazel Brooks otherwise he'd probably stay a rich kept husband, it's Colbert who has all the bucks in the family.

As part of his plan he has George Coulouris who took a patent out on sinister and who is a photographer in real life going in the guise of a psychiatrist. That and some psychotropic drugs administered and a little amnesia have Colbert thinking she is indeed ready for the rubber room.

Sleep My Love is a combination of Gaslight and Dial M For Murder and the comparisons are obvious since Bob Cummings plays the same kind of role in both films, the sympathetic friend who gives the heroine a shoulder to cry on. He's a bit more proactive in this film than in the Hitchcock classic as he figures out slowly that Colbert is not just imagining things.

Keye Luke has a role of companion 'brother' to Cummings. In fact Colbert and Cummings attend his wedding during the film. What was nice here was that his role was stereotypical in no way. Luke was not constantly make a mess that Charlie Chan would have to straighten out.

As much as the stars give good performances, you will remember Hazel Brooks from this film more than anyone. How a sexy woman like that never had a major career one can only wonder.

Arise My Love was a United Artists release and produced by one of the founding mothers of the studio Mary Pickford. A role she might well have played in the later stages of her career. And Hitchcock himself couldn't have done better with the suspense.

There are overtones of "Gaslight" in this watchable little movie from 1948 in that it has the same plot -that of a husband trying to persuade his wife that she is going mad .It sets its story in a then contemporary USA rather than foggy London town in the era of hansom cabs and cobbled streets. The husband is Richard Courtland (Don Ameche) who wishes to get his paws on his wife Alison 's inheritance in order that he can then marry his mistress ,the delectable Daphne ( Hazel Brooks)/the wife is played by Claudette Colbert. To this end he is covertly administering hypnotic drugs. The movie opens with Alison on a train and not knowing how she got there.Later she tries to jump from a balcony with no apparent motive for her actions and the movie builds to a neat and edgy climax on the Brooklyn Bridge .Out to stop the husband's evil machinations is "Bruce Eliot" played by Robert Cummins

Supporting roles are in the capable hands of such performers as George colouris (playing a phoney shrink),Raymond Burr as a sceptical policeman and such adroit bit part players as Ralph Morgan and Keye Luke .They indeed ,outshine the leads who are all adequate but slightly miscast and playing against type

The plot is predictable but Douglas Sirk does a good job of building suspense with some deft Hitchcockian touches

A man plots his wife's demise while his lover waits impatiently. It treads familiar territory, with the story a variation of "Gaslight." However, it's a lot of fun, thanks to a good cast, a fast pace, and an engaging script. Colbert and Ameche collaborate for the third time ("Midnight" being the best) while Cummings plays a character similar to the one he later played in "Dial M for Murder." The tension is nicely balanced with touches of humor, with Johnson providing most of the comic relief. Before he became known for directing a series of melodramas in the 1950s, Sirk dabbled in some film noir, and this is his best, a big improvement over the previous year's "Lured."