La colpa di Janet Ames

I'm afraid that for one to appreciate The Guilt Of Janet Ames one would have to have seen the Gary Cooper film Peter Ibbetson which came out from Paramount a dozen years earlier. I think that in 1947 there were probably new adult moviegoers who did not get the reference.

Based on a Daphne DuMaurier novel Peter Ibbetson is the story of a paralyzed and imprisoned man who meets and has a whole life with his true love through dreams.

In this film Rosalind Russell plays an embittered war widow. Her husband was killed by jumping on a live grenade and saving five others around him. Russell feels that none of these people could have been worthy of the sacrifice he made that got him the Congressional Medal Of Honor. She resolves to meet them all to confirm her suspicion.

One of them is Melvyn Douglas who has become quite an alcoholic since his war service. He was the editor of a newspaper and a crusading journalist before the war.

Russell gets hit by a car and his name is found in her pocket along with the other four. Nothing too serious in physical injuries, but she has a hysterical paralysis now. Douglas is sent for when they find the scrap of paper and he's known to the hospital staff.

Knowing who she is, but her not knowing him, Douglas stimulates her imagination and she discovers what the others could be like with some small bits of information. The fantasy scenes are really quite good, the best being a young Sid Caesar in a standup routine about psychological films of which this is surely one. Thinking of the recently released Spellbound, I wonder what Alfred Hitchcock must have thought when he saw Caesar's routine. It's worth seeing the film for that alone.

In the end Russell and Douglas learn a good deal about each other and themselves. The Guilt Of Janet Ames is not on par with a film like Spellbound, but it does have its moments and the stars acquit themselves well.