Ritratto in nero

Poor Lana Turner is forced to wear Jean Louis gown after Jean Louis gown in this picture, a veritable sea of sequins. To add insult to injury, she is kept like a bird in a gilded cage in her magnificent Pacific Heights mansion. Her lover (Anthony Quinn) lives only a couple of blocks away, but in order to tryst with him, she must first go down to Union Square and pretend to shop at the old I. Magnin store (now Macy's), then take a cab back out to Divisadero - very inconvenient. An uncommonly silly movie, but great set decoration and use of locations. If you ever come to visit San Francisco, you can see the house that Lana, Sandra and Lloyd lived in; it's at the corner of Broadway and Baker, just about the ritziest neighborhood in town, natch....enjoy!

Oh the heartache and troubles rich people suffer through. Take Sheila Cabot (Lana Turner) for example, an attractive, middle-aged woman married to a wealthy, but ailing, shipping tycoon, Matthew Cabot (Lloyd Nolan). They live in a San Francisco mansion overlooking the Bay, and have multiple servants. But Matthew is gruff, verbally abuses his wife, and generally treats everyone like dirt. It's enough to make Sheila ... well ... cry. Making matters infinitely worse, Sheila has a lover on the side. And she's desperate to exchange the gruff hubby for the lover. However will she manage?

That's the setup for this melodrama-mystery combo, a story that involves passion, suspicion, deception, and ultimately murder. The film's easy to follow plot gets a needed boost when a card addressed to Sheila arrives in the mail. All the card says is: "Congratulations on the success of ..." That scene sends the plot hurling into mystery territory. Who wrote the card, and why?

The script's two main characters behave in ways that do not seem credible, given their circumstances. And the idea that a grown woman living in California has never learned to drive is a tad dubious.

The film's overall look and feel is that of a typical 1950s melodrama. Elegant, expensive clothes, dreamy violin background music, and melodramatic acting conjure up visions of some sudsy 1950s film directed by Douglas Sirk. I don't recall any scene in which Lana Turner is not wearing an expensive dress and, in some scenes, a full-length mink coat.

Color cinematography is acceptable, if unremarkable. Casting favors well-known actors. And they perform well enough. I was pleasantly surprised by the performance of Sandra Dee.

If you're looking for a believable story, look elsewhere. If you're looking for a sudsy melodrama and/or mystery, "Portrait In Black" will appeal. I could have done without the pretentious suds of these very rich people. But the plot puzzle provided enough mystery to keep me hooked.

Portrait in Black (1960)

In a beautifully drippy, bleeding, sticky Douglas Sirk mode, and one year after leading lady Lana Turner appeared in Sirk's "Imitation of Life," this highly slick and artificial (and yet moving) melodrama is one of the high points in a low period of Hollywood. The other main character is Anthony Quinn, who is remarkable, too, one of those underrated leading men, I'm not sure why. The two of them are supported by Richard Basehart as a fascinating and chilling underling with a peculiar mysterious cheerfulness, and Sandra Dee, who plays the spoiled daughter all too well (as you can imagine).

Unlike Sirk's dramas, this one, directed by is not just about normal human dramas (soap opera stuff), but adds a criminal and suspense element that kicks in after half an hour. The throbbing music takes on a different meaning here, and the sobbing and regrets make for an intense ride.

The deeper you get into this movie, the deeper the plot gets, with intrigue and worry and more murder mounting. And it's all filmed with fluid, rich, widescreen color photography, with intensely rendered music (that holds nothing back), and with a subtle kind of attention to nuance that oddly adds to the excesses of the plot.

And it's the plot, the story, that is so finely tuned it sustains all this cinematic swaying. It's not like some movies where the music or the photography drives the plot--here they are woven together really well, artfully and emphatically. Quinn and Turner are both extraordinary, lifting what could have been a soap opera to something completely fuller.

Russell Metty, behind the camera, was at the peak of his career, having shot not only "Imitation of Life" the year before but Sirk's early "Written on the Wind" (and moving on quickly to several masterpieces like "Spartacus" and "The Misfits"). And in fact the composer, veteran Frank Skinner, wrote the music for those two classic Sirk films, as well. It's worth stressing all this because Sirk has a huge (and deserved) following, and I have a feeling this one is just under the radar of Sirk fans. If a great Sirk film seems to almost reference itself the way it becomes so perfectly "arch" in its stereotypes, "Portrait in Black" does maintain a sense of being still a film wanting to move a plot idea along (these are subtle differences about style becoming affectation on purpose). But even so, the parallels are extraordinary, and this is a remarkable movie on those terms.

It's worth wondering what else, beyond Sirk, was going on around this time, and in fact, with the murder and suspense here it helps to look at Hitchcock's films "North by Northwest" (1959) and "Vertigo" (1958). Both are clearly influences in filming style, lacking only that higher level of stylized artfulness (and storytelling) that Hitch was by then such a master of. Or then, you might say, there was perhaps the influence of Sirk on Hitchcock, at least in the visual richness and fluidity (something Hitch abandoned immediately, almost making a point, this very year with "Psycho").

Anyway, if you don't mind an over the top melodrama done to perfection, here you go. And for movie fans, check out Anna May Wong's last film appearance (not a great performance, but she's her own legend). See it on the biggest screen you can, too--this doesn't translate well at all to a laptop experience.

Lana Turner plays Sheila Cabot. She's unhappily married to a mean, old and rich man who treats her like that. She's having a secret affair with his doctor (Anthony Quinn). They plan and inject a lethal air bubble into her husband killing him. She gets all his money. They think they've gotten away with it till Turner receives a note in the mail saying, "Congratulations on the success of your murder". Who knows it and what do they want. A young Sandra Dee and John Saxon are mixed up in this.

The plot is OK, it LOOKS great and Turner is always dressed to the 9s but this fails utterly. It has terrible dialogue--truly laughable. The acting doesn't help, Turner--a wonderful actress--gives a lousy performance. Quinn is seriously miscast and out of his depth. Saxon and Dee are good but are hardly in it. There's also a totally ridiculous but fun plot twist at the end. This was (understandably) a box office failure but is now considered a camp classic. Proceed at your own risk.

Lana Turner, who's married to invalid Lloyd Nolan, has fallen for his doctor Anthony Quinn in one of Lana's most underrated films. This has to be one of the best examples of the melodrama genre, with Lana looking great as usual. I love it when movies know how to fill the cast with recognizable names, giving each role a chance to stand out: Anthony Quinn, Richard Basehart, Lloyd Nolan, Sandra Dee, John Saxon, Ray Walston, silent-screen star Anna May Wong, and Virginia Grey, who was an almost constant presence in Lana's later films. How you can go wrong? Granted, it may be campy or cheesy in some places, with loopholes to boot. But it wouldn't be melodrama without them. And, watching Anthony be driven out of his mind, is priceless. Only a great actor as him could overact so well. And, Sandra Dee comes off surprisingly well in her role, as the stepdaughter skeptic of her stepmother, who goes shopping, but comes back with no packages. If you're yearning for a good old-fashioned movie, the kind they just don't make anymore, this is for you. It's out on DVD, with Madame X. (That's another review.) Knock yourself out! Also, with Lana and John Saxon together in San Francisco, it feels like early Falcon Crest all over again. You gotta love it.