Escravo de Si Mesmo

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!

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.

Howard Wilton is a troubled man, driven by an anger he can barely control far less understand and plagued by blackouts and spells of amnesia. Finding a dead body in his pantry, he flees the scene and boards a train to continue his nomadic life. He takes a job at the home of widower Helen Gordon as a cleaner but soon finds himself feeling mocked and judged by Helen and others. When he breaks loose, Howard holds Helen in the house, with her fearing for her life from this irrational stranger.

I was attracted to this film because the title suggested a tough detective film noir – something that was backed up by the description of the film as such on this very site. Very quickly though I realised that this was down to some people's assumption that anything that is black and white and tough gets called a "noir" but I was not disappointed because this domestic thriller is driven by two very good performances. The film starts well with Howard quickly being marked out as unbalanced at best as he runs in fear and disgust from the very crime that he has committed; it isn't long before we see this end result starting to develop again in his new house. The plot is simple in this regard but it is the delivery that keeps it tense, with the confines of the house adding to the feeling of claustrophobia and lack of an escape route. It isn't outstanding stuff but what makes it work as well as it did was a pair of strong performances from the famous lead actors.

Ryan has the hammy role but manages to play it just right, delivering the complex character well while also convincing me that he could neither explain or control what he was doing. Lupino is as good as always and it is her palatable fear and confinement that gripped me and really made me buy into it. The support cast are ample but really Ryan and Lupino are hardly off the screen and it is the film's strength that they are all that it needs to do the job.

Overall this is not the film I was expecting but it was still very enjoyable and effective. The story is mainly kept within the house, upping the tension and the story is well delivered by two strong performances that make the film well worth seeing.

Ida Lupino is trapped in her own home by crazy Robert Ryan in "Beware, My Lovely," a 1952 film from RKO. Lupino and Ryan did three films together and worked well as a team, both being consummate professionals and strong performers.

In this film, based on a Broadway play called "The Man," Lupino is a World War I widow who rents out a room in her home. She's very active and well-liked in her community and though her husband has been dead for two years, she's not ready to move on. The man who rents her room goes on vacation, and Lupino hires Robert Ryan to help her with some heavy-duty cleaning in the house.

He's friendly enough to start, but later terrorizes her, locking her in the house, and not allowing her to answer the phone or the door, as he grows violent and more out of touch with reality.

The character played by Ryan is shown in the beginning of the movie running away when he discovers a dead body in another house he's working in. It isn't clear whether or not he's the killer, since he seems surprised to see the body.

He might be a split personality, as when his personality turns ugly toward Lupino, he seems to have no memory of his activities when he comes out of it. He doesn't know that he has the keys to Lupino's house in his pocket and doesn't know why he has tickets to a party that he bought from young children who came to the door.

"Beware, My Lovely," is a very suspenseful film, and the two leads give terrific performances. The tension builds to a very high level and ends in a way you're not expecting.

Intense domestic suspense with the mistress of the house (Lupino, excellent as always) threatened by a psychotic migrant housecleaner (Ryan). The 2 masters of the genre are at their heady, erotic best as they match wits, emotions, and wills in a bizarre hostage situation right out of the Saturday Evening Post. Richly hued B & W photography with an unusual amount of close-up head shots. The young girl who teases Ryan is really well directed here. Improbable, but satisfying suburban melodrama.