Escravo de Si Mesmo

The movie with its single set, minimal cast, and straightforward photography (except for a couple of brief special effects) reminds me of one of those old 60 minute playhouse dramas so popular during TV's early years. Nonetheless, the suspense hangs heavy over poor war widow Ida Lupino as she tries to deal with her semi-psychotic handyman Robert Ryan before one of his mood-swings kills her. And who better to play the troubled part than that great actor Ryan. He wasn't very versatile-- watching him essay comedy is almost painful. But no one was better at wounded idealism (On Dangerous Ground) or the psychic pain of this movie. Few actors could express as much with their eyes as this lean and towering figure.

Lupino's problem is that she's locked up in her house with a man who is kind and gentle one moment and raging the next. The suspense comes from her various ploys to keep him happy while trying to escape. It's a nail-biter all the way. This is not one of Lupino's many fine "soulful" parts that she was so good at. Instead, it's a role many lesser actresses could have handled well enough. My favorite scene is with Ryan and bratty teenager Margaret Whiting. Ryan's already having difficulty with his masculinity and what others are saying about him. Then when Whiting walks in and finds the attractive-looking Ryan scrubbing the floor, she starts getting coy, flirting with her budding sexuality. Sensing trouble, Ryan abruptly fends her off-- finesse is not his strong suit. Insulted, Whiting attacks his masculinity by calling his work "women's work". That does it. Up to that point he's been courteous and professional with Lupino, trying to set himself on a normal path. But Whiting has hit his raw nerve. Now there's heck to pay as Whiting bounces out the door, leaving Lupino to pay the price. It's a riveting scene, expertly done.

Anyway, this is one of the dozen or so films produced by Lupino and her husband at a time when audiences were moving away from these little black-and-whites in favor of wide-screen spectacles. Too bad. What a hugely talented figure she was both behind the camera and in front. She deserves at least an honorary Oscar from a movie industry to which she contributed so much.

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.

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.

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.