Le médaillon

This film by underrated director John Brahm is one of the more interesting works of the 1940s (not one of the best, but different).

Laraine Day plays Nancy, about to marry and hiding some dark secrets in her past. She was excellent at this kind of thing. Gene Raymond (not the most charismatic of actors but surprisingly good here) plays her intended, with Brian Aherne as the psychiatrist who knows about her previous life.

In flashback we see Nancy and her husband (a young Robert Mitchum) and then into another flashback (daring to attempt this at the time when many films were still pursuing conventional structure).

'The Locket' of the title obviously holds the key to the mystery, and we have an absorbing time pulling all the loose ends together. Reginald Denny, Ricardo Cortez, and Ellen Corby decorate an accomplished cast.

Knowing that this is the movie with the famous "flashback within a flashback within a flashback" draws people in, but the device never comes across as forced or artificial, and it works.

Like a lot of other people, I think Leonard Maltin underrates this one. "The Locket" is fun and suspenseful, as all "did she or didn't she" stories are when they're told right. This is Laraine Day's finest hour, and Robert Mitchum is very good in a sympathetic role. They are ably supported by Brian Aherne and Gene Raymond.

It's nice to see so many of the wonderful old thrillers from the 40s enjoying a revival. So many little gems like "The Locket" come in at under 90 minutes; they benefit from tight writing, intriguing premises and neat plot twists. Like "Detour," "Phantom Lady," "Follow Me Quietly" and many others, "The Locket" does not disappoint.

This is the kind of movie you think about all day long, and maybe the day after, if you happen upon it at 3:00 a.m. on TCM.

Brahm's intricately constructed film is based on the obvious conceit of a locket: in psychoanalytical terms, it symbolises repressed memory and of the 'opening up' of hidden psychosis. In a filmic sense of course, The Locket itself is a cinematic 'locket', the flashbacks within flashback structure reflecting the secret enclosure typical of such a piece of jewellery.

In fact I can't think of another film that takes this much commented narrative technique to such extremes. Mitchum of course was well used to playing heros faced with abnormal feminine psychology. He faces similar femme fatales in Preminger's 'Angel Face' for instance and in Farrow's 'Where Danger Lives' - all made at around the same time (end 40's, start of 50's). This may reflect something of the obsession that Hollywood had with cod Freudianism just as much as noir convention, but there is no doubting that Mitchum's peculiar manner as an actor, his doe-eyed sleep-walking acting style, made his starring excursions into the dangers of the subconscious peculiarly effective.

Brahm, one of Hollywoods most neglected directors at least for the work that he did at this time in his career, makes the somewhat over- stretched structure of the film work, pun intended, like a dream. Nancy's final walk to the altar, immediately before her mental and psychic collapse, although necessarily melodramatic, is very effective version of a personal calvary and she seems stunned and trance like. In retrospect, of course, it is easy to see how the whole of the preceding film has been leading up to this sequence, (just as how the flashback structure of the film reminds one in passing of 'Citizen Kane') but the sound and vision montage is still powerful.

By setting the bulk of the film in flashback, Brahm places it in the past - or, more precisely, in the imaginatively reconstructed past, and it is this dream-sense that retains a powerful grip on the viewer as events unfold. This almost hallucinatory sense, together with a feeling of 'drifting with fate', marks out some of the greatest noirs and B-mysteries made at this time and is what makes this film still very watchable today.

A 'Locket' well worth looking into.

I'm correcting a mistake in the previous post by Limsgirl of Massachussetts. That was NOT the mother of Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine who played the cruel woman who gives Nancy (Laraine Day) the locket. That woman was actress KATHERINE EMERY who played many "evil" or mean women in supporting roles. Lilian Fontaine had a brief nondescript role as a wealthy woman and made no impression whatsoever--she never had a really good role on screen, appearing briefly in THE LOST WEEKEND (Jane Wyman's mother) and IVY (as Joan Fontaine's friend, Lady Flora). LET'S GIVE CREDIT WHERE IT'S DUE--and applause for Katherine Emery as the cruel woman who has an immense effect on Nancy's life.

Just before his wedding to the beautiful and carefree Nancy, John Willis is visited by Doctor Harry Blair who informs him that he knows the real Nancy and warns the doctor not to make the same mistake as him by marrying her. He tells her the story of how he had just married Nancy when a man called Clyde turned up in his office and told him a story about how he had met Nancy and had got drawn into her world of deception.

Shunning conventional structure is always a risk and in this film it is one that it takes as we have a story being told by Blair that is basically about him being told a story by Clyde. This makes for an interesting approach especially since the stories are both told by her dumped lovers. In this regard we're not sure what is true and what isn't and, while the stories engage on one level, I was conscious of the fact that they were telling and not necessarily facts (a trick Usual Suspects would later repeat to great praise). Existing within the minds of the characters, the story is interesting and is all the better at the end for it. For many viewers the story-telling approach will be a little slow and I times it did drag a bit but mostly it comes together and works as something different and interesting.

The cast are roundly good although they take second fiddle to the script and the ideas of director Brahm (who produces some clever ideas in Nancy's bridal march). Aherne is a bit too stiff in the role where really I wanted him to display a bit more range. Mitchum is good in his role but it wasn't the sort of thing I was used to seeing him in and he has been much better elsewhere. Day takes the main role of Nancy and does well with it – she is part of the reason we're not sure what is true and what isn't and she convinced me that she didn't know either. She has plenty of nice touches as well as one or two very strong moments. Like I said though, this wasn't a great actors film but nobody was less than good.

Overall this is an interesting and different film that takes a risk by stepping back to flashback within flashback but mostly pulls it off. The story format might be a little testing on the patience (hearing about something implies a lack of action in the time where we are – after all the audience spent the film in the Willis study) but the material is worth it and, once back in the present, everything comes together nicely. Worth seeing for being a different style of drama from the period.