Crépuscule

At most, this film deserves a 5 out of 10 review stars. It's pure camp, albeit a product of its time. It's almost like a radio play turned into a movie. Maybe it was, but I haven't researched it enough to know for certainty.

What I do know is out of the four or five times I've seen this movie, Agnes Moorehead pretty much steals the show as usual.

Her performance is cool. It's calculated. And although it starts convoluted, especially under the script's parameters, it unravels into pure delight.

It's my opinion this is a clunker of a movie, although I watch it again and again if only because it's Dane Clark. But at a closer look, one can see how Ms. Moorehead was one of the greatest film actresses of her time. (They called them actresses back then.)

When I think of the multiple films I've seen her in, not to mention her TV appearances, she blows my mind. Such talent.

I usually refrain from commenting on films because there are so many other reviewers out there...but seeing how this just has one review and a very negative, I felt I should offer my opinion.

I'll admit the first 20 or 30 minutes felt like a typical Hollywood pot-boiler. Cheating wife accidentally kills lover; will she get away with it; etc. After this set-up, the film becomes an onion - revealing new layers of characters' motivations and back-story.

Laraine Day stands out superbly as the cheating wife...whole scenes develop around her without her speaking, yet we know what's going on in her mind.

I have to agree with the other reviewer that I loved Steiner's score...but did feel it inappropriate at times. The performances on screen are very subtle and the music is anything but subtle.

I particularly enjoyed the second half of the film as characters acted against stereotypes.

The DVD I watched was from Geneon and featured an adequate transfer; not stellar, but much above average from the usual run-of-the-mill public domain stuff.

Wild film.

Laraine Day as Jane is cheating on her husband (Bruce Bennett) with Franchot Tone. However, he breaks up with her, and during a struggle, she kills him.

While he is dead in another room, her brother-in-law (Dane Clark) shows up. He wanted her at one point, but she rejected him.

So he has called a revenge meeting, inviting the dead man's wife and the dead man himself, not realizing it a bit late for that, planning to surprise his brother with the news that his wife is a cheat.

Given that the man is dead, there are other surprises in store.

Laraine Day, understandably, plays a totally wired and half-hysterical woman. She does a good job, but the film feels off balance and frantic. Dane Clark's character clearly has a screw loose.

I would call this an odd film. And how much did they pay Franchot Tone to spend all that time on the floor?

What an odd picture. An Overwrought Melodrama with a capital O and a capital M this breaks out of the starting gate hitting high C and continues at a fevered pitch right up to its conclusion.

Unhappy Laraine stabs caddish Franchot by accident then rambles hysterically while the callously odious Dane Clark circles around making her life hell. The one beacon of restraint in the entire enterprise is Agnes Moorehead who shows up none too soon and steals the picture with a controlled and dignified performance while all around her her cast-mates are swallowing scenery whole.

Franchot Tone, him married to Agnes Moorehead and Laraine Day, her married to Bruce Bennett have been carrying on an affair, but Tone comes over to Day's house while Bennett's away and says time to end it. Bennett's a dull sort and Day doesn't want things to end. She gets positively hysterical and remains so the rest of the film with the events that follow. Quite a bit does follow.

Manipulating all that is going on is Dane Clark who is Bennett's brother and it's positively Iago like the way he controls all around him. This might have been Dane Clark's best moment on the big screen as it is Laraine Day's.

If this is ever remade and maybe it should be, it will be a great example about how the Code could nearly ruin a story. The censorship was such that so much was left out in the telling.

Still a nice piece of melodrama.