Meurtre sans faire-part

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.

Adultery, murder, blackmail, and Lana Turner, what more could one ask of a Ross Hunter production? Perhaps a good script, but that would spoil the fun. "Portrait in Black" will have lovers of camp in stitches at dialog that makes daytime soaps seem Shakespearean. The overwrought emoting and melodramatic scenes are often unintentionally funny, and the plot requires Olympian leaps to cross the credibility gaps.

Lana is having an affair with Anthony Quinn, the doctor who is attending her terminally ill husband, Lloyd Nolan, a shipping magnate. Nolan's company, Cabot Lines, is evidently quite successful, because Lana's daily expenditures on wardrobe, coiffures, and makeup would likely sink a ship. The couple's palatial San Francisco home is a Ross Hunter fantasy whose upkeep could sink yet another Cabot Line vessel. Nolan's daughter from a first marriage, Sandra Dee, evidently has her stepmother's taste in clothes and manicure, while the son from his marriage to Lana has to make do with a toy airplane. Throw in a greedy business associate played by Richard Basehart; Dee's suitor, John Saxon; a chauffeur, Ray Walston; and a housekeeper, Anna May Wong; and you have a delicious cast of potential suspects to populate an Agatha Christie mystery. However, "Portrait in Black" is not a whodunit, but rather a "who knows they dun it."

Lana is the ultimate drama queen, and she is in peak form. She suffers, she screams, she cries; she is the empress of high camp. Anthony Quinn, who should have read the script before he signed the contract, plays down to his part and seems to know he has had and will have better parts. Sandra Dee appears to be studying for future Lana Turner roles, while Walston and Wong play their parts with the necessary ambiguity to keep viewers guessing their secrets.

However, despite the overacting, bad writing, and soap opera direction, "Portrait in Black" is great fun for those who love their melodramas with big budgets and great style. Even the obligatory mirror smashing has been incorporated. The movie is enormously entertaining for its sometimes howlingly funny situations, absurd lines, and the sheer pleasure of watching Lana looking and emoting at her best.

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.

A beautiful, but faithless woman(Lana Turner) plots with her handsome, but brooding doctor-lover(Anthony Quinn) to murder her sickly husband(Lloyd Nolan). No, there's nothing overly fancy about this suspense melodrama, in fact in content it's quite ordinary. But the movie is given Hollywood's full treatment with striking photography, splendid costuming and decor, and good performances by a capable cast. Trivia: this film reunited IMITATION OF LIFE producer Ross Hunter with that movie's stars Lana Turner and Sandra Dee. Having played mother and daughter in that film, Turner and Dee are stepmother and stepdaughter this time around.