SHADOW ON THE WALL (1950)

Good (almost very good) little thriller has Zachary Scott returning from a long business trip to catch his second wife cheating on him with her own sister’s fiancé. Threatened by a gun he’s only putting away, she strikes hard with a hand mirror, knocking Scott out just as that ‘wronged’ sister (Ann Sothern) comes in, grabs the gun off the floor, and accidentally fires. By the time Scott comes to, Sothern has split, his unfaithful wife lies dead on the floor, and Scott assumes he’s the murderer! Blacking out just as he shot. Yikes! Quick blink and he’s on Death Row and Sothern ain’t talking. But not so quick, turns out the crime was at least partially witnessed by Scott’s little girl from his first wife, Gigi Perreau, now hysterical, traumatized and either unable or unwilling to remember events. Enter Nancy Davis (later Nancy Davis Reagan, in one of her few good roles) as the girl’s court-appointed psychiatrist. Bonding with the child in a series of role-playing games with dolls, she starts to get curious about discrepancies in the ‘airtight case’ against Scott. But will revelation come too late to save him? Nifty ideas here, and given a kind of poetic treatment, especially in the use of an Indian doll, nicknamed Cupid for his bow & arrow, who stands in as the shadow of real murderer You Know Who. All the perfs are tip-top: Scott in a rare good guy role; Perreau a lot like the young Natalie Wood, and just as good; and Sothern, after a decade of likeable roles at M-G-M, finishing up her contract playing a cold-blooded killer. Director Pat Jackson, moving from documentaries to features, does a nice job, too. But you can’t help feeling he’s left a lot of lyric possibilities, atmosphere & suspense on the table. In a way, the film’s like one of those poetic horror pics Val Lewton made so much of over @ RKO (CAT PEOPLE/’42, et al.). So what a disappointment to see Lewton was actually working on the M-G-M lot at the time, making a forgettable, little comedy called PLEASE BELIEVE ME. (More on that one later.)

DOUBLE-BILL/SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: It’s likely someone in the front office noticed the big success of another childhood murder/trauma story in RKO’s THE WINDOW the previous year. And that someone would no doubt have been Dore Schary, just moving from head of production/producer @ RKO to similar duties @ M-G-M.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The big reveal of Agatha Christie’s 4:50 FROM PADDINGTON, one of her Miss Marple novels, is 'borrowed' for this film’s ending.