West End murder-mystery (a two-week flop on B’way) gets a film adaptation with all the production values & visual flair of 1950s ‘Golden Age’ television. Perfect 'Playhouse 90' material. David Farrar and Geraldine Fitzgerald are the illicit lovers, freed when wife Edwina Black dies at curtain rise. Not of natural causes, but poisoned. Yikes! And since Geraldine knows she didn’t do it; and David knows he didn’t do it; and Jean Cadall’s housekeeper/companion is quitting because she thinks both of them did it . . . well, who DID do it?! Enter Inspector Roland Culver, loaded with maddeningly calm questions and hoping for a spot of tea while he sorts it all out. He’d better hurry, too, since our lovers are either viciously accusing each of murder or busy making promises to honeymoon in Venice on M’Lady’s fortune. It’s all vaguely ridiculous and cumulatively entertaining as our clever inspector returns to parse the twists & turns with psychological acumen and indirect questions. Vet director Maurice Elvey, with major credits back to the ‘teens (HINDLE WAKES/’27 particularly fine: https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/hindle-wakes-1927.html) must have wondered what he had come to.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: One year later, a perfect paradigm of this sort of play came along in Frederick Knott's DIAL M FOR MURDER, quickly followed by the ‘unopened’ perfection of Alfred Hitchcock’s stunningly faithful, stunningly successful 1954 film adaptation. Note just how interchangeable OBSESSED’s Inspector Roland Culver is with M’s Inspector John Williams. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/05/dial-m-for-murder-1954.html
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