It took more than five decades for someone to remake THE RECKLESS MOMENT/'49, the last of Max Ophuls’ four American films. (Three of the four are masterpieces; all were commercial flops. That's the gorgeous Italian poster for RECKLESS MOMENT just to your right.) It’s a ‘perfect plot’ pic about a wife whose husband is away when her eldest child, caught in a messy/inappropriate romance, accidentally & unknowingly gets involved in a homicide. A handsome blackmailer calls. But rather than collect, he falls for the wife, and winds up protecting her & her family. This new version works quite well, but modern family dynamics & women’s place in society are so changed that the original's sense of daring & self-discovery in Mom’s competence & sheer gall proves impossible to resurrect. It doesn't help that Tilda Swinton’s Mom is tense & neurotic from the get-go while Goran Visjic ’s overly romantic henchman falls for her without enough motivation. And, when you've got to dispose of a dead body, sweats & jeans don't set the scene like a woman wearing pearls, white gloves & a cashmere overcoat. Amazingly, Ophuls, with far more narrative incident and character development runs twenty minutes shorter. Also missed is the B&W cinematography that helped make actors like Joan Bennett & James Mason icons back in the day. The new version is certainly worth seeing, but next to Ophuls' mastery, the writing/directing/producing duo of Scott McGehee & David Siegel can’t compete.
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