Don’t be fooled by a few ‘name’ stars and some top-line tech, this is basically an M-G-M programmer with a bit more polish than usual. It’s mid-1800s New York (actually M-G-M’s backlot Londontown) and young French gal Leslie Caron (in her second film) is new in town, lost in the big city till friendly stranger Joseph Cotten points out the creepy mansion she’d passed by as too unsavory a place for the rich grandfather of her fiancé, currently in Paris fighting for the Republic. Naturally, Grandpa Louis Calhern is a Monarchist with no intention of helping out his sole living relative. Chances are he couldn’t anyway as respectable houseguest Barbara Stanwyck (who runs his life and debaucheries), along with venal butler Joe De Santis are planning on inheriting everything . . . and soon. Only diff? Babs willing to wait for the apoplectic old man to die naturally while De Santis wants to speed things along. No doubt some studio exec thought this could be worked up as period suspenser along the lines of GASLIGHT/’44. (This guy couldn’t even come up with a decent title.) Cotten the dead giveaway as he plays nearly the same character and has the exact same structural function as he did in the earlier classic.* (They did give him a meaningless identity twist which you’ll guess easily.) In ways large & small, the film feels like an expanded episode from some high quality tv anthology show; all pedestal and no statue. Just where director Fletcher Markle would soon be headed.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: *As mentioned, GASLIGHT/’44. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/05/gaslight-1944.html
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Impeccable dubbing by Harriet Lee for Stanwyck's throaty vocal.
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