THE SECOND WOMAN is an extremely appealing melodrama, vastly Hitchcockian, charmingly scored (Tchaikovsky); a singularly likable treatment of Neo—Victorian themes (a wealthy and mysterious widower who fascinates a visibly younger broad), with the psychiatric overtones of the '40s (the discussions of paranoia and mental illness), THE SECOND WOMAN is more than anything exquisitely shot, gorgeously scored, brightly paced, limpid, intelligently directed. And it simply looks as its director knew how to make movies; once in a while, the movie buff gets this impression of a feature which is just masterly made (--similar examples are an early Demme comedy, or the Rooney vehicle QUICKSAND, or a few very early Lemmon comedies from the '50s—that 'delightful secret movies' which it belongs to you to discover all by yourself--). It has what countless others lack. The two leading actors, Young and Betsy, are likable precisely because they are unglamorous.
There are direct quotations from Hitchcock (e.g., when daddy Young does a Grant impression).
As the lead, daddy Young had a certain _finesse; sometimes he looked like an aunt, and others like a true man. His character's girlfriend is the piquant and cute Betsy Drake, 26 yrs in this movie and by then Grant's wife. At 26 yrs, this cute babe had become Grant's wife; she was much younger than him, which disproves Grant's hypocrisy and shyness when filming CHARADE (--where Grant thought it inappropriate to develop the erotic element of his interplay with young Audrey--). She was a stylish and witty girl.
The protagonist of the melodrama is an Irish architect, moody and gloomy, vaguely annoying with his sudden changes of dispositions and Heathcliff—like moods. For the American '40s, the widowed British aristocrat became the widowed American architect.
And, yea, Tchaikovsky was eminently fit for scoring Neo—Victorian melodramas.
There are direct quotations from Hitchcock (e.g., when daddy Young does a Grant impression).
As the lead, daddy Young had a certain _finesse; sometimes he looked like an aunt, and others like a true man. His character's girlfriend is the piquant and cute Betsy Drake, 26 yrs in this movie and by then Grant's wife. At 26 yrs, this cute babe had become Grant's wife; she was much younger than him, which disproves Grant's hypocrisy and shyness when filming CHARADE (--where Grant thought it inappropriate to develop the erotic element of his interplay with young Audrey--). She was a stylish and witty girl.
The protagonist of the melodrama is an Irish architect, moody and gloomy, vaguely annoying with his sudden changes of dispositions and Heathcliff—like moods. For the American '40s, the widowed British aristocrat became the widowed American architect.
And, yea, Tchaikovsky was eminently fit for scoring Neo—Victorian melodramas.