If you can suppress your disbelief for 99 minutes and get lost in the starry charms of the actors and the set pieces, this dramatically unconvincing film can be mighty diverting.
It's an old-fashioned gothic yarn set in a stately manor house with the stock elements of lavish furnishings, including the essential drawing room with the blazing fireplace, deep shadows, a damsel in distress, a crazy villain, and supporting figures including a stern maid, a jolly drunkard, a clean-cut young hero, a precocious child, an ice-cold femme fatale and the inevitable raging nocturnal thunderstorm with rain lashing the windows and winds howling. "Gaslight" and "Suspicion" and numerous other films immediately come to mind.
This is the kind of movie that would have been perfect for the likes of Vincent Price, Carol Ohmart and other B-level actors of the 50s, but the presence of superstars Humphrey Bogart and Barbara Stanwyck adds depth and lustre to an otherwise far-fetched narrative which holds the interest not only through its fine cast, but also by the insertion of frequently humorous, almost self-parodic dialogue, as if to signal to the audience "We hope you're not taking this too seriously; we're not."
The maid as played by Anita Sharp-Bolster is a standout. She delivers her sour lines with a bold gravitas as she did in her all-too-brief appearance in Fritz Lang's "Scarlet Street."
It's an old-fashioned gothic yarn set in a stately manor house with the stock elements of lavish furnishings, including the essential drawing room with the blazing fireplace, deep shadows, a damsel in distress, a crazy villain, and supporting figures including a stern maid, a jolly drunkard, a clean-cut young hero, a precocious child, an ice-cold femme fatale and the inevitable raging nocturnal thunderstorm with rain lashing the windows and winds howling. "Gaslight" and "Suspicion" and numerous other films immediately come to mind.
This is the kind of movie that would have been perfect for the likes of Vincent Price, Carol Ohmart and other B-level actors of the 50s, but the presence of superstars Humphrey Bogart and Barbara Stanwyck adds depth and lustre to an otherwise far-fetched narrative which holds the interest not only through its fine cast, but also by the insertion of frequently humorous, almost self-parodic dialogue, as if to signal to the audience "We hope you're not taking this too seriously; we're not."
The maid as played by Anita Sharp-Bolster is a standout. She delivers her sour lines with a bold gravitas as she did in her all-too-brief appearance in Fritz Lang's "Scarlet Street."