Marriage is typically treated as one of the happiest moments of your life by most people, but anyone who watches film noir will know that the stereotypical image of a happy couple is just propaganda at its finest. I say this because Tension highlights just how damaging a marriage to the wrong person can be. Richard Basehart plays Warren Quimby, a manager at a drug store who works night shifts. There, he sees his wife, the disagreeable Claire (Audrey Totter), who is essentially just a spoiled rotten kid in adult form. After working really hard for countless nights, Warren is able to afford a suburban home, but Claire isn't even interested in seeing the interior. Eventually, she abandons her husband in favor of a rich man named Barney Deager. Outraged, Warren tries to get his wife back as she relaxes on the beach with Deager. When Warren won't take no for an answer, Deager pummels him. Humiliated, Warren confides to one of his friends, who says that if he was in that situation, he'd murder Deager. Warren takes this advice to heart, and builds a false identity for himself. Now known as Paul Sothern, Warren now wears contact lenses, has a new house, and rents an apartment. At the latter, Warren meets Mary (Cyd Charisse), who becomes his new love interest. Using a different tone of voice, Warren calls Deager's beach house, but his servant answers it instead. Warren threatens that Deager is not going to get away with what he did. One night, Warren creeps into Deager's house and holds a small pitchfork to his neck. Suddenly, Warren changes his mind, and now finds it unthinkable that he's about to kill somebody. He drops the weapon, waking up Deager. Warren tells him that he's not going to kill him, as Claire is his problem now and it's more cruel to keep him alive so he can suffer by being with her. Sometime after, Claire goes back to Warren in his LA apartment and tells him that Barney is dead. Although it was Warren's original intention to murder him, he didn't carry through with it. Somehow, Barney was shot instead. Warren tells Claire she isn't welcome in any of his dwellings, and orders her to leave. Claire taunts him by saying the cops will be looking for him now, but Warren is confident that the truth doesn't fear any investigation. He didn't kill Barney, so he has nothing to worry about. Just then, two investigators knock on the door and start questioning Claire and her husband. They ask about what Barney meant to Claire and Warren, to which Claire lies and says they were good friends. Warren is forced to go along with what she says so as not to cause any discrepancies. One of the detectives, Bonnabel (Barry Sullivan) tells the two that they're looking for a man named Paul Sothern, but can't find him since his name isn't attached to any type of identifying accessory or credential that any ordinary person would have, such as a driver's license or social security number. Meanwhile, Mary goes to a bureau responsible for tracking down people who are missing, since she wants to find where Sothern is. After Bonnabel realizes that Sothern and Warren are the same person, he contacts Mary and brings her to Warren's drugstore to identify him, but she lies and says it's not him. This does not spare Warren from the handcuffs. After being interrogated, he simply says to talk to Claire instead since she was the one in close proximity to Barney, not him. Warren is eventually let go since there's no definitive proof he killed Barney. Claire, wanting to see her husband get jailed once and for all, retrieves a handgun from a prearranged location and attempts to plant it in Warren's apartment. Warren shows up, breaks the window, and enters, not noticing that Bonnabel is right behind him. Claire tries to misconstrue what's going on and says how Warren was trying to kill her, but the gun is found eventually. Claire's plan to use the gun as evidence against her husband backfires, as Bonnabel explains all the furniture in the room was replaced earlier that day, meaning there's no way the gun could have been there until just now. Furthermore, the gun's serial number located on the bottom surface of the handgrip matches the one of the pistol used to kill Barney. As Mary and Warren get ready to enter a relationship, Claire is taken away by the investigators. Even though this film was predictable at certain points, it flipped my expectations on their head later on. I put it this way because I knew it was only a matter of time before Warren got caught (which does end up happening), but I wasn't counting on seeing him get freed later. Additionally, it looks like he's about to get arrested a second time right at the end, but this doesn't happen. I don't think I've seen a movie that defied my expectations so many times before, but I'm glad it did because seeing Claire walk free would have really angered me. Audrey puts on a great performance as her, since she's everything a noir woman should be. She cheats on her husband, gets him in huge trouble, and then tries to lie her way out of taking accountability. You just hate her, and you want to see Basehart win. I kind of felt the saxophone music that plays whenever Claire is onscreen was getting on my nerves, but putting this aside, you'll find that Tension is a worthwhile noir that shows really well how criminals always make one mistake, and that's all an investigator needs.
Review of Tension
