A real odd one out in Deanna Durbin's filmography - a kind of psycho thriller in the Gaslight/ Rebecca tradition only not really.
The credits on this are impressive - Durbin probably should have gone to MGM when she had the chance but Universal did try with her, hiring Robert Siodmak to direct and Herman Mankiewicz to write the script.
The storyline is about Durbin marrying Gene Kelly who is obsessed with his mother Gale Sondegaard. It actually takes a while to get around to this - Manckiewicz goes all non linear, introducing this soldier (played by some random actor called Dean Harens) who's been stood up by his girl, then he meets Durbin, who is singing in some dive and it takes forever for her to bring up the marriage to Kelly which is in the past.
I wonder if the piece wouldn't have been more successful if it had been linear. But maybe not because Durbin's character is very passive - she just marries Kelly and goes along with him, and it becomes apparent he's weird she still loves him, and even after he goes to prison and the mother slaps her and he comes back looking to kill her... she still loves him. Normally in this sort of movie the heroine comes to her senses and gets plucky. Not here.
You (or at least I did) keep waiting for Durbin to investigate and maybe even send Kelly to prison, and to have a big confrontation with Sondegaard, but it never happens.
The acting is decent - for me there was something slimy about Kelly's personality which works here. He's got charisma too which Harens doesn't have. Sondegaard is fun though her character needed another scene to resolve her story.
Robert Siodmak was a very good director and Mankiewicz wrote it with intelligence but it's still frustrating because Durbin's character is such a ninny. This was a big hit though.
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