A woman torn between father and son is always a solid dramatic situation but this film muffs it. For starters she meets both father and son in this film and it happens quite close to each other. Secondly there's no sense of Phyllis Calvert being into the father or son, though she spends more time with the dad and hardly any with the son, so the triangle is lopsided. Thirdly Melvyn Douglas looks too young to play Philp Friend's dad - they should've been brothers. There's no real differentiation between father and son either. I guess the son has been through a harsh war service and lacks a leg - but they don't feel different. On paper there's this bond between Friend and Calvery because both were POWs but we don't feel it. They shouls have been POWs together.
Calvert is alright. She's shot lovingly. When she talks about working in the camps in Occupied France it's like she's talking about organising a fete.
Douglas does his leading man thing, Friend is okay. You can't say it's a badly acting film.
But it's dull. There's no life to it. It needed a bitch, or a swine, or zombies, or bombs. Someone to murder someone. Betrayal. It's boring.
Compton Bennett directs this, dully. The photography is nice. Arthur Shields, Barry Fitzgerald's brother, popus up as this sort of artist spy I think and it seems he might be important but he's not really. Shields would've been better in Douglas' part - someone old. You'd understand more the attraction to the son then.
Wandra Hendrix feels miscast as Douglas' daughter - Douglas seems too old for her too. Binnie Barnes has an interesting little part as a woman who has always been in love with Douglas. Maybe that character should've been the lead. Or the villain. Pick a lane.
I guess it's a bit different Douglas worked in the war as a documentary filmmaker but they do nothing witth that.
Val Lewton produced this. He struggled without horror, Val. This was so boring.
No comments:
Post a Comment