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The bitter distillate of "posture and social usage," the Max Ophüls Hollywood experience. Disembodied cooing over baubles on magazines anticipates Madame de... at her cabinet, the young dreamer is a Los Angeles shopgirl (Barbara Bel Geddes) soaking her heels while waiting for an affluent Prince Charming. She models the mink coat she hopes to own and ponders the yacht party in the distance (Anderson recalls both in The Master) then bumps into the millionaire bachelor (Robert Ryan), "the Wall in Wall Street, darling." Fear of weakness is the psychiatric diagnosis answered with a whirlwind wedding, a Cinderella tale for newspapers and a cruel trap for the wife, another possession added to the Long Island mansion. Citizen Kane is certainly indicated, tantrums in the screening room and a wormy lackey (Curt Bois) at the piano. "Tough, buy yourself a new hat." Only the expansion of romantic notions can counter money's cheapening of emotion, the heroine finds it in the office of a struggling East End pediatrician (James Mason). (The Ophüls waltzing epiphany is staged in a crowded nightclub, with Bel Geddes and Mason stepping on each other's toes as the camera's curving track becomes the doctor's tentative marriage proposal.) The fruits of charm school and the brute's weak heart, enchantment eaten away by noir shadows. Memo to Howard Hughes: "You know, you're a big man, but not big enough to destroy that girl." A tender and vicious work, the equal of The Reckless Moment in its subversive beauties—capitalism is a toppled pinball machine, deliverance comes via miscarriage, love and freedom reborn in the back of a speeding ambulance. Godard celebrated it heartily for Cahiers du Cinéma, and applied its lessons to Le Mépris. Cinematography by Lee Garmes. With Frank Ferguson, Ruth Brady, Natalie Schafer, and Art Smith. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |