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Story of "an adding machine," out of Dickens and Sinclair. The Wall Street scoundrel (Zachary Scott) hopes to rebrand as a philanthropist, the guests at his seaside palace turn soirée into séance. "What else are we here for, but to remember?" The estranged best friend (Louis Hayward) brings along a fiancée (Diana Lynn) who's a dead ringer for the inamorata of youth, the flashback to the Twenties takes place as a match burns for a cigarette, a note of Cocteau amid noir textures. A deep-focus composition with pinched Mom (Joyce Arling) points up the Welles connection, Dad (Raymond Burr) is a gambling deadbeat whose tip on opportunity knocks is heeded most implacably by the lad. Women are not as important as their moneyed fathers, the muse is ditched for the corporate heiress (Martha Vickers), herself ditched for the wife (Lucille Bremer) of the industrialist (Sydney Greenstreet). "A man doesn't go very far in life without leaving some rag ends behind." The impoverished genius sees the venom of luxury, thus Edgar G. Ulmer's astounding vision of capitalism ran to its logical extremes. Conscience is something the protagonist cannot afford, ambition possesses him like a demonic entity, the abandoned sweetheart sees him as "terribly ill." A collector of things and discarder of people, his pal meanwhile builds bridges. Water is the motif, the overturned canoe of innocence (cf. The Strange Woman), the swimming race at Harvard, the fateful pier brawl. "Remember, my boy, next time you go hunting big game, don't use a cap pistol. Fetch the heavy artillery." Biblical quotes set up the clash of sharks, the tide takes care of the rest. Polonsky's concurrent Force of Evil makes for a striking double-bill. Cinematography by Bert Glennon. With Edith Barrett, Dennis Hoey, Charles Evans, Claire Carleton, Robert J. Anderson, and Ann Carter. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |