Letterboxd — Your life in film

A hybrid, fantastical noir melodrama that kind of exists in a strange middle-ground of not being supernatural enough, nor noir enough, but somehow working all the same. Definitely better as an initial idea than a final product! I really like this subgenre of postwar, quasi-noir films that were more influenced by supernatural elements and 40s psychiatry—they scratch a specific itch in my brain every single time.

The first person pov gimmick is kind of a nightmare for people with short attention spans…… how am I supposed to concentrate on any plot details with Audrey Totter staring directly at me

Janis Carter in this film is the definition of never let them know your next move. A double-double-double-crossing dame wearing a personalized robe with her full name on it, I'm obsessed!! Sadly Glenn Ford plays a bit of a nothing character really, but he's so puppy-eyed that idc. Femme fatales carrying noir like always.

I hate lazy storytelling so much... I think this works a lot better if I just remember the immaculate gothic noir vibes and treat it more like a Geraldine Fitzgerald character study. The absolute nerve to put a warning in the closing credits about spoilers after that horrendous ending 😒 "In order that your friends may enjoy this picture, please do not disclose the ending." Yeah because if they knew the ending they wouldn't watch it in the first place!!

Kind of long and overbearing, but unfortunately I am a huge hollywood melodrama apologist and cannot bring myself to hate this. There's a conversation where Elizabeth Taylor says "I guess it was silly and stupid, but it was fun" and Van Johnson replies "Was it?" and she goes "Well, almost fun. On the verge of being fun." Like so real!! That's this film exactly.

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

Thought I was used to 30s films switching genres every twenty minutes, but the scene where a baby gets shot in broad daylight caught me off guard wtf. Like 70% of this is Joan Bennett and Cary Grant in a lighthearted comedy/jewel robbery/crime drama, then it changes plot-points and the severity of the crime is never really matched by the mood of the film most of the time?? An odd film idk!!

Ahh the closest film to copy the charm of a Lubitsch film without actually being a Lubitsch film! This was so fun. Doesn't overstay its welcome with the short runtime, and has just the right amount of self-referential humor and fourth-wall breaks to not become too annoying and repetitive. Apparently one of Tarantino's favorites too?? which I'm only just learning now from other reviews??? So random but a nice surprise!

I need a detailed history of every time MGM reused Andre Previn's score for this film in other projects because this is definitely the third or fourth time I've heard it?? It was used in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof almost a decade later so this is a very exciting discovery for me personally!! Kind of a strangely fitting association honestly, it almost looks like Elizabeth Taylor's hair and clothes as Maggie the Cat were modeled after Audrey Totter in this film, even though I know that's definitely a reach 😭 but it's hard not to make the connection whenever the theme music plays

the last of Douglas Sirk’s big melodramas that I had yet to see, and probably one of my favorites!! idk the technicolor films are very much great gowns beautiful gowns but the brand of over-seriousness and sentimentalism isn’t something I can watch often, though I can appreciate it. The Tarnished Angels is a good balance, and I couldn't shake how much it looked and felt like a Sirk film based on a Tennessee Williams adaptation (probably why I liked it so much??). Rock Hudson’s tousled hair in this deserves its own ovation I think!!

“There’s something about the dead silence of an office building at night. Not quite real.”

Such quintessential film noir, at a time when the canon was really beginning to take shape. The noir style x100, but surprisingly not as much cynicism as I was expecting, and I think that’s largely down to Dick Powell’s version of Philip Marlowe (which I found great), and Dmytryk’s direction (also great). The dream sequence is sooo good, and the haziness that follows is even better. (I can feel myself being roped back into a noir phase again 🫠🫡)