Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Lizabeth Scott, Morris Camovsky, Charles Cane, William Prince
Director: John Cromwell
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars
Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age. This month, our focus is on Lizabeth Scott-click here to learn more about Ms. Scott (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.
Throughout her career, Lizabeth Scott was never not a leading lady, something virtually no other performer can claim. Other than a cameo appearance in Variety Girl as herself, Scott was the lead in every single one of her pictures. But she obviously wasn't always a star, something that came about with two films, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, which we profiled last week, and Dead Reckoning, where she managed to gain shared billing alongside one of the quintessential leading men of the era, Humphrey Bogart. Dead Reckoning was a big hit (commercially, it was more mixed with critics), and this one-two punch is truly what managed to transform Scott from an overnight leading lady into a proper movie star.(Spoilers Ahead) The plot of Dead Reckoning is convoluted to say the least. I'll try to summarize a bit though. Bogie plays Rip Murdock, an army officer whose buddy Johnny (Prince) is about to get the Medal of Honor and then disappears, with Murdock going AWOL to pursue him. We soon learn that Johnny joined the military under an assumed name to avoid a murder charge (something that is actually a really good plot device that is not given enough credence in this convoluted picture). The murder was of a rich, older man who was married to Coral (Scott), a woman that Johnny was desperately in love with. Soon Coral & Murdock are involved in something of an affair, though in the process Murdock is framed for murder after being drugged at a casino. This makes Murdock suspicious of Coral, who admits that she killed her husband (but in self-defense), and we learn that Coral is married to the sadistic club owner who drugged Murdock, and he himself killed Coral's wealthy husband, framing Johnny. Martinelli is killed, by Coral, and Murdock realizes that Coral was trying to murder them both. They struggle, getting into a car accident that eventually kills Coral, but leaves Murdock just fine.
The film is almost weird enough to make up for a messy, frequently nonsensical plot. The movie's ending is strange, where we suddenly see Scott (still glamorous as hell, but in a bandaged bald cap), try to cling to Murdock as she dies with an almost theremin-style score playing in the background. We see the film almost from her point-of-view, and understand that so much of the movie we've been trying to see her as Murdock does, gorgeous, and not nearly as dangerous as she clearly is.
It's worth noting this would work better with an actress like Gene Tierney, one with more emotional resonance, but while Scott is very watchable here (it's easy to get her appeal, and it's not just surface-level), we probably needed an actress with better dramatic skills to land this role. We have three more films left of hers so I might yet change my mind, but she feels more like a Gina Lollobrigida or someone that would have worked really well with a director like David Lynch-she has unmistakable presence on screen, but it doesn't work in terms of connecting to her character and the world around her. The filmmakers here are clearly trying to make her into Lauren Bacall, but she's really more an auteur actress than the ballsy movie star that Bacall was, someone that would have been more at home in a more properly abstract vision. You see that in the desperation in her lip syncing to "Either It's Love or It Isn't." Sadly, Dead Reckoning isn't an interesting enough or artsy enough film to capture such a performer's specific gifts.
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