Cast a Dark Shadow (1955)

Film: Cast a Dark Shadow (1955)

Stars: Dirk Bogarde, Margaret Lockwood, Kay Walsh, Kathleen Harrison, Mona Washbourne

Director: Lewis Gilbert

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Margaret Lockwood-click here to learn more about Ms. Lockwood (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Last week we talked about The Wicked Lady, which was the biggest success of Margaret Lockwood's career.  The actress, though, would continue to make films regularly for the next decade, albeit with less success.  By the early 1950's, while she was still famous & had had numerous stage successes in recent years, she was essentially considered box office poison when Cast a Dark Shadow came out, to the point where she had to give up top billing to her costar Dirk Bogarde.  This movie was intended to be a comeback vehicle of sorts, but that's not how it would pan out.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film, a pretty dark noir, is about Teddy Bare (Bogarde), a man with a much older, dowdier wife Monica (Washbourne), whom he kills & frames as an accident for her fortune.  Teddy doesn't know that Monica was about to change her will to give him everything, but she hadn't yet, so all of the money has gone to her sister instead.  This leaves Teddy with just the house, but he uses it to lure in a well-off widow named Freda (Lockwood), who is brassy, uncouth, and aware that Teddy is a fortune-hunter, but has no intention of her money going to him, and Teddy can't murder her for it because it would be too suspicious.  When a wealthy woman named Charlotte (Walsh) comes knocking, initially Teddy starts to woo her, making Freda jealous, but it turns out that Charlotte is in fact Monica's sister in disguise, come to figure out how her sister died.  The climax has Teddy nearly getting away with murdering Charlotte, thus inheriting Monica's fortune back, but he doesn't as she is on to his trick, and when he escapes, he uses the car with the cut brake lines (the ones he cut) to escape, sealing his doom.

The noir, clocking in at under 90 minutes, is fast-paced & quite enjoyable.  Some at the time complained about it not having enough actual intrigue, and there are moments where the exposition does more heavy-lifting than it should (some of the last acts seem a bit too out-of-nowhere for me), but I thought it was great.  The performances were good, including Dirk Bogarde (delightful as a too-handsome, possibly gay, definitely unbalanced would-be serial killer), and the script is fun, filled with great speeches & wry chemistry between the two leads.

And as for Margaret Lockwood?  She's once again a home run, totally owning this character.  Gone here are the glamorous, bodice-pushing outfits of her youth.  Nearly forty at this point, she looks older in the movie, eschewing her natural beauty with overdone makeup & a brash accent.  Had she been a bigger star in the United States, this is exactly the sort of role that might have made the Academy take notice.  The film was a success, and Lockwood was even nominated for a BAFTA for the work (a deserved one-she owns the screen), but it wasn't enough to save her career.  While she'd do some television after this movie, her next film wouldn't come out for twenty more years, and she'd enjoy no more chances at a proper comeback.  Margaret Lockwood died in 1990, at the age of 73, of cirrhosis.  Next month, we'll move away from Lockwood, but not too far from her home country, with another actress from the British Isles, but one who would find true fame in Hollywood, as we encounter our first proper cinematic legend of this year's Saturday with the Stars.