The Reckless Moment (1949)

Film: The Reckless Moment (1949)

Stars: James Mason, Joan Bennett, Geraldine Brooks, Henry O'Neil, Shepperd Strudwick

Director: Max Opuls

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Throughout the month of June we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

One of my favorite actresses to talk about on this blog when it comes to film noir is Joan Bennett, who has been a regular feature in this series since its inception.  Bennett, one of the famed acting Bennett sisters, is a strange actress because her career is sorted into three chapters.  The first, when she was a blonde & in the shadow of her older sister Constance.  In the third, she took on matronly roles in movies like Father of the Bride (and in her most famous role, Elizabeth Collins Stoddard in the TV soap opera Dark Shadows).  But it's the second phase that's the most interesting.  Bennett, more than almost any actress save for Lizabeth Scott, was known exclusively during the height of her fame for the film noir genre specifically.  Throughout the 1940's and into the 1950's, she made eight film noirs, most of them classics of the genre, including the prototypical The Woman in the Window (links for a review of that, as well as a number of other Bennett films, at the bottom of the article).  Today we're going to to with a movie of Bennett's that was initially dismissed by audiences, but since has been rescued by critics.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses on Lucia Harper (Bennett) a conventional suburban housewife disturbed that her 17-year-old daughter is seeing a man named Darby (Strudwick) who is 13 years her senior.  Lucia initially plans on bribing Darby to stop seeing her daughter, but when he's clearly willing to take the bribe, she assumes this will be a way to get her daughter to stop seeing him.  However, when her daughter Bea (Brooks) goes to confront Darby, she attacks him, and while she doesn't realize this, eventually we see that, in a daze from her striking him on the head, he falls off of a balcony and dies, essentially causing Bea to be guilty of manslaughter.  Lucia wants to keep her daughter safe, but there's a catch-two men have the love letters that Bea sent to Darby, one of them being Martin Donnelly (Mason), who is blackmailing her to keep Bea's name out of the paper (and out of the police's clutches).  This sets off a desperate dance between Lucia and the blackmailers, with one of them (Martin) slowly falling in love with her in the process.

If some of this sounds familiar, it's because this is not the only big-screen adaptation of this story, called "The Blank Wall" by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding.  This was made in 2001 with Tilda Swinton & Josh Lucas in a movie called The Deep End, and in that movie it's Swinton's son who is being seduced by Lucas's Darby (and in a memorable scene, it's clear that they are doing more than just necking).  It's fascinating because this movie honestly plays Darby a little bit queer-coded too, so the Lucas interpretation might make more sense than the original by Ophuls.

In terms of this being a rediscovered classic, it's definitely good, but I don't know that it's great.  Bennett is a bit too matronly for my taste (I like it when she's got more fatale in her film noir leading ladies), and Mason is weirdly out-of-step with the character (not just the accent work, but also it's not totally clear why he has fallen in love with Lucia other than her beauty).  The direction is the best part.  Max Ophuls had just made the film masterpiece Letter from an Unknown Woman a year before, and is very good at having multiple actions onscreen at once with his direction, making sure there's little exposition, which is hard in a plot-heavy film.

1940's: Act of Violence, The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Blues in the Night, Brighton Rock, Criss Cross, Crossfire, Daisy Kenyon, Dead Reckoning, Detour, Fallen Angel, The Fallen Idol, Force of Evil, Gilda, High Sierra, I Walk Alone, I Wake Up Screaming, The Killers, The Lady from Shanghai, Leave Her to Heaven, Ministry of Fear, Moonrise, Murder My Sweet, Nightmare Alley, Out of the Past, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raw Deal, The Reckless Moment, Ride the Pink Horse, Scarlet Street, Sorry, Wrong Number, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, They Won't Believe Me, Too Late for Tears, The Woman in the Window, The Woman on the Beach

1950's: Affair in Trinidad, The Asphalt Jungle, Beat the Devil, The Big Combo, The Big Heat, The Blue Gardenia, The Burglar, Cast a Dark Shadow, The Crimson Kimono, Gun Crazy, The Hitch-Hiker, House of Bamboo, In a Lonely Place, The Killing, Kiss Me Deadly, Murder by Contract, Night and the City, On Dangerous Ground, Pickup on South Street, Slightly Scarlet, Sudden Fear, Sweet Smell of Success, They Live By Night, While the City Sleeps

Neo-Noir: Blade Runner, Body Heat, Farewell My Lovely, Fargo, From Afar, The Long Goodbye, Night Moves, Nightcrawler