#19 in the Reverse Hitchcock project.
I’ve seen many lukewarm or downright negative reviews of this costume drama, but I think if it hadn’t been directed by Alfred Hitchcock, it would be better regarded.
Michael Wilding is Charles Adare, an Irish gentleman who has little in the way of money who meets former convict Sam Flusky (Joseph Cotten), a man with a secret, who married above his station to the now-alcoholic Lady Henrietta (Ingrid Bergman), a Lady who has known Wilding back in Ireland when he was a boy.
Margaret Leighton as house servant Millie manages to be even more vicious than Mrs Danvers, a poisonous little bitch who chides Cotten just as Iago did Othello. And so as Bergman tries to pull herself back into the society which shuns her husband, he in turn is consumed by jealousy.
Two sequences I particularly liked: one where Wilding whips off his coat as if it is Walter Raleigh’s cloak and drapes it over a window so Henrietta can see how beautiful she is in her reflection; the other where Flusky holds a necklace of rubies behind his back as a surprise for his wife at a critical point in the plot.
Only some of the musical flourishes and long takes betray the Master’s touch, but this is a strange exercise for him to undertake: still, in a decent print the colours and composition of cinematography shine through (Jack Cardiff’s touch, reminiscent of his work a couple of years earlier on ‘Black Narcissus’ for The Archers).
Joseph Cotten (miscast as Flusky, to see this character brought to life watch John Hallam’s portrayal in the later TV movie) dismissed this film as ‘Corny Crap’, while Ingrid Bergman’s personal scandal when she ran away with Roberto Rossellini hurt both critical and commercial reactions to this film.
Wilding, at this point not yet ensnared by Hollywood or Elizabeth Taylor, is fine as the impoverished gentleman, while Leighton’s viper of a maid (Leighton would eventually wed Wilding, in 1964, after unsuccessul marriages to Max Reinhardt and Laurence Harvey) is excellent.
Hitch himself disowned it in later life, but I can’t help feeling he was wrong, as what shows on the screen is a vibrant drama with a strong performance from Bergman.