Cast a Dark Shadow (B&W)

Cast a Dark Shadow (B&W)
Customer Review: Dirk Bogarde and Margaret Lockwood star in this interesting and nasty bit of British semi-noir
"I know who I appeal to. Freda because she's my class and Monie because she was old and lonely." That's Edward 'Teddy' Bare (Dirk Bogarde) speaking. He's a charming young man. Monie (Mona Washbourne) was his first wife, considerably older than he and quite rich. He killed her and made it look like an accident. Freda (Margaret Lockwood) is his second wife. She's strong-willed, older than he, common and is quite well off. Teddy was thinking about other kinds of accidents that might happen even before they married. He already has spotted Charlotte (Kay Walsh), another older, wealthy woman he and Freda met shortly after their wedding. But Teddy didn't count on two things: That he might be too clever by half is one. The other is that Monie had a sister. Please note that there are no spoilers here; everything is laid out early. The plot is all about how Teddy will get his comeuppance, not about what he does. Cast a Dark Shadow is a British noir from the late classic period, as they say. It's a moody, murderous film filled alternately with sunlit days and scenes in the dark, curtained drawing room of the country house Teddy inherited from Monie. It's the room he killed her in. A lot of drama, melodrama and acting takes place in it. Don't misunderstand me. While the last fifteen minutes of the film nearly collapse from the weight of twists and double twists, from dramatic confrontations and from hysteria as psychological revelation, the bulk of the movie is an effective study of charming, shadowed nastiness. The film also has a sharply-written screenplay. After Teddy kills Monie he learns that her will, which she was about to change to give him everything, at the time of her death only gave him the house, none of her cash. "I tripped up that time," Teddy says to the chair Monie usually sat in, "but one thing's for sure, somebody's going to have to pay my passage." He has a bookmaker friend finance his wooing of Freda, who is as sharp as they come; she's not about to let Teddy get his hands on her money. But Teddy's friend wants to be paid back. "You've landed the fish," he tells Teddy, "but don't forget it's your Uncle Charlie who supplied the chips." Teddy, who occasionally looks through male muscle magazines, offers to sleep in Monie's room after an argument with Freda. She's having none of it. "I don't know what your arrangements were with Monica," she tells him, "but I didn't marry you for companionship." Bogarde at 34 was eager to escape the sensitive, funny young men he had been playing ever since he hit it big with Doctor in the House. He'd begun starring in action roles, but this was his first as a villain. I doubt too many remember him any more as the naive young man. He proved himself not only a very good actor, but outstanding at playing neurotically vicious characters, or troubled, middle-aged men, or just condescending representatives of the better classes. This is very much his movie. He's in just about every scene. Holding her own with him, however, is Margaret Lockwood. Through the Forties she was a huge star in Britain. She took off with The Lady Vanishes in 1938 and Night Train to Munich and The Stars Look Down, both in 1940. She was a brunette vision, slender, intelligent and with a slightly sly sense of humor lurking behind her eyes. Now at 44, her Freda Jeffries is startlingly effective, and nothing like Night Train's Anna Bomasch or Lady Vanishes' Iris Hamilton. She's still a vision, but Freda is common and crude, with a lower class accent, a loud laugh and a firm hand with Teddy. Freda was a barmaid at a pub, she says, who "married my guv'nor" and inherited his money when he died. Freda (and Lockwood) is still very attractive, but Freda looks at the world through experienced eyes. She tells Teddy at dinner before they are married that she's known a few men since she was widowed. "But it was just the moneybags they were after," she says with a loud laugh, "not the old bag herself." Cast a Dark Shadow is a modest semi-noir. Up to the last two or three scenes it's a stylish bit of murder, trickery and fate. My VHS version is from Alpha. It's not as bad as some public domain movie transfers are. There is a DVD disc from Mandacy named Mystery & Suspense Collection which holds this movie as well as The Red House and Night Train to Munich. The price is reasonable. If the transfers are any good, it would be worth getting. Neither Night Train nor Red House is a noir, but in my view both are first rate films.
Customer Review: bad Teddy Bare
This film based on a play called Murder Mistaken by Janet Green is directed with pace by Lewis Gilbert, and only reveals it's stage origins at the climax when the cast yell at each other. We begin with Dirk Bogarde as the irresistably named Teddy Bare, married to an older woman, who he kills for the inheritance. The murder occurs offscreen, with the camera moving to a curtain fluttering in front of an open window. Gilbert presents Bogarde as threatening from the opening where his wife (the touching Mona Washbourne) screams and he glowers as they ride the ghost train at an amusement park. Gilbert also uses Wellesian deep focus framing of the couple, for an expressionist effect. However Bogarde's next intended victim, his new wife Margaret Lockwood is a lot more resistant to his charms. It's hard to decide which of Lockwood or Bogarde is the more unlikeable character, so when they court to the strains of a torch singer's Leave Me Alone, you're not sure which one should leave and which should be left. Things are complicated by Lockwood being the aggressor, but as we see she is no fool, it becomes a game of outwitting. When Kay Walsh enters after Lockwood becomes the new Mrs Bare, and appears to be Lockwood's successor, the stage is set for a venomous triangle. The suggestion that Washbourne remains some sort of accomplice to Bogarde's actions and his confidante, with her symbolic rocking chair prefiguring Mrs Bates in Psycho, doesn' make sense since there was no hint that his wife was in on her own demise, even though we see that Bogarde enshrines her bedroom. Perhaps it is more a device left over from the theatre staging, so that Bogarde can deliver asides, more than a demonstration of his mental state. And the suspicious lawyer breathing down Bogarde's next makes similarly theatrically timed entrances. However Gilbert gives Bogarde a nicely conceived partially shadowed face when he is confronted with his past as motivation, and whilst the end may bear a hole, we're still willing to go along with it. This film was one of the roles Bogarde took on to escape his Doctor at Large typecasting, which explains his working class accent, though his character reading a muscle magazine just before he meets Lockwood is something left unexplained and a subtextual hint not further explored. Lockwood too roughens her Hitchcockian Lady Vanishes image. I liked 2 of Green's lines. At the wedding of Lockwood and Bogarde is told "You've landed the fish but don't forget who supplied the chips". And in response to Bogarde's anger at Lockwood invading Washbourne's bedroom, she says "If he had any more wives, I'd have to sleep in the bathroom".