Whilst I have no admiration for Edward Dymtryk as a man after his selfish betrayal of his colleagues during the Hollywood Communist witch-hunt of the late 40's and early 50's, he undeniably knew how to direct a film. This indeed was a movie he made in exile in England at a time when his membership of the Hollywood Ten saw him denied work in America.
It's a very unusual film built around a highly implausible premise which still manages to carry the viewer's interest until the end. Robert Newton is a wealthy, but emotionless doctor who dines at his club, sitting with his cronies late into the night putting the world to rights and bemoaning the poor quality of the drinks on offer. Not too surprisingly, his pretty wife, Sally Gray takes lovers behind his back only this time, when he catches her in the act with suave American Phil Brown, he exacts a grisly revenge by effectively kidnapping and imprisoning the hapless Yank in a subterranean garage, chaining him to a bed and promising his hostage that he will indeed kill him after the fuss about the disappearance has died down, even months from now. Thus, Newton can effect his perfect murder in his own time as the delay will greatly reduce any suspicion of motive on his part should the police start investigating the man's associates, even allowing for the unlikely event that the poor man's body will ever turn up, as Newton is obviously taking inspiration from Gilbert Haigh's then recent acid-bath M.O. Also, there's only so much acid you can smuggle in a water bottle until you can in fact fill a bath which also accounts for the delay.
Credulity is stretched even further however as we're bizarrely expected to accept that the unfaithful wife, who firmly believes that Newton has already killed and disposed of Brown, would continue to not only live with her homicidal husband in unhappy wedlock, but also fail to go to the police with her well-founded suspicions. I understand that things like marital vows and social position meant much more then than now but it's asking a lot to accept that a woman, especially a high-spirited one as projected here by Gray, would continue to live with a perceived murderer and not try harder to trace the whereabouts of her former lover.
A couple of outside occurrences, one seemingly minor and the other major, change the course of events, one the disappearance of the couple's dog who ends up being Brown's cherished companion in hiding and the second the appearance on the scene of Naunton Wayne's English-Poirot-type DCI who immediately suspects Newton and makes a nuisance of himself to the latter's carefully laid plans.
It gets even sillier when Brown improbably trains the dog to derail Newton's end-game strategy and it all ends up with a race against the clock to save the seemingly doomed man as Newton senses Wayne close on his tail.
This sort of thing, in my opinion, was carried out appreciably better by William Wyler in the much later "The Collector". I appreciated the black humour of the piece, particularly the matter-of-fact exchanges between Newton and his hostage Brown. However, I found the whole thing too improbable to hold together and that it ultimately collapses under the weight of its own pretensions, this despite good performances by all the four principals. Dymtryk directs with a lightness of touch but fails ultimately to really create the tense, nail-biting finish which I think would have salvaged the film and in the end left me thinking more about the English class system, marital mores of the time and the importance of manners and politesse instead of the noir-ish chills and thrills I was anticipating,
In the end, the film comes across like a Raymond Chandler story as adapted by Terence Rattigan when in fact it would have worked far better if those positions had been reversed.
It's a very unusual film built around a highly implausible premise which still manages to carry the viewer's interest until the end. Robert Newton is a wealthy, but emotionless doctor who dines at his club, sitting with his cronies late into the night putting the world to rights and bemoaning the poor quality of the drinks on offer. Not too surprisingly, his pretty wife, Sally Gray takes lovers behind his back only this time, when he catches her in the act with suave American Phil Brown, he exacts a grisly revenge by effectively kidnapping and imprisoning the hapless Yank in a subterranean garage, chaining him to a bed and promising his hostage that he will indeed kill him after the fuss about the disappearance has died down, even months from now. Thus, Newton can effect his perfect murder in his own time as the delay will greatly reduce any suspicion of motive on his part should the police start investigating the man's associates, even allowing for the unlikely event that the poor man's body will ever turn up, as Newton is obviously taking inspiration from Gilbert Haigh's then recent acid-bath M.O. Also, there's only so much acid you can smuggle in a water bottle until you can in fact fill a bath which also accounts for the delay.
Credulity is stretched even further however as we're bizarrely expected to accept that the unfaithful wife, who firmly believes that Newton has already killed and disposed of Brown, would continue to not only live with her homicidal husband in unhappy wedlock, but also fail to go to the police with her well-founded suspicions. I understand that things like marital vows and social position meant much more then than now but it's asking a lot to accept that a woman, especially a high-spirited one as projected here by Gray, would continue to live with a perceived murderer and not try harder to trace the whereabouts of her former lover.
A couple of outside occurrences, one seemingly minor and the other major, change the course of events, one the disappearance of the couple's dog who ends up being Brown's cherished companion in hiding and the second the appearance on the scene of Naunton Wayne's English-Poirot-type DCI who immediately suspects Newton and makes a nuisance of himself to the latter's carefully laid plans.
It gets even sillier when Brown improbably trains the dog to derail Newton's end-game strategy and it all ends up with a race against the clock to save the seemingly doomed man as Newton senses Wayne close on his tail.
This sort of thing, in my opinion, was carried out appreciably better by William Wyler in the much later "The Collector". I appreciated the black humour of the piece, particularly the matter-of-fact exchanges between Newton and his hostage Brown. However, I found the whole thing too improbable to hold together and that it ultimately collapses under the weight of its own pretensions, this despite good performances by all the four principals. Dymtryk directs with a lightness of touch but fails ultimately to really create the tense, nail-biting finish which I think would have salvaged the film and in the end left me thinking more about the English class system, marital mores of the time and the importance of manners and politesse instead of the noir-ish chills and thrills I was anticipating,
In the end, the film comes across like a Raymond Chandler story as adapted by Terence Rattigan when in fact it would have worked far better if those positions had been reversed.