Tag: ray milland

Mysteries in May: So Evil My Love (1948)

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I watched this movie five days ago, and I have to admit I had to read the entire Wikipedia synopsis to remember what had happened. My mind was completely blank on the plot details. You would think that would mean I didn’t like it, but the opposite is true – I liked it a lot. I guess I’ve just slept since then.

So Evil My Love is a twisty film noir set in Liverpool during the Victorian era (Wikipedia says this subgenre of Victorian noirs is called Gaslight Noirs, and I just love that). Ray Milland stars as Mark Bellis, and Ann Todd plays Olivia Harwood. They meet on a boat returning from the West Indies. He is a rapscallion and a thief; she’s the widow of a missionary.

He’s sick on the boat with malaria, and she nurses him back to health. When they land in Liverpool, he charms her into letting him stay at her boarding house. A romance ensues.

He learns she’s got a rich friend and talks her into asking the rich lady for money. Then she becomes the rich lady’s paid companion. Meanwhile, Bellis is attempting burglary and stepping out with another woman. He pushes Olivia into blackmailing her friend.

It is less of a mystery and more of a naive woman being beguiled by a lecherous older man. The stuff between Bellis and Olivia is golden. The first act is a real treat. But when the plot turns to her rich friend and all those shenanigans, it becomes a bit of a bore. Thankfully, it turns a corner towards the end and creates a completely satisfying closing.

Well worth checking out.

Mysteries in May: The Uninvited (1944)

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The Uninvited was not the first ghost story to ever make it on film, but it was one of the first movies to take them seriously. Prior to this, ghosts were used for comic relief, or there were natural or psychological reasons for them to “exist.” They were explained away in some fashion. In The Uninvited, they are quite real and quite terrifying.

Roderick Fitzgerald (Ray Milland) and his sister Pamela (Ruth Hussey) are holidaying on the coast of Cornwall. They fall in love with an abandoned seaside manor. When they inquire into whether or not it is for sale, they are at first told by Stella Meredith (Gail Russell) that it is off the market, but her grandfather, Commander Beech (Donald Crisp), immediately agrees to sell it for a low price.

Later, they’ll learn that Stella is quite attached to the house as it was her mother’s house, and where she died under mysterious circumstances when Stella was quite young. Roderick and Stella form an instant bond and the beginnings of a romance, but Commander Beech forbids it and for Stella to even set foot inside the house.

There are rumors around the village that the house is haunted, and sure enough, our heroes begin experiencing strange occurrences. Their pets refuse to go up the stairs. They periodically smell mimosa wafting from somewhere, though there isn’t any on the premises. And in the wee hours of the morning, they sometimes hear a woman sobbing.

At first, Roderick is skeptical, but Pamela wants to believe, and Stella is a firm believer and is fascinated. She believes her mother haunts the place. At times, she seems possessed by her.

One lonely evening, she runs out of the house in a trance and nearly falls off a cliff next to where her mother did that very thing. They hold a fake seance (to try and convince Stella to stay away from the house) and see a real ghost.

The film isn’t really scary. Not by the gore-filled, jump scare standards of today. But it is full of a wonderfully creepy atmosphere. It isn’t quite gothic, but it was certainly influenced by the genre with the big, creepy house and the various mysterious characters.

The main cast is all terrific, and while the story didn’t quite enthrall me, it did keep me fully interested and entertained. It is a perfect Saturday night movie to watch in the wee hours of the night during a thunderstorm.

Noirvember: The Big Clock (1948)

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Knowing that I’m a big film noir fan, my wife recently bought me a bunch of postcards with film noir posters on them. Some of them I’ve seen, some of them I haven’t. A big chunk of my list of films to watch this month comes from those postcards. This is one of them.

Ray Milland plays George Stroud an editor at a big magazine in New York City. His boss Earl Janoth (Charles Laughton) is tyrannical. He’s the type of guy who calls a meeting to yell at everybody because subscriptions are down, then demands they come up with immediate solutions only to berate them when they respond. He doesn’t berate George because he’s just got a major lead on a missing person’s case. Janoth demands that George stick with the case even though he has a vacation planned for the next day.

George can’t miss that vacation. He’s missed too many vacations with this job, including his honeymoon. His wife is none too happy with him. He quits the job, but still misses his train. A glamorous woman, Pauline York (Rita Johnson) overhears his predicament and sees it as an opportunity. She’s Janoth’s secret lover and she’s ready to sell him out. She wants George to tell the story.

She gets herself murdered. Janoth learns that someone was seen leaving her apartment not long after the time of death. He forces George to supervise a team of reporters to figure out who that man was.

Spoiler alert: that man was George. He spends the rest of the movie trying to find himself.

The Big Clock is a lot of fun to watch. Milland and Laughton are terrific. Elsa Lanchester, in a tiny role, steals the show. It is one of those films that’s really quite good, but there is some little something that keeps it from being great. Still, it is a swell time at the movies.