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For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Robert Cummings (Lewis Venable), Susan Hayward (Tina Borderau), Agnes Moorehead (Juliana Borderau), Joan Lorring (Amelia), John Archer (Charles), Frank Puglia (Pietro), Eduardo Ciannelli (Father Rinaldo), Minerva Urecal (Maria), William Edmunds (Vittorio), Martin Garralaga, Saverio LoMedico (waiters), Julian Rivero (storyteller).Director: MARTIN GABEL. Screenplay: Leonardo Bercovici, based on the 1888 story, "The Aspern Papers", by Henry James. Photography: Hal Mohr. Film editor: Milton Carruth. Art director: Alexander Golitzen. Make- up: Bud Westmore. Costumes: Travis Banton. Producer: Walter Wanger. Copyright 31 October 1947. Released through Universal: 21 November 1947 (New York), 13 June 1949 (U.K.). 89 minutes.COMMENT: At present commercially available only on VHS, this is the only film directed by noted actor and stage producer, Martin Gabel. A masterpiece of film noir fantasy, with both Agnes Moorehead and Susan Hayward in their finest roles, "The Lost Moment" brilliantly captures the intriguing, suffocating, noirish atmosphere of the Henry James' story, thanks to a combination of masterful direction, faithful scripting, evocative sets and camera-work, plus superb acting — even from Robert Cummings!

'The Lost Moment' is worth watching - not too bad of a film. It's a romantic-drama (with a bit of a mystery and with a dash of thriller). I was hoping for a bit more with the ending I guess because I was left with a disappointed feeling at the end of the film.Lewis Venable (Robert Cummings) is a publisher and he is after the love letters of an early-19th-century poet, Jeffrey Ashton, to his beloved Juliana Borderau (Agnes Moorehead). Lewis pretends to be a writer and rents a room from Juliana Borderau in hopes to gain the love letters. Juliana has a niece named Tina Bordereau (Susan Hayward). Tina has a split-personality: her real self, Tina, and that of her aunt Juliana. Tina thinks she is her aunt Juliana from time to time. Lewis finds himself in a mystery surround Juliana, Tina, and the love letters of Jeffrey Ashton. I enjoyed the film - I was just disappointed with the ending because we never got a real explanation about Tina - an explanation for the split in her personality. 7/10

Not since "Green Dolphin Street" have I seen such drawn out melodrama! YUCH! If this is Henry James, I'm glad I don't read his works.The plot is so highly predictable it takes any pleasure out of that aspect of the film. Each seeming plot twist made my nausea even worse. Not even the production values can rescue this laborious waste of time.Cummings and Hayward make a valiant effort, but this is not worth the film used to make it. Agnes Moorehead could have been replaced by Norman Bates' mother and still that would not have improved things any.There is ONE good thing I can say for it... it didn't beat Citizen Kane for dramatic cinematography. Do yourself a favor... SKIP IT SKIP IT SKIP IT!

Henry James, with his interest in minute psychological examination of his characters and his complex, ornate prose style, has never struck me as being the most cinematic of writers, but in fact there have been some decent film adaptations of his work, such as William Wyler's "The Heiress", based upon his "Washington Square", "The Innocents" from his "The Turn of the Screw" and three Merchant-Ivory productions, "The Europeans", "The Bostonians" and "The Golden Bowl"."The Lost Moment" is, as far as I am aware, the earliest James adaptation for the cinema, made two years before Wyler's film. It was the only film ever directed by Martin Gabel, better known as an actor, but not particularly well-known even for that. It is loosely based upon James's "The Aspern Papers" and is set in Venice in the early 1900s. Lewis Venable, a publisher, arrives in the city in search of the love letters written by the poet Jeffrey Ashton, believing that if he can secure them and publish them he will make a fortune. Ashton (Jeffrey Aspern in James's story) was an early-19th-century Romantic poet, an American contemporary of Keats and Shelley, who disappeared mysteriously in 1843. Venable discovers that Ashton's mistress, Juliana Bordereau, is still alive at the age of 105 and concludes that the letters must still be in her possession. Using a false name, he rents a room in her palazzo.Living with Juliana is a strange young woman, Tina, whom she describes as her niece, although there must be more than one generation between them. Tina is beautiful but austere, dressing in black and wearing her hair severely scraped back, and makes it quite clear that she does not trust Venable. Yet there is another side to her character. One night Venable finds Tina with her hair loose, wearing a white, old-fashioned dress of the mid-nineteenth century, playing the piano. She declares her love for Venable, but calls him "Jeffrey" and clearly believes him to be Ashton and herself to be the young Juliana.Ever since at the early seventies, the era of Visconti's "Death in Venice" and Roeg's "Don't Look Now", it has been virtually obligatory for films set in Venice to celebrate the city's visual beauty. In the 1940s, however, even after the war in Europe had finished, tight budgets often precluded location shooting, and "The Lost Moment" is not a film of that sort. It is made in black-and-white rather than colour, with most of the action taking place indoors inside Juliana's gloomy palazzo. The atmosphere is one of claustrophobia, of Gothic melancholy reminiscent of that found in a number of other American films from the forties and early fifties, such as Hitchcock's "Rebecca" and "Notorious", Max Ophuls's "Caught" and Robert Wise's "The House on Telegraph Hill". (As in "Rebecca", the house turns out to be hiding a dark secret).Although there is a rational explanation for the strange events surrounding Tina- namely that she is suffering from some psychiatric illness- other, unearthly, explanations might suggest themselves to the viewer; at times it seems that Tina is not an individual in her own right but rather the young Juliana, somehow caught in a time-warp and co-existing with her older self. It is notable that the late forties also saw a number of films on the subject of psychiatry, of which "Spellbound" is perhaps the most famous, as well as supernatural fantasies like "A Portrait of Jennie". Although no psychiatrist appears in the film, there is a Catholic priest, who plays a somewhat similar role.There are some weaknesses in the film; the subplot involving Venable's associate Charles is not well integrated into the film, and Charles's motivation is never made entirely clear. Robert Cummings as Venable is a rather bland and unconvincing hero. Overall, however, the film is a good one. There is one particularly good performance from Susan Hayward as Tina. Hayward was always an unpredictable actress; at her best she could be very good, but she had the infuriating ability to give bad performances not only in bad films (e.g. "The Conqueror") but also in otherwise reasonably good ones (e.g. "Demetrius and the Gladiators"). Here, however, she is excellent, coping brilliantly with the difficult challenge of playing what is effectively a double role, the severe, repressed "Black Tina" and the free, uninhibited "White Tina". Agnes Moorehead, unrecognisable beneath her make-up, is also good as the aged Juliana.Apart from Hayward, the film's main asset is its brooding atmosphere of mystery and Gothic menace. It is not quite the story that James wrote- indeed, in many ways it is closer to M R James than Henry, and closer to a mixture of Charlotte Bronte, Daphne du Maurier and M G Lewis than either. It is, however, a remarkably effective piece of cinema. I am surprised that Gabel did not go on to direct more films. 8/10