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Pretty Good

A Major Disappointment

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Blistering performances.

Spoiler alert! As good as other reviewers say - particularly Margaret Lockwood. One point they haven't mentioned: Teddy is trapped in the house he inherits from his first wife. It's a heavy Victorian monstrosity that hasn't been done up since about 1880. He keeps his wife's rocking chair with its lace antimacassar. The house is full of dark shadows, and the chair keeps rocking, sometimes apparently under its own steam. He begins to talk to it as if it was Monie herself. Another point: It seems that he was genuinely fond of the old dear, and can't bear to have anyone enter her bedroom, or change anything in it. When he falls to pieces at the end he turns into a familiar 50s stereotype – the young man who is as mad as he is bad. Bogarde is brilliant at this slimy character. American viewers may not appreciate his skill at adopting an appropriate voice (he was known for playing middle-class characters). Margaret Lockwood is good at this too. Also see the way she hitches up her skirt before sitting down, and holds her hand out affectedly to shake hands.

Margaret Lockwood is so good as the hardened widow Mrs. Jeffries, it's almost scary. Those initial encounters between her and Bare (Bogarde) are like two sharks searching for a soft spot. Seldom has a courtship been more cynically reduced to a conjugation of bank balances than in this bleak little exercise. I love that tacky seaside club where they first meet with its empty tables and off-key musicians that reeks of faded gentility. Bogarde is all oily charm and greed, while Lockwood has seen it all, yet somewhere still wants to believe. Their prickly coupling is to marriage what he Hitler-Stalin pact was to peace treaties. Certainly, no one can accuse the writers of loading up with sympathetic characters. In fact, only the pathetic housekeeper Emmie invites empathy—Kathleen Harrison in a slyly bravura performance.In my book, the movie's an excellent little thriller up to the point where the screenplay has Bogarde go bonkers. To that point, he's been all cold calculation and self-possession, an impressive study in ruthless boyish charm. However, by suddenly collapsing that cold confidence into a blubbering psychotic, the screenplay undercuts both the character menace and the dramatic tension. I'm just wondering whether some watchdog group insisted that the character be exposed as a weakling in order to undercut Bogarde's appeal as a villain. However that may be, the movie remains an atmospheric, well-mounted little thriller, unusually well acted.

"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.

This oddball black'n'white movie from 1955, early on inserts a plot-hole so large it haunted me throughout the entire film.Dirk Borgarde plays a charming but evil young man with the unbelievable name of Teddy Bare. Yes, that's right - this character's name is Edward Bare, and he is called Teddy throughout most of the film.When we first meet him, he is newly wed to a woman who is supposed to be old enough to be his mother - but actually she looked old enough to be his grandmother.Of course he has married this older woman, named Mony, for one reason and one reason only - her money. Mony, money - hmmm - another odd character name. So, we in the audience are expecting him to off her at any time.Shortly after her marriage to Teddy, Mony made out a will leaving her new husband the large mansion they live in, along with a beach shack, but with all the money going to her sister, Dora. Teddy knows nothing about this will.Now Mony has had second thoughts and decided she wants to make a new will, leaving everything to her dear Teddy Bare. This she discussed with her lawyer, Philip Mortimer, I think was the character's name. He advises against it, but she has the bit in her teeth and she has decided she will sign the new will into effect first thing tomorrow morning.She then tells Teddy about her plan to leave everything to him, saying she hasn't even seen her sister Dora in 20 years. He tells her that isn't necessary, whoever the surviving spouse is will get it anyway and that he doesn't want her to do this. I assumed it was to throw her off the scent of the fact he's after her money--because there was certainly no other good reason for him to tell her this. She, however, has decided she will definitely sign the will tomorrow morning.Now what happens next is what threw a monkey wrench into the entire thing--creating the Grand Canyon of plot holes.Teddy then arranges for Mony's death that very night, and is successful. Now this stopped me right in my tracks - it made no logical sense of any kind.She was signing a new will the next morning that would guarantee that he would get everything. Having a will makes things much simpler and easier than when an estate has to go through probate which can take up to a year or longer. This was in Britain, so perhaps their laws are somewhat different, but it still made no sense for him to off her just before she was to sign this wonderful document that was completely in his favor and that cut out the sister entirely.Well, the story moves on. Teddy discovers he is bound by the first will, which he knew nothing about. He goes hunting for a new wealthy wife and comes up with one - a very disagreeable, but outspoken, older widow, Freda, whose husband passed away six months previous. They wed.Then a woman named Charlotte Young, pretty, sweet, wealthy and older than Teddy, enters Teddy and Freda's lives.Eventually there's a confrontational scene between Teddy and Charlotte. This scene is very strange - with Teddy making all sorts of wild-eyed confessions, followed by the two of them literally screaming at each other.The scene is much too long and drawn out and rather unrealistic as well.The ending one can see coming a mile away.5 stars out of 10.