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Brilliant and touching

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

This movie is directed by the acclaimed Michael Curtiz. THE MAN in the NET is a suspense driven drama starring Alan Ladd as John Hamilton, an accomplished commercial artist that leaves the hustle and bustle of New York and relocates in a small community in Connecticut. His wife Linda(Carolyn Jones)is not so happy with this move. He has concerns about her alcoholism, but she misses the night life and her social functions, along with John's salary potential.At a party, a drunken Linda claims that her husband is a wife beater to try and spoil her husband's reputation. When John is tricked into going back to New York for a job interview, he returns finding his wife gone. The local police finds her luggage near a garbage dump and immediately John is suspected of killing his wife.Rounding out the cast: Diane Brewster, John Lupton, Tom Helmore and Charles McGraw.

Like a lot of classic film stars, Alan Ladd's career ended on a low rather than a high note, and one of his last films, 1959's Man in the Net, is a good example of this. It was also one of the last films for director Michael Curtiz who directed such classics as "Casablanca." It's a poor effort from such an accomplished man.Ladd plays an artist who has left the pressure of NYC and his full time job in order to paint. He spends most of his time in the woods, painting, while a group of local kids play nearby and talk with him. His major problem isn't the brushes and colors, though, it's his wife (Carolyn Jones), an alcoholic who wants to return to the social atmosphere that helped her drinking along in the first place. Here in the boondocks, she's hooked up with the ritzy set, to Ladd's displeasure.When he returns from a business trip to New York City, his wife is missing, there is blood on his painting clothes, his paintings have been destroyed, and everybody thinks he's responsible. With the help of the children he has befriended, he eludes the police and is able to get the proof he needs to exonerate himself.With a tighter script and someone other than Ladd, this might have been a decent movie. The kids are adorable, and that angle of the script plays out nicely. Ladd, unfortunately, sleepwalks through the role and at times, actually looks like a blind man. I tried to figure out why, and I think it's just because he's literally staring into space instead of focusing on something. There was never anything spectacular about Ladd's acting - what he had was a presence, a toughness, and good looks. These are all gone, and in their place is a puffy, heavy-lidded, slow man.In contrast, the striking Carolyn Jones is full of energy in her role. With her signature short haircut and Bette Davis eyes, Jones was an edgy actress who left us too soon. She was very good at playing neurotic party girls and straying wives, though she's remembered today as Morticia on "The Addams Family" TV show.All in all, "The Man in the Net" plays like a television drama, with the suburbanites going after Ladd like they all live in the wild west. Someone commented that today he would be suspicious for hanging out with children, and that aspect dates the film as well. It's a shame, because the nicest aspect of the movie was the way the kids rallied around him and helped him.If you loved Ladd in "This Gun for Hire," "The Glass Key," "The Blue Dahlia," and "Shane," skip this. You don't need to see a fallen star.

While this was a far cry from Alan Ladd's best films (such as THIS GUN FOR HIRE and THE GLASS KEY), it is better than most of the films Ladd was making towards the tail end of his career. By this point, most of his performances lacked energy or any sort of spark--partly due to poorer scripts and partly due to Ladd's advancing addiction. Ironically, a major plot element of this movie is Ladd's wife's alcoholism! Carolyn Jones (yes, that's Morticia from the Addams Family) plays the exceptionally flaky wife who is both chemically dependent and appears to have many features of a Borderline Personaliy--a personality that craves excitement, addiction and self-destruction. Psychologically speaking, this makes the movie very exciting to therapists, though the average person might think that she overplayed her part--though she captured the volatility of these types of individuals well and Borderline Personalities ARE seemingly impossible to believe due to their shallowness and volatility.It's obvious that Ladd can't stand his wife, but he stays with her because he married her and he tries to be a good husband. His wife, on the other hand, has little commitment to him and eventually her wicked and dangerous ways result in her murder. Unfortunately, Ladd is blamed, as few know her for what she really is--as Ladd protected her and hid her escapades from everyone else. Unfortunately, he did such a great job that EVERYONE thinks he's the murderer and he spends most of the film trying to prove his innocence and avoid a lynch mob! His assistants in this endeavor are local kids who like him and can't believe he'd hurt his wife. This is a stretch to believe, but it does create some interesting story elements. Overall, the film is pretty exciting and different and well worth a look--particularly if you are a fan of Alan Ladd.

Alan Ladd gives up the city life and rat race for himself and also for dipsomaniac and nymphomaniac wife Carolyn Jones. They move out to quiet and peaceful Connecticut. Where Ladd paints out in the woods with his only true friends the town children. Jones on the other hand gets an affair going with one of the town movers and shakers.Jones winds up very dead when Ladd makes an overnight trip to New York. Local cop Charles McGraw thinks Ladd did it as does most of the town, his only friends are the children and Diane Brewster, one of the suburban wives. Alfred Hitchcock might have made the rest of this film seem plausible. In fact Man in the Net plays like an expanded version of one of his half hour TV stories. There are some plot similarities to The Blue Dahlia made back during Ladd's Paramount hey day. In that one he's also a husband on the run after his wife has been killed. Back then though Ladd put a lot of passion into his role of John Morrison, returning war veteran. As John Hamilton though he seems just tired and bored.One thing that doesn't ring true is the lynch law mentality that takes over this suburban town. That plays more like a western than a modern story. Again, maybe Alfred Hitchcock could have made it more believable.It's kind of cute and fun to see the kids outsmart the grownups including the local law for a good deal of the film. But it only goes so far for Man in the Net.