Watch The Man with a Cloak For Free

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Good movie but grossly overrated

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

... maybe that's why she never sang in any other picture. But that's a minor point, because "The Man With A Cloak" is an absorbing, interesting 84 minutes with a surprise payoff. I hate rehashing plots, but just a couple of brushstrokes; Joseph Cotten arrives in NYC, as does Leslie Caron, he penniless and she interceding for her fiancé back in Paris (it is 1848). She is looking for her fiancé's dying grandfather (Calhern) to intercede for funds and runs into Cotten. She tells him she has come to an impasse in the form of Calhern's iron-willed housekeeper (Stanwyck). It seems none of Calhern's staff like him and hope he will die soon so they can split his fortune. Together Cotten and Caron try to outwit his staff's plans to hasten Calhern's departure.I disagree with most of the other reviewers and I felt it was a very good story (from a book by John Dickson Carr) which keeps the viewer off balance throughout. It is held together by old pros Stanwyck and Calhern and keeps you guessing right up to the end of the picture. I thought it could have used some mood music at times to heighten tension in some spots, but on the whole it is a very entertaining 84 minutes without any perceptible down time which could have been edited out. Good, solid, if unspectacular, filmmaking. And don't forget; there is a unique ending as a bonus.

Man with a Cloak has an impressive roster of performers but somehow they fail to jell as a team to make for a winning film. Usually Joseph Cotton and Barbara Stanwyck shine in these dark ambiguous roles but here they fail to connect like the rest of the cast who also seem disconnected from each other. It's as if they are still in rehearsal working on their parts and oblivious to everyone else. Wealthy Charles Tavernier (Louis Calhearn) is near death. Loyal but fed up housekeepers await the day to collect the inheritance they feel they so richly deserve. Enter Madeline Minot (Leslie Caron) from Paris who tries to persuade Tavernier to leave his money to his grandson and her fiancé. On the periphery but soon inveigling his way into the drama Dupin a mysterious poet takes up the cause of Minot as Tavernier starts to circle the drain.Stanwyck as the plotting housekeeper gives a nice icy performance in attempting to outwit Minot and Dupin. As things begin to unravel she retains her cool pushing around fellow conspirators and undermining Tavernier's health. Cotton is miscast as the poet more in search of a drink than a sonnet. He lacks the carefree nature of a free spirit and is more smug than charming as the protagonist. Caron is a dour GiGi, Margaret Wycherly steals every scene she utters a word and Calhearn walks off with the acting honors as the withering Tavernier.Director Fletcher Markle and cameraman George Folsey serve up a few William Wyler deep focus moments with some revealing compositions but they never build up enough steam to sustain the whole film or heighten tension before capping things off with a silly denouement that reveals to the audience they have wasted their time.

Though the mystery man is in reality no mystery man--most viewers will be able to identify the literary figure from the beginning--this movie gem now almost forgotten is well written, well acted, and well presented. It still packs a wallop, filled with thrills and suspense. Not surprisingly, the leads give outstanding performances as one would expect from the likes of Joseph Cotten, Barbara Stanwyck, Louis Calhern, and Leslie Caron. What is surprising is how well Jim Backus (Mr. Magoo) as Flaherty the good-hearted if cynical bartender shines in a small part, as does Joe De Santis, now known mainly for his TV work, playing the sinister and potentially deadly Martin, the butler. Margaret Wycherly too plays Mrs. Flynn, the pessimistic yet wily housekeeper, to perfection.The story by detective novelist John Dickson Carr while not all that original is aided by a witty script by Frank Fenton. The plot is a rehash of the age-old ploy of a group of hangers-on after an old man's fortune, this time led by a conniving siren. What makes this one somewhat fresh is the introduction of a historical character and a pretty French guest who supplies intrigue smiting of revolutionary Europe in 1848, in the aftermath of the fall of Napoleon's empire. There is also an unexpected death to make it all the more interesting. All in all an entertaining film that deserves more recognition.

A curious film hampered by an overwritten and stagy script, Man With a Cloak starts off looking like it might deserve to be as forgotten as it apparently is. However it recovers nicely when we see its plot unfold. Joseph Cotten plays Dupin, an intellectual, fond of drinking, but without a steady income, who spends much of his time in the local establishment owned by the kindly yet pragmatic Flaherty (Jim Backus). The young French woman Madeline Minot (Leslie Caron) arrives in New York from France with a letter of introduction from her fiancée, now manning the barricades in Paris, to his grandfather, the wealthy but dying Charles Therverner (Louis Calhern) who must spend his last days surrounded by the avaricious staff of the house, who impatiently await his death, in the vain hope that they will somehow get his money. Barbara Stanwick, as the head of the house, and Joe De Santis as the brutish and menacing butler, along with Margaret Wycherly as the housekeeper, have waited years for the old man to die, and are now confronted with the arrival of Madeline Minot, who is also seeking the old man's fortune although for the altruistic purpose of aiding the establishment of a republic in France. While the dialog tends towards the verbose, the story maintains your interest, especially the unlikely romance of sorts between Stanwick and De Santis, a romance based not on any mutual attraction, but on their shameless complicity in hastening along the dying process. Cotten, as Dupin, manages to come between them and in the process infuriates the butler though his anger is played with taut control by De Santis, whose performance is memorable. All in all, it is one of those films, that if you can catch it on TCM, is definitely worth watching.