The Reckless Moment (1949) - film review

Lucia Harper is a happily married housewife who enjoys a comfortable middle class existence at her Californian beach home.  With her husband often away on business, she has a struggle trying to keep up with her fast growing up children, David and Bea.  When her daughter takes an interest in a shady art dealer named Darby, Lucia becomes anxious and resolves to end the relationship.  Her fears are conformed when, on seeing Darby, he offers to allow himself to be bought off.  Tired of her mother’s inference in her life, Bea decides to elope with Darby, but when they meet one evening she realises his true character and knocks him unconscious in a fit of rage.  The next morning, Lucia finds Darby’s body lying on the beach and decides to dump it in the marshes.  Not long afterwards, she is visited by a sinister looking Irishman who is in possession of love letters written by Bea to Darby.  Unless Lucia pays him five thousand dollars, the stranger, Martin Donnelly, will hand the letters over to the police, thereby incriminating Bea in Darby’s murder.  Lucia realises that unless she can find the money to pay off Donnelly, her whole world will be destroyed...

Possibly the most underrated of Max Ophüls’s films is this moody film noir drama, the last of the four films that he completed during his generally lacklustre stint in Hollywood in the 1940s.  During his short and pretty unproductive time in Tinsel Town, Ophüls became fascinated by the film noir style, with its use of harsh lighting, unusual camera angles and shadows to lend atmosphere and subjectivity.  Whilst the plot of The Reckless Moment may not naturally lend itself to the film noir style, its director succeeds in employing the familiar noir motifs to create a tense, claustrophobic drama.  The end result is a film that is stylistically brilliant but slightly marred by some implausible characterisation and a few horrible plot contrivances.

Although her career was very much on the wane when she made this film, Joan Bennett proves that she is still a very capable actress.  Here she gives one of her better performances, transforming what might have been a limp melodrama into a poignant and engaging drama which is devastatingly poignant in parts.  Admittedly, the story is a tad ridiculous in a few places, but Bennett and her illustrious co-star James Mason play it for real and it is hard not to be moved by their desperate attempt to extricate themselves from the vile web of intrigue in which they have become ensnared.  

The Reckless Moment scarcely bears comparison with the triumphs that Max Ophüls would deliver on his return to Europe.  Yet, despite some obvious imperfections (some of which can be attributed to its shoestring budget), this is a beguiling film, darkly ironic in its portrayal of contemporary American society and highly inventive in its use of film noir technique to convey mood and a sense of psychological realism.   If you appreciate this film, you will absolutely adore what Ophüls made afterwards, particularly his sublime masterpieces Madame de... (1953) and Lola Montès (1955) which, in common with The Reckless Moment, feature a strong-willed woman who is tormented and ultimately crushed by the stifling constraints of her milieu.

© James Travers 2010

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