Film Review
One of the most unsettling and sophisticated of film noir dramas,
The Locket takes the familiar noir
device of the flashback and uses it with great ingenuity to build
suspense and convey a sense of slowly mounting paranoia which makes it
hard for the audience to distinguish truth from fantasy. The idea
of the flashback within a flashback is carried to its ultimate extreme,
sending us deeper and deeper into the labyrinthine passages of the
mind, until we feel as lost, confused and chilled as the protagonists
in the drama. The intricately constructed narrative is both
compelling and disturbing and when the great unravelling comes, in the
superbly staged denouement, it feels like an assault, as though reality
has suddenly been turned inside out. Rarely
has a film noir played psychological games with its audience as
effectively, as ruthlessly as this film.
The Locket is one of a series
of exceptionally well-crafted films made in the 1940s by director John
Brahm. Brahm's previous credits include
The Lodger (1944), an impressive
remake of Hitchcock's silent classic, and
Hangover Square (1945), another
fine example of film noir, albeit one set in another epoch. In
the '50s and '60s, Brahm took his directing talents to television,
where he contributed to the success of many great series, notably
Alfred Hitchcock Presents,
General Electric Theater,
The Twilight Zone,
Thriller and
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
The Locket offers Laraine Day
her most interesting screen role, an enigmatic femme fatale who is
completely obvious to the harm she causes, and also features impressive
contributions from Brian Aherne, Robert Mitchum and Gene Raymond.
The script was written by Norma Barzman, although, as she was on the
Hollywood blacklist, the film was credited to Sheridan Gibney.
Not only is the film an inspired use of the film noir aesthetic to
explore psychological disorder (far more convincingly than any other
film of this period), it also offers a powerful indictment of American
social attitudes in the 1940s, presaging the many great films that
Douglas Sirk would make in the following decade.
© James Travers 2011
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
On the day of his marriage to his true love Nancy, John Willis receives
an unexpected visit from a man who claims to be his future wife's
former husband. The man, a psychiatrist named Dr Blair, reveals
that Nancy is a habitual liar and thief, a woman who has already
destroyed three men. It all began when Nancy was a little girl,
when the woman whom her mother worked for as a housemaid accused her of
stealing a valuable locket from her daughter. Blair recounts how
another man, a struggling artist, fell under Nancy's spell and
discovered that not only is she a kleptomaniac but also an
unconscionable murderer...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.