Sudden Fear

Saw Sudden Fear (thanks, Anne!) Is was an excellent old noir. Joan Crawford is a millionaire heiress who amuses herself by being a playwright. She cuts some actor from her play only to run into him again later on a long train ride from New York to San Francisco. They fall madly in love but (alas! of course!) she soon discovers that he's trying to bump her off for her cash. This was a very domestic thriller. Crafty little plans unfold involving phones, makeup, gloves, little notes; the sort of plots a playwright would come up with. Versus this is this the blunt force of the calculating actor and his moll assistant. The film makes us wait for the climax but when it comes it's great! Tension, dutch angles, chiaroscuro, it's all there!

I liked this film. I have a weakness for old-timey, Hitchcockian, thrilling drama and this one, like I say, is a little slow starting but gets there in the end. Many times shadows are used to excellent effect. At one point Joan is sitting at her desk, waiting for midnight when she's going to spring her trap. The light is placed right inside of a clock so that the shadow of the swinging pendulum is thrown right on her face, swinging hypnotically and exactly from eye to eye. The film is shot very flatly, people always standing ten feet or so from the camera. The only time (apart from establishing shots) that a character recedes far into the background is when Joan learns of the actor's nefarious plot. She's suddenly dwarfed by her own study, a tiny woman lost in a giant room. It's so nice and neat!

So, this is a good film. A nice taut thriller, a bit goofy at parts, but wonderfully melodramatic and hysterical at the climax.