Tuesday, May 03, 2016
Dear Murderer
This British movie from 1947 has a tight plot but suffers from resembling too much the stage play it came from. The actors seemed as fenced in as they would on a smallish stage. Cramped indeed,
When a man returns from an extended overseas trip to discover his wife is having an affair, he decides to murder her lover and pin the crime on another lover. Greta Gynt makes a good femme fatale and Eric Portman, a decent murderer, but far too many scenes rely on lengthy explications with the actors standing there expectantly.
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7 comments:
This sounds like my idea of fun (at the cinema I mean) - not seen it Patti and while I usually try to dodge anything to do with the evil empire that is Amazon, I will seek this out - ta!
Strangely, I dreamed last night that I was watching a play.
Interesting, that contrast between a play and a film. Thanks for sharing this one, Patti.
I'm with Sergio: I'll track down a copy of this!
I'm interested in watching this one. I like analyzing movie thrillers and mysteries that were adapted from plays to spot the sections of the source material that remained intact. There's a good one with Bette Davis and her then husband Gary Merrill called Another Man's Poison that reminded me of Deathtrap. Very stagey and theatrical in places and all the more surprising because it was made in 1951. IMO, lots of movies from the 1930s and 1940s look like filmed stage plays regardless of the origin of the script. In the right hands, however, plays adapted for film can become landmarks so much so that the original theater script is not only improved upon it's almost completely forgotten. Dracula, The Wizard of Oz and Casablanca, to give three examples, were based on stage plays or stage adaptations of novels. In the last case it was a very little known play called Everybody Comes to Rick's. You don't often see revivals of that play these days, do you?
It's so easy to tell - sometimes - when a movie is based on a play. Though I'd forgotten that CASABLANCA was just that, John.
I've never seen the film you posted about, Patti - sounds a bit stiff to me. When I think of Eric Portman, I always remember him as Professor Moriarity in the BBC Holmes productions. (I think it was the BBC.) with Jeremy Brett.
A movie based on a play that would have been better if it had NOT been opened up for the Big Screen - A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM. I was lucky enough to see Zero Mostel in the original theater production as well as the film and the play worked much better in 'confined' theater space. It's funny how that happened sometime. I suppose the trick is knowing when to expand and when not to. Not automatically thinking that something has to be LARGER than life.
It would have been much better if it had been made in America, the British simply dont know how to make films. Movies made in America always have been and always will be infinitely superior to movies made anywhere else.
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