A good movie

To be honest, I wonder how I actually ended up watching this movie. Indeed, I constantly add movies to my queue. Right now, I’m focusing on older movies released during or before the 40’s and I think I came across this one more or less by accident on YouTube. Anyway, basically, it turned out to be a decent film noir. The funny thing (depending on your sense of humor, I guess) is that I have just been recently separated from my wife and I certainly could identify with what happened to Philip Marshall. Indeed, getting stuck in a really toxic relationship within which the only option is to avoid any confrontation at all costs was terribly familiar. What’s even more eerie is that I also met a wonderful young woman and we are both seriously in love so the similarities with this story were just really striking. However, I was already separated from my wife when I met her so, fortunately, there was no need to murder anyone. But, that’s the interesting approach with this movie, the fact that even though Philip Marshall was really a murderer, he was also a really nice and decent guy who killed his wife not because he really wanted to get rid off her but because he wanted to protect an innocent young woman. On top of that, it was really neat to see Charles Laughton playing the lead for once and, even though I haven’t seen many movies starring this guy, I’m already pretty much sure he was one of the best actors that ever lived. Concerning the story itself, well, even if it was fairly entertaining, it was not really great though and, eventually, it felt like a rather average Hitchcockian thriller. The fact that Charles Laughton and Ella Raines didn’t have much chemistry probably didn’t help either. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, thanks to Laughton at the top of his game, it was still a decent watch and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.