THE RECKLESS MOMENT

Max Opuls [Ophuls]


T. it.: “Sgomento”; Scen.: Henry Garson, Robert W. Soderberg; Adattamento: Mel Dinelli, Robert E. Kent, da “The Blank Wall” di Elisabeth Sanxay Holding; F.: Burnett Guffey; Op.: Gert Andersen (non accr.); M.: Gene Havlick; Scgf.: Cary Odell; Cost.: Jean Louis; Su.: Russell Malmgren; Ass. R.: Earl Bellamy; Int.: James Mason (Martin Donnelly), Joan Bennett (Lucia Harper), Geraldine Brooks (Bea Harper), Henry O’Neill (Tom Harper), Shepperd Strudwick (Ted Darby), David Bair (David Harper), Roy Roberts (Nagel), Jessie Arnold; Prod.: Columbia Pictures Corporation; 35 mm. D.: 82’. Bn.

info_outline
T. it.: Italian title. T. int.: International title. T. alt.: Alternative title. Sog.: Story. Scen.: Screenplay. F.: Cinematography. M.: Editing. Scgf.: Set Design. Mus.: Music. Int.: Cast. Prod.: Production Company. L.: Length. D.: Running Time. f/s: Frames per second. Bn.: Black e White. Col.: Color. Da: Print source

Film Notes

When someone as intensely personal as Max Ophuls takes on a genre film and a contemporary subject (as he would do again one year later in Caught), employing all his stylistic liberty and inspiration (though the mixing of melodrama and noir was not unusual in those years, Ophuls’ vision was unique), we get the sense that we are seeing even familiar things for the first time. The home, full of secrets behind its doors, appears transparent in the way that only film, and an inspired mise-en-scène, can show it. We get a tough glimpse of ordinary life. Ophuls maintains a natural look, while giving us a creation as magical as any of his flashy historical films. Just like Ophuls’ insight into historical falsehoods and fictional fin-de-siècle happiness, here we see a life where everything is a facade, a set – a life we can recognize as Ophuls’ described Madame de…: “This isn’t a life, it’s an existence. Even less: a non-existence… This film should be, indirectly, very bitter, and a thousand times more profound than the anecdote upon which it is based.” Five years have transformed “the unconquerable fortress of an American home” (as it was defined in Selznick’s Since You Went Away, 1943) into a house of shadows, and life into a theatrical play, a set of lies. Two couples are juxtaposed. One corresponds to the central paradigm of American life, or marriage; the other, in an unexpected lawless development, begins when a blackmailer contacts his wife. Somehow, their relationship suddenly and briefly becomes the only possible glimpse of real life. The sense of the 1940s lingers, with one key person – the father – never shown. (the Cinemateca Portuguesa recently dedicated a series to these symptomatic “protagonistas ausentes”). Hence, a stunted family lies at the center, an unnatural entity that must appear and act naturally, even more so because of this absence. But the rituals of everyday life and the urgent need to preserve them, to appear ordinary and decent, are
overtaken by darkness and a sense of criminal doom. Though nothing really happens, the mind and a repressive culture fill in the rest. The simple and spare setting seems made for permeation by an unknown and anti-establishment noir presence, which of course arrives, sinking into the foundations of routine family life and violating it. Ophuls shows this life as a prison, all about money and property. Emotions are all an act. Otherwise they find no outlet, not now and probably not ever, unless they are unrequited or unless they transpire in desperate, fleeting circumstances, such as the relationship between the blackmailer (James Mason) and his wife (Joan Bennett) – two lonely people in a relationship that seems first cruel and then poignant, with a great repressed tenderness underscored by the inevitability of doom. Part of the wrenching unforgettableness of The Reckless Moment comes from the interplay between two exceptional actors: a restrained James Mason (whose profound megalomaniac creation in Bigger than Life will prove another highlight of this week, and who worked with Ophuls again in Caught), and Joan Bennett, who creates one of the most intense, understated, and dualistic incarnations of the housewife in all of the cinema. Considering her roles for Ophuls, Lang, and Renoir, Bennett was one of the most brilliant and somewhat underestimated actresses of her time.

Peter von Bagh

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