A comparatively minor but char…
A comparatively minor but characteristically elegant Tourneur costume melodrama-cum-psychological thriller in the vein of Rebec and Gaslight, this features Lamarr as the wife of a wealthy philanthropist; inevitably, she comes to quail not lone for her own sanity, but also for that of her genuinely threatening husband, a manic authoritarian patriarch whose violence is the product of a troubled, shocking teens. Equally inevitably, doctor/ detective Brent is there to save her and supplying exotic interest, but Tourneur manages to overcome the formulaic plotting and cod-Freudian characterisations through carefully controlled performances and Tony Gaudio’s bonzer camerawork.