“Trashy but stylishly enterta…
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melodrama.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Nicholas Ray (“Rebel Without A Cause”/”Johnny Guitar”) dips down
a few levels from his illustrious opus to helm this trashy but stylishly
entertaining melodrama. It’s passable as a routine Hollywood woman’s pic
about bitchy social climber Christabel Caine (Joan Fontaine). She fools
most of those in her inner circle (not her cunning artist friend Gobby
(Mel Ferrer)) by her innocent act, and gets her hooks into the wealthy
Curtis Carey (Zachary Scott) by cuddling up to him and disarmingly saying
poisonous things about his fiancée Donna (Joan Leslie)–an employee
for her publisher uncle John Caine and her temporary roommate while she
visits uncle. Christabel also fends off novelist Nick (Robert Ryan), a
stud suitor under contract to her uncle and a good friend of Donna’s. Nick
has the hots for Christabel and after six months of marriage, where she
plays the busy social do-gooder by serving on numerous society charity
committees, the bored Christabel resumes her affair with the just published
Nick. At this point, Christabel doesn’t care if hubby knows–her plan is
to take him to the cleaners in a divorce settlement.
It moves in trite soap opera circles reaching a predictable outcome;
but, Ray keeps all the viciousness going at full blast, thereby drawing
an ugly picture about the bankrupt emotional state of society life. Fontaine
has a change of pace from her usual “nice” image heroine role.
It’s based on Anne Parrish’s novel All Kneeling; the caustic screenplay
is by Edith R. Sommer and Charles Schnee. The men are all cast as sex objects–for
either their looks (Nick), talent (Gobby) or their money (Curtis). The
women rivals cast long looks at each other that can kill with either sweetness
or enmity.