Saturday, December 22, 2018

TCM's Film Noir of the Week for Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight ET (and 10 a.m. ET Sunday Morning) is Harry Horner’s Beware, My Lovely (1952), starring Ida Lupino and Robert Ryan, with Taylor Holmes and Barbara Whiting

By David in TN
Thursday, December 20, 2018 at 11:51:00 P.M. EST

TCM's Film Noir of the Week for Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight ET (and 10 a.m. ET Sunday Morning) is Harry Horner’s Beware, My Lovely (1952), starring Ida Lupino and Robert Ryan, supported by Taylor Holmes and Barbara Whiting.

Robert Ryan plays a psycho, not exactly cast against type. Ida Lupino plays a woman who hires Ryan's character without knowing he's on the run after a murder.

Film Noir Guide: "A paranoid-schizophrenic handyman (Ryan) hops a freight train after killing a housewife and lands a job with homeowner Lupino in a nearby town. He isn't on the job five minutes before he starts behaving strangely, turning the widow's Christmas holiday into a film noir nightmare. Homes plays Lupino's boarder and Whiting is her annoying teenage niece. Although Ryan is chilling, and Lupino is convincing enough, 'Beware' is a bit dated, managing only an occasional fright. The film was based on the successful Broadway play 'The Man,' which starred Dorothy Gish."


1 comment:

David In TN said...

TCM's Film Noir of the Week for Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight ET (and 10 am ET Sunday Morning) is Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (1944).

Fred MacMurray stars as Walter Neff, an insurance salesman who allows Barbara Stanwyck, playing a scheming, unfaithful wife, to maneuver him into a plot to kill her rich husband. The plan is to collect a big insurance payoff from Double Indemnity- A come on used by insurance companies for a death scenario that almost never happens. Edward G. Robinson plays MacMurray's colleague at the office who investigates insurance claims.

The murder was made to look like an accident and the suspense element of the film is will Robinson discover it was a murder.

Raymond Chandler and director Wilder wrote the screenplay from James M. Caine's pulp novel. I recall a commentary for the DVD edition said Chandler wrote MacMurray's dialogue ("I wonder if you wonder") and Wilder Robinson's.

This is the paradigm Film Noir plot. A sap falls for a femme fatale, kills her husband for her, and the entire plan falls apart resulting in his destruction.

As I previously remarked here about James M. Caine's other novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice; "The story begins with the protagonist having the best sex he's ever had. It ends with him in San Quentin facing the gas chamber.