Wednesday, April 8, 2009

SHADOW ON THE WALL (1950)

Wednesday, April 8, 2009
A curious, noir-ish film, SHADOW ON THE WALL reflects the late 1940s-early 1950s fascination with psychoanalysis.

What gives this movie its extra zing is the casting against type of Ann Sothern, a smart, funny presence in comedies and musicals, cast as the villain. Also, Zachary Scott, best known as sleazy Monte Beragon in 1945's MILDRED PIERCE, is the good guy here.

He plays David Starrling, who returns home to his new wife and 6 year old daughter only to find that his wife has been having an affair with his sister-in-law Dell's (played by Sothern) fiance. David, carrying a gun, confronts his wife, and as he nears her, she knocks him out with a silver hand mirror from her dressing table. The wife panics, thinking she's killed her husband, and calls Dell to help her. Dell arrives and reassures her sister that David is not dead, but unconscious. Then, as she realizes the situation with the fiance, she gets angry and kills her sister with David's gun. At this moment, David's daughter walks into the room and sees her father seemingly dead and her stepmother most certainly dead. Screaming, she sees Dell's shadow on the wall, but doesn't see who it is.

David is taken to prison believing he killed his wife, Dell's not confessing, so six-year-old Susan is the only person who really knows who the murderer is. Suffering from shock, she's taken to stay in the children's ward of a psychiatric facility under the care of a sympathetic doctor, played warmly by Nancy Davis (later to become Nancy Reagan), who begins to suspect that there were three people in the room the night of the murder. Watching this unfold — and Dell's reaction — makes this movie interesting.

Good performances all around, including Gigi Perreau as the daughter and John McIntyre as Davis' colleague. Patrick Jackson directed.