The Reckless Moment (Ophüls, 1949): Garden Cinema, Covent Garden, 8.30pm
Chicago Reader review:
This
1949 melodrama from Max Ophuls's postwar Hollywood period is usually
overlooked in favor of the masterpieces he would realize upon returning
to Europe (Lola Montes, The Earrings of Madame de . . . ).
But it's one of the director's most perverse stories of doomed love,
with Joan Bennett as a bored middle-class housewife whose daughter
accidentally kills her sleazy suitor, and James Mason as an engagingly
exotic Irishman who attempts to blackmail the mother. Naturally, they
feel a certain attraction. Ophuls spins a network of fine irony out of
the lurid material; Bennett is surprisingly effective as a typical
Ophuls heroine, discovering a long-suppressed streak of masochism.
Dave Kehr
Here (and above) is Mark Cousins' introduction to the film on the sadly missed Moviedrome television series.
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