LOCKET, THE (director: John Brahm; screenwriter: Sheridan Gibney; cinematographer: Nick Musuraca; editor: J.R. Whittredge; cast: Laraine Day (Nancy Blair/Patton), Brian Aherne (Dr. Blair), Robert Mitchum (Norman Clyde), Gene Raymond (John Willis), Ricardo Cortez (Mr. Bonner), Henry Stephenson (Lord Wyndham), George Humbert (Luigi), Sharyn Moffett (Nancy, age 10), Katherine Emery (Mrs. Willis), Lilian Fontaine (Lady Wyndham), Gloria Donovan (Karen), 1946)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
A psychological drama about a woman with a dark secret from her childhood that is carried over to her adult life. It's a post-war baroque melodrama, creaky as wooden steps in an old mildewed house might be. It's from the German émigré director, John Brahm, who gives this genre a decidedly European flavor."The Locket" has something to say about a person with a severe personality disorder needing the proper psychological therapy.
It was too wooden a presentation to generate anything but a few sparks. But the way of telling the story by flashbacks within flashbacks, from the view of the male lovers who were deceived by the pert heroine, Nancy Blair (Laraine Day), is visually unconventional, and the story itself, is cleverly diverting.
The wealthy John Willis (Gene Raymond ) is a happy man, who is about to marry the charming Nancy Patton (an alias last name) today. He seems to be very content with his choice of bride, even though he doesn't know much about her and his parents haven't met her until now. He is suddenly confronted by a stranger bursting into his house, who identifies himself as Dr. Blair (Aherne), a psychoanalyst, and Nancy's former husband. That surprises him. She never told him that she was married before. Blair tells the startled John that he has something urgent to tell him about Nancy and warns him not to be fooled by her amiable exterior, she is a sick woman with a history of kleptomania and will ruin him like she did her other lovers, telling him to stop the marriage before it is too late.
Dr. Blair tells him about a portrait artist in New York, Norman Clyde (Mitchum), who almost married her. The flashbacks within the flashbacks begin here. This is early Mitchum before he reached stardom. This was one role that was not suited for his temperament. It's one of the few performances I thought he was awful in. He plays an angry Bohemian artist, overly concerned with the integrity of his work, who meets Nancy when she came to him as an art pupil, on the insistence of her boss, Mr. Bonner (Cortez). She was his secretary and he an avid art patron. Clyde is invited to show his art collection at a gathering Bonner is having for his wealthy acquaintances. To Clyde's dismay, he discovers in Nancy's purse a bracelet stolen at the party. He makes her mail it anonymously back to the guest she stole it from and gets her to tell him about her childhood. She tells him that her mother was a housekeeper for a wealthy woman, Mrs. Willis (Emery), and that when she was 10-years-old, she was friends with that lady's daughter, Karen. On Karen's birthday, Mrs. Willis refuses to let the servant's child attend the party, but Karen gives Nancy a locket as a present, anyway. When the mother finds out what Karen did, she retrieves the necklace, which unknown to the little girls, is actually a diamond locket. This action disappoints Nancy. Later the locket is reported stolen and Nancy is accused of taking it, even though she is innocent, she gets blamed for something she didn't do. The locket is retrieved when Nancy's mother finds it in Karen's dress, but Nancy's mother is fired anyway. This event turns out to be the critical one in Nancy's life, as she vows that if God somehow gives her the locket -- she will never ask him for anything else again.
Invited again to a Bonner shindig, Nancy disappears upstairs with Bonner, and Clyde suspecting them of being secret lovers, quietly follows her. A gunshot comes from Bonner's room and Nancy emerges, but she is sneaked back into the party by Clyde. The valet who found Bonner's body is eventually charged with the murder. Clyde doesn't believe her explanation and their romance breaks up.
When he finds out that Blair eloped with her in Miami and now lives with her in New York, he goes to his workplace to warn him about the femme fatale, but Blair refused to believe him. In a scene that was impossible to fathom, Clyde becomes so upset that he couldn't get Blair to go to the district attorney and stop the execution of an innocent man, that he jumps to his death from the office window of Blair's workplace.
Blair says, he didn't believe Clyde's story until the couple went to England during the war, and he found out for himself that his wife stole jewelry from Lord Wyndham's wife. As an added bit of melodramatics, Blair cracked up over this and was institutionalized, and only recently was released.
John is not impressed with the story and the wedding precedes. Before the wedding, Mrs. Willis, as a surprise gift, gives her daughter-in-law, whom she doesn't recognize as being the servant girl, the locket she wanted as a child, telling her the owner of the locket, Karen, has died. But when walking down the aisle, the bride's repressed memories come hauntingly back, and she has a nervous breakdown and is carted off to the loony bin.
It's a somber story, with a lot of heavy-handed things going on. The plot devices were too leaden to be fully credible, but the complexities of the heroine's character were well presented. The analyst's comments about her stealing to get even with Mrs. Willis, seemed to be a reasonable explanation, if taken on face value. But that doesn't answer her ability to murder or her depraved indifference to men while pretending to like them. Her revenge is shown to be complete when she is about to marry the son of the woman who accused her of the theft.
The locket only had some glitter but not enough substance to make its aims lucidly felt. Though, as muddled as it was, it still kept me alert, wanting to know what gives. The problem is, that I never found out what gives.
REVIEWED ON 4/29/2000 GRADE: C-
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
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