Introducing a little lost lamb....with fangs.

mark.waltz

With a long camera closeup lingering on her, you know that sweet looking Joan Fontaine is truly trouble. With the soap opera sounding name of Christabel Kane, Fontaine could be the aunt that Erica Kane of "All My Children" picked up a thing or two from. In fact, the whole plot line has a soap opera plot set up: distant relative Fontaine showing up at the home of Joan Leslie's, expected a day later, and passive aggressively setting up her scheming from the moment Leslie finds her sitting in her living room.

Between the two women and three men (Robert Ryan, Zachary Scott and Mel Ferrer), there's enough soapy plot to fill an entire afternoon. Fontaine had played vixens before, but no one like Christabelle. Her murderess in "Ivy" was a period femme fatale, basically the American version of a Margaret Lockwood character, so in modern dress, she gets to be openly a modern women, basically a sort of Eve Harrington type schemer breaking into society rather than theater.

The anti-hero bad boy, Robert Ryan, sees through her from the start, but is intrigued by her two sides. But if homewrecker has a picture in the dictionary, Fontaine's likeness in character should be there as she sets her eyes on Leslie's fiancée (Zachary Scott), with a painting by Mel Ferrer opening his eyes about her, and not taken in by her lady like facade. This goes for the gold as a camp classic, quite over the top, especially when Ryan refers to her painting as a cross between Lucretia Borgia and Peg o my heart.

As for Leslie, she has a major makeup call as she's brought to life by the revelation of who this dangerous vixen really is and how she became the hand that not only rocked the cradle, but cracked it as well. Psychological darkness of the soul even opens the eyes of the amoral men, making this one of the few film noir where no crime is committed. Like the same named Erica Kane of daytime legend, God help any woman who gets any more male attention than her.

score 6/10

mark.waltz 21 March 2017

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3667567/