Conflict
Directed by Curtis Bernhardt
Written by Arthur B. Horman and Dwight Taylor from a story by Robert Siodmak and Alfred Neumann
1945/US
Warner Bros.
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental
Kathryn Mason: [to Richard] It’s funny how virtuous a man can be when he’s helpless.
This movie’s preposterous plot is lifted by Humphrey Bogart’s fine performance.
Engineer Richard Mason (Bogart) is in love with his wife Kathryn’s (Rose Hobart) younger sister Evelyn (Alexis Smith). The wife knows this, denies him a divorce, and makes his life miserable. So Bogart cooks up a plan to get rid of his wife and marry the sister. Unfortunately for him, Dr. Mark Hamilton (Sydney Greenstreet), a psychiatrist and close friend of the family, decides to play amateur detective. It would be criminal to reveal any more of the plot.
Bogart is very good in this picture, which he did not want to make. We would not see him this angry and haunted until “In a Lonely Place” (1950). He also becomes increasingly paranoid as the story progresses. Greenstreet always plays Greenstreet and he is extremely good at it. The plot relies on increasingly improbable and contrived elements that drag the film down. It is not a who done it but a what happened. There is some nice noir cinematography courtesy of Merritt B. Gerstad.
