The Lost Moment (1947)

The Lost Moment
Directed by Martin Gabel
Written by Leonardo Bercovici based on the novel “The Aspern Papers” by Henry James
1947/USA
Walter Wanger Productions
First viewing/Amazon Prime Instant Video

[box] Lewis Venable: In that fearfully incredible moment I knew I had plunged off a precipice into the past. That here was Juliana beyond belief, beautiful, alluring, alive. How strange this was, this Tina, who walked dead among the living and living among the dead, filling me with a nameless fear! I had a sudden impulse to turn and leave, and then I remembered the letters.[/box]

The best thing about this noirish Gothic melodrama is Agnes Moorehead as an 105-year-old woman.

The setting is Venice, Italy sometime in the last half of the 19th Century.  A neer-do-well tells publisher Lewis Venable (Robert Cummings) how he can get his hands on priceless love letters written by poet Jeffrey Ashton to Juliana Borderau (Moorhead).  Using this information, Lewis poses as a writer needing lodging while he completes a novel.  Juliana, now 105, is desperately in need of money to keep the mansion.  She is convinced that as long as she has the house she will never die.  Venable is willing to pay the exhorbitant price she quotes in cash and in advance and moves in.  Juliana’s cold, suspicious niece Tina (Susan Hayward) thoroughly disapproves.

Late one night, Venable hears the piano.  He goes downstairs to find Tina, now looking radiant, playing.  She greets him as her lover Jeffrey and appears to have taken on the personality of a young Juliana.  Venable plays along, still hoping to find the letters, but soon enough his pretense turns to love.  When Juliana becomes ill, Tina warms up to Jeffrey in real life.  I am leaving out lots and lots of turmoil. With Warner’s favorite gangster Eduardo Ciannelli as a kindly priest.

Henry James took the same ghostly tone in The Aspern Papers as he did in The Turn of the Screw, which was captured on film as The Innocents.  I can’t compare the fictional works but The Lost Moment does not begin to compare with the film version of the other story. The film has plenty of atmosphere but the performances Cummings and Hayward bring it back to 20th century reality.  In the context of those performances, all the overwrought emotions and weird happenings just seem silly.   Moorehead is unrecognizable though and a reason for her fans to catch this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=624YRAzUFMw

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