Spoilers.
I've just seen this film again for the first time in about 20 years. I've held it as a personal favorite from an earlier viewing, all this time. It was with some trepidation, then, taking into account all the water that has washed under the gates in the last 20 years in cinematic terms, that I came to Conflict again. Would it still stand up as an authentic film experience?
For me, it has. --And what's more, there are resonances here, this time around, that flew over the head of a callow youngster. This go 'round, the film feels like nothing less than a meditation on regret, all those mistakes you wish you could undo, all those unfulfilled longings of middle age that arise out of a palpable sense of missed opportunities and fading last chances.
Bogart is perfect as Richard Mason, an engineer who is trusted to oversee the building of a bridge or skyscraper, but can't repair a 'simple little thing' like his damaged relationship with his wife. Mason regrets what has become of his marriage. He regrets feeling trapped in a 'situation.' He regrets that the time line of eternity has failed to synchronize the lifetime of his wife's much younger sister with his own. A cool and respected professional outwardly, he is, inside, a flailing, discontented man. What finally pushes him over the edge may be his wife's casual mockery in the films first scene, a preparation for their anniversary party. Amid some standard jibes and old-couple bickering, she throws out this taunt: that she hopes he never tells Evelyn, her sister, he has a thing for her, because she'd laugh at him. "I wish you hadn't said that" he thinks out loud. It's at that point that we begin to feel the wheels of escape turning in the engineer's head. With just a few thoughtless words, the relationship has turned a corner, from merely unrewarding to personally demeaning and thus intolerable. Therein hangs the tale.
By fade out, it is clear that Mason has one other towering regret: having killed his wife. The final scene, returned to the sepulcher he fashioned for his wife, Mason takes a long hard look with us alongside at existential despair. The empty tomb is a metaphor for Mason's life as he must feel it at that point: The emptiness of an empty life, the emptiness of death and eternity for one who has lived such a life. Whatever he was waiting for hasn't shown up this existence, and won't in the next. This is it for Richard Mason. Does it get any darker than this?
Conflict isn't included in most noir references because, I believe, some of the more psychologically aberrant elements of the characters and story are explained away rationally at the end, as part of a set up or a trick to trap a murderer. But I think the experts are mistaken in not having looked more closely at this film. The core of Conflict is, in fact, the purest noir: an existential view of life and death, struggles with doubts about ones own sanity, sexual longing as a spur to murder, and a cruel subversion of a cherished bourgeois institution (the 'perfect' marriage). If this isn't noir, then what is noir criticism but a transparent popularity contest-- like the earliest auteur criticism-- that speciously excludes films for having the "wrong" director, or for not having been endorsed by the "right" people?
Ten stars. Definitely worth your time.
I've just seen this film again for the first time in about 20 years. I've held it as a personal favorite from an earlier viewing, all this time. It was with some trepidation, then, taking into account all the water that has washed under the gates in the last 20 years in cinematic terms, that I came to Conflict again. Would it still stand up as an authentic film experience?
For me, it has. --And what's more, there are resonances here, this time around, that flew over the head of a callow youngster. This go 'round, the film feels like nothing less than a meditation on regret, all those mistakes you wish you could undo, all those unfulfilled longings of middle age that arise out of a palpable sense of missed opportunities and fading last chances.
Bogart is perfect as Richard Mason, an engineer who is trusted to oversee the building of a bridge or skyscraper, but can't repair a 'simple little thing' like his damaged relationship with his wife. Mason regrets what has become of his marriage. He regrets feeling trapped in a 'situation.' He regrets that the time line of eternity has failed to synchronize the lifetime of his wife's much younger sister with his own. A cool and respected professional outwardly, he is, inside, a flailing, discontented man. What finally pushes him over the edge may be his wife's casual mockery in the films first scene, a preparation for their anniversary party. Amid some standard jibes and old-couple bickering, she throws out this taunt: that she hopes he never tells Evelyn, her sister, he has a thing for her, because she'd laugh at him. "I wish you hadn't said that" he thinks out loud. It's at that point that we begin to feel the wheels of escape turning in the engineer's head. With just a few thoughtless words, the relationship has turned a corner, from merely unrewarding to personally demeaning and thus intolerable. Therein hangs the tale.
By fade out, it is clear that Mason has one other towering regret: having killed his wife. The final scene, returned to the sepulcher he fashioned for his wife, Mason takes a long hard look with us alongside at existential despair. The empty tomb is a metaphor for Mason's life as he must feel it at that point: The emptiness of an empty life, the emptiness of death and eternity for one who has lived such a life. Whatever he was waiting for hasn't shown up this existence, and won't in the next. This is it for Richard Mason. Does it get any darker than this?
Conflict isn't included in most noir references because, I believe, some of the more psychologically aberrant elements of the characters and story are explained away rationally at the end, as part of a set up or a trick to trap a murderer. But I think the experts are mistaken in not having looked more closely at this film. The core of Conflict is, in fact, the purest noir: an existential view of life and death, struggles with doubts about ones own sanity, sexual longing as a spur to murder, and a cruel subversion of a cherished bourgeois institution (the 'perfect' marriage). If this isn't noir, then what is noir criticism but a transparent popularity contest-- like the earliest auteur criticism-- that speciously excludes films for having the "wrong" director, or for not having been endorsed by the "right" people?
Ten stars. Definitely worth your time.