Review of The Arnelo Affair

The film is worth watching for the sake of John Hodiak, who usually made quite memorable roles, especially in "A Bell for Adano", his ticket to eternity. Frances Gifford falls entirely in his shadow and makes a rather bleak appearance, as one critic said, with only one expression in her face throughout the film, a woman lost in the trap of her own weakness, falling in love with a guy whom she is too effete to be able to see through, while he is too obsessed with her to let her go. There is a certain Douglas Sirk melodrama air about this and at the same time like veiled in a smokescreen of a sickly mystery tendency although there is no mystery - the murder cures that illusion, and still she is too weak to be able to break out of the dream. The restaurant scene is the most interesting, when the police detective discovers the truth by pure instinct but says nothing about it, to later come back with a vengeance. It is not unintersting and rather original, it's different from the normal noir standard, but it is slightly under the level of great noirs.