In that I have NEVER liked this film. I put it in the same category as I do "The Yearling" or "Old Yeller" - a classic, well directed, acted, and produced and memorable - to me - for all the wrong reasons. And since this is in the Turner Classic Movies library it gets trotted out a lot, and so I have tried to watch it several times, but I just don't like it and don't care to see it ever again.
Part of it may be that I have never really liked period pieces or Charles Boyer. No, unlike other reviewers, I don't like him from the start. I don't even believe the cheerful beginning where he and Paula seem in love. The film shows his true side soon enough, and I also don't like seeing a true innocent - Paula - put through all of that mental torment just so Boyer's murdering thief can get his rubies.
It does have some good and amusing parts - mainly Angela Lansbury as the maid who sees herself as the next Mrs. Anton, even if she sees what is happening to the first Mrs. Anton and that Mr. Anton is not exactly a husband to be trusted. Like those class boundaries would have ever been breeched in Victorian England.
The end leaves things open for Bergman's Paula and Joseph Cotten's cop to get romantic without waiting for her husband to go to the gallows. It turns out Mr. Anton AKA Sergis Bower was already married to somebody else when he married Paula. So from the beginning the whole relationship was a lie. I think I'd need ten years of therapy before I believed anybody ever again about anything if I was Paula. But in the time period portrayed there were no therapists only madhouses, and on top of that Paula would have been ostracized for being involved in a bigamy even if she had been completely deceived. An unforgiving era indeed. Your mileage may vary.
Part of it may be that I have never really liked period pieces or Charles Boyer. No, unlike other reviewers, I don't like him from the start. I don't even believe the cheerful beginning where he and Paula seem in love. The film shows his true side soon enough, and I also don't like seeing a true innocent - Paula - put through all of that mental torment just so Boyer's murdering thief can get his rubies.
It does have some good and amusing parts - mainly Angela Lansbury as the maid who sees herself as the next Mrs. Anton, even if she sees what is happening to the first Mrs. Anton and that Mr. Anton is not exactly a husband to be trusted. Like those class boundaries would have ever been breeched in Victorian England.
The end leaves things open for Bergman's Paula and Joseph Cotten's cop to get romantic without waiting for her husband to go to the gallows. It turns out Mr. Anton AKA Sergis Bower was already married to somebody else when he married Paula. So from the beginning the whole relationship was a lie. I think I'd need ten years of therapy before I believed anybody ever again about anything if I was Paula. But in the time period portrayed there were no therapists only madhouses, and on top of that Paula would have been ostracized for being involved in a bigamy even if she had been completely deceived. An unforgiving era indeed. Your mileage may vary.