About as gimmicky as a melodrama can get (apart from those that are intentionally silly and played in drag), the Four Star Playhouse showcasing beautiful Merle Oberon was hard for me to watch. I suppose that being this dated and piling on one dumb gimmick after another is hard for me to overlook (or suspend my disbelief).
I imagined as I watched it the director Robert Florey, a film suspense master stuck doing TV later in his career, gritting his teeth and trying very hard (at times too hard) to make a hokey script work. The Bagni writing team is usually reliable, but handing in this stinker is a blot on their record.
The predictability of the show, once the PSA first half (which reminded me of those government-made Safety films made during this era, the kind Something Weird Video would resurrect on video decades later to amus exploitation movie fans) to thriller was annoying. The most significant one concerning TV great Barbara Billingsley I guesed immediately.
Planting of clues, with the used of intercut closeups, was way too emphatic to pass muster. Florey of all people knew better, so I presume he just grit his teeth and plowed ahead with the task at hand.
Oberon is great to look at (they even turn her into a sweater girl near the end), but her one-note performance is poor, even if technically mandated by the script. She should be a multi-dimensional character, not merely a vain, pitiable handicapped person. Putting oneself into the context of the 1953 era, what woman wouldn't want to be Merle, bad hering andall! And casting as bland a leading man as possible as her husband is cheating and insulting -given the series it should have been Charles Boyer gaslighting her!
I imagined as I watched it the director Robert Florey, a film suspense master stuck doing TV later in his career, gritting his teeth and trying very hard (at times too hard) to make a hokey script work. The Bagni writing team is usually reliable, but handing in this stinker is a blot on their record.
The predictability of the show, once the PSA first half (which reminded me of those government-made Safety films made during this era, the kind Something Weird Video would resurrect on video decades later to amus exploitation movie fans) to thriller was annoying. The most significant one concerning TV great Barbara Billingsley I guesed immediately.
Planting of clues, with the used of intercut closeups, was way too emphatic to pass muster. Florey of all people knew better, so I presume he just grit his teeth and plowed ahead with the task at hand.
Oberon is great to look at (they even turn her into a sweater girl near the end), but her one-note performance is poor, even if technically mandated by the script. She should be a multi-dimensional character, not merely a vain, pitiable handicapped person. Putting oneself into the context of the 1953 era, what woman wouldn't want to be Merle, bad hering andall! And casting as bland a leading man as possible as her husband is cheating and insulting -given the series it should have been Charles Boyer gaslighting her!