The Two Mrs. Carrolls: Peter Godfrey

Peter Godfrey's The Two Mrs. Carrolls would make an excellent double feature with Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place (1950). Both films feature stunning performances by Humphrey Bogart as a mentally unstable artist who is finally driven to violence over his affection towards a beautiful woman. But whereas Dix Steele is a tragic figure seemingly doomed by fate to destroy everything he loves, Geoffrey Carroll is legitimately mentally ill. He has developed a habit wherein he falls in love with a beautiful woman, becomes temporarily endowed with tremendous inspiration and clarity of artistic vision, and suddenly loses his creative spark whereupon he falls in love with yet another woman, restarting the cycle. Unfortunately for the first woman, he believes that once they have served their purpose, they must be disposed of. Enter Sally Morton (Barbara Stanwyck), Carroll's second wife. The film watches as Sally gradually figures out Carroll's terrible secret, successfully creating an enormous amount of dread and suspense. This works in large part because we don't get any clear confirmation that Carroll is a murderer until later in the film. Stanwyck is, as always, incredible. However, there is one exception to an otherwise flawless performance: there is a painful scene where Godfrey lost his nerve and resorted to using second-person narration to explain how Sally figured out Carroll's secret. This scene has Stanwyck standing still and staring obliquely off-screen as her own voice taunts her with her revelations. Watching Stanwyck twist her face in silent agony for 10 or so seconds is simply uncomfortable. Maybe a silent actress could have pulled it off. But the scene clashes with Stanwyck's otherwise bombastic acting style. But there is much to love in The Two Mrs. Carrolls: the use of church bells to underline decaying mental clarity, sumptuous cinematography by J. Peverell Marley, a haunted performance by Bogart, and a wonderful scene near the end where Carroll breaks through a window and throws the massive curtains behind him in an entrance that makes one think of Dracula tossing his cape over his shoulders as he prepares to prey on an innocent young woman.

7/10