Corridor of Mirrors (Terence Young, 1948)

Edana Romney and Eric Portman in Corridor of Mirrors

Cast: Edana Romney, Eric Portman, Barbara Mullen, Hugh Sinclair, Bruce Belfrage, Alan Wheatley, Joan Maude, Leslie Weston, Hugh Latimer, John Penrose, Christopher Lee, Lois Maxwell, Mavis Villiers, Thora Hird. Screenplay: Rudolph Cartier, Edana Romney, based on a novel by Christopher Massie. Cinematography: André Thomas. Production design: Serge Piménoff. Costume design: Owen Hyde-Clark, Maggy Rouff. Film editing: Douglas Myers. Music: Georges Auric. 

As a study in erotic decadence, Corridor of Mirrors courts (and has received) comparison to any number of stories, films, and fables, including Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast (1946), Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (filmed by Albert Lewin in 1945), and the French legend of Bluebeard and his wives. When we first meet her, Mifanwy Conway (Edana Romney) seems like a petulant young woman, catered to by her husband, Sir David Conway (Bruce Belfrage) and more than happy to escape from her three noisy young children to go to an assignation with her lover at, of all places, Madame Tussauds wax museum in London. She tours the museum until she comes to the effigy of Paul Mangin (Eric Portman) in the hall of criminals; he was hanged for the murder of Caroline Hart (Joan Maude), a night club singer. From here the story unfolds in flashback: Before she is married, Mifanwy meets Paul in the night club. He is attracted by her dark beauty and she by his mysterious aloofness. She goes to his opulent mansion, where her explorations take her to a hall lined with mirrored doors, behind each of which she finds a figure of a woman in an elaborate Renaissance costume. As their relationship develops, he eventually unveils for her a portrait of a 15th century Italian woman who looks exactly like Mifanwy, and claims that they were lovers in a past life. She also encounters a mysterious woman named Veronica (Barbara Mullen) who resides in his mansion and asserts that she, too, was once his lover, now relegated to the role of servant. This is all a little too spooky for Mifanwy, who finds that taking up with the comparatively normal David gives her a break from Paul's sinister ways. But she's drawn back again, with calamitous results. That Corridor of Mirrors stands up at all to the comparisons with the other tales is in large part because of the sumptuous settings and costumes, the atmospheric cinematography, and an only occasionally overbearing score by Georges Auric. What it lacks is the wit that Cocteau and Wilde brought to their fables, and any real chemistry between its leading players, Portman and Romney. Portman plays Paul with the stiffness of his effigy at Madame Tussauds, and Romney, who also wrote the screenplay with Rudolph Cartier and served as co-producer with him, doesn't have the range or depth as an actress to bring off such a complex role. It was her third film and her last. On the other hand, it was the first film for Terence Young as director; he went on to launch the James Bond series with Dr. No (1962), and made two more movies with Sean Connery as Bond, From Russia With Love (1963) and Thunderball (1965).