So Evil My Love (Lewis Allen, 1948)

Ray Milland and Ann Todd in So Evil My Love

Cast: Ray Milland, Ann Todd, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Leo G. Carroll, Raymond Huntley, Raymond Lovell, Martita Hunt, Moira Lister, Roderick Lovell, Muriel Aked. Screenplay: Ronald Millar, Leonard Spiegelgass, based on a novel by Joseph Shearing. Cinematography: Mutz Greenbaum. Production design: Thomas N. Morahan. Film editing: Vera Campbell. Music: William Alwyn. 

So Evil My Love needs a better actress than the starchy Ann Todd to make its central premise work, that a respectable Victorian widow of an Anglican missionary would fall so hard for a handsome cad that she'd do anything from larceny to murder for him. It could also have used a more charismatic cad than Ray Milland in the role. We meet Olivia Harwood (Todd) on a ship returning to England from Jamaica, where she has buried her husband. When the ship's doctor asks her to help nurse some malaria patients on board, she agrees -- a little reluctantly, which is perhaps a sign that she's not as sweetly complaisant as she might be. One of the patients is traveling under the name Mark Bellis (Milland), which may not be his real name: He's an artist who makes his living by stealing valuable paintings and forging Rembrandts. A spark is lit between them, although we don't really see it because the actors have so little chemistry, and when they get back to London, Bellis makes his way to her doorstep. She owns a small house and lets out rooms, one of which he takes, though under the disapproving eye of her other tenant, the ostentatiously proper Miss Shoebridge (Muriel Aked). When Olivia allows Bellis to paint her, in an off-the-shoulder peasant blouse, she relaxes her defenses and passion blossoms -- or what passes for it in the screenplay if not on the screen. Meanwhile, Olivia makes contact with an old school friend, Susan Courtney (Geraldine Fitzgerald), who is unhappily married to the wealthy and domineering Henry Courtney (Raymond Huntley). Susan has confessed her unhappiness, and her love for another man, Sir John Curle (Roderick Lovell), in letters to Olivia. When the affair between Bellis and Olivia develops, he finds the letter and sees the possibility of blackmailing Courtney, who is in line for a peerage that would be derailed by scandal. Under Bellis's spell, Olivia gets deeper and deeper into a plot that turns lethal. There's potential for real heat in the story, but miscast leads and a talky script undo it. 

Desert Fury (Lewis Allen, 1947)

 

Cast: John Hodiak, Lizabeth Scott, Burt Lancaster, Wendell Corey, Mary Astor. Screenplay: Robert Rossen, based on a novel by Ramona Stewart. Cinematography: Edward Cronjager, Charles Lang. Art direction: Perry Ferguson. Film editing: Warren Low. Music: Miklós Rózsa. 

Where there’s a desert there are going to be rattlesnakes, and the one in Desert Fury is full of them, hissing and showing their fangs. The opening scenes of the movie are so full of poisonous dialogue and hostile conversations that you wonder how anyone survives in the small Nevada town of Chuckawalla. Chief among the serpents is Fritzi Haller (Mary Astor), who runs a casino and tries to run the life of her rebellious 19-year-old daughter, Paula (Lizabeth Scott), who has a tendency to get involved with the wrong men. Eddie Bendix (John Hodiak) couldn’t be wronger, a gambler and racketeer whose wife recently died under suspicious circumstances and who also used to be involved with Fritzi. Now he makes a play for Paula, which not only upsets Fritzi but also irks his … well, what is Johnny Ryan (Wendell Corey)? Eddie’s sidekick? His factotum? His fall guy? When we see Johnny sitting on the patio with a shirtless Eddie we may get other ideas, especially when Paula shows up and Johnny treats her with contempt – as, we find out, he did Eddie’s late wife. The coded gay relationship only becomes more obvious when we find out that the two men first met in Times Square, where Johnny bought the down-and-out Eddie breakfast at the Automat and then took him home with him. The only apparent good guy in Chuckawalla’s nest of vipers is Tom Hanson (Burt Lancaster), a former rodeo rider who after a disabling accident moved there and became a deputy sheriff. Tom is such a good guy that he takes off his badge before he slugs Eddie and refuses Fritzi’s offer to set him up with a ranch if he’ll marry Paula and get her away from Eddie. All of this is familiar film noir stuff, even in glorious Technicolor, but it would take a Douglas Sirk to figure out how to make it good. Lewis Allen is not up to the task, and he’s hampered by the acting limitations of Scott and Hodiak. Astor and Corey (making his debut in a film career that never quite panned out) are fine, and Lancaster does what he can with a fairly thankless role. But too often, Allen seems to be letting Miklós Rózsa’s somewhat overbearing score tell the story.