Dir: George Stevens | Joan Fontaine, Ray Milland, Teresa Wright, Richard Derr | US Drama
The presence of Ray Milland prompts comparisons with The Lost Weekend, but it’s emphasis of the relationship between two mature professional people (and the lush score by Victor Young) makes it resemble a more mellow ‘Days of Wine and Roses’ (although the suspiciously short running time suggests the intervention of the censor).
Despite the star power of its leads (Fontaine, in particular, was never more appealing), the production values (especially George Barnes’ incredible photography), and the fact that George Stevens made it between A Place in the Sun and Shane, Andrew Sarris managed to entirely omit this very low-keyed soap opera with asides about problem drinking from his entry on Stevens in his seminal book ‘American Cinema’. Such lack of ostentation links it to Stevens’ other postwar chamber pieces I Remember Mama (1948) and his final film, The Only Game in Town (1969), another film few people have seen. @RichardChatten