Wednesday, 7 May 2014
Shock (1946)
I picked this movie tonight because I had limited time and it was short. At least in terms of actual minutes (70), though it sure felt longer than that while I was watching it.
A young woman is waiting for her husband when she sees a man and a woman arguing in the next building. The man is asking for a divorce, but his wife isn't co-operating. Their argument grows more and more heated, until finally the man snatches up a silver candlestick and - off screen - kills his wife.
Because this is the sexism-friendly 40s and she's a woman, the witness promptly sinks into a catatonic state, from which her husband - when he arrives - is unable to waken her. So he arranges for her to get care from the best psychiatrist in the city.
It's such a shame that the best psychiatrist in the city has anger issues, and a very recently deceased wife ...
As setups go, it's not a terrible one at all. The film's problem is that having put the young woman in the clutches of the very man she saw commit murder ... nothing happens. For a long, long time. The whole momentum of the film just comes to an end for a good 45 minutes, before finally moving into the endgame with about 10 minutes still left in the run time.
Not a film I could recommend, even if it didn't have a creepy sense of apologism for the murderer of the piece. The script seems us to want to think he's not such a bad guy, he just has a temper, and ... well I hopefully don't need to explain what's wrong with that!
Labels:
Not Recommended,
S
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