A bad film based on an intriguing concept can be entertaining if the viewer is in the mood to laugh at the bizarre results of its ineptitude. Rage in Heaven is not over-the-top awful enough to fall into the camp category but it brushes at its edges. Despite the starry cast, it has a "B" feel.
The plot itself offers numerous opportunities for strong audience engagement, all wasted. A wealthy man (Robert Montgomery), heir to a British steel manufacturing fortune, escapes from a Parisian mental institution where he has been admitted under the name of an old school chum of his (George Sanders). When the two subsequently cross paths in a hotel bar, Montgomery invites Sanders to a reunion at the palatial country estate of his mother (Lucile Watson). There they encounter Watson's recently hired companion/nurse (Ingrid Bergman). Both men fall in love with her, but she agrees to marry Montgomery for no apparent reason. Soon he begins perpetrating psychological cruelties on his bewildered, innocent bride (shades of "Rebecca," "Suspicion" and "Gaslight"), and on employees of the steel plant he is encouraged to helm by his ailing mother. He spends his time at the office doing crossword puzzles and firing any managers who disagree with his ill-conceived policies. If workers demand better housing or basic rights, he calls the police. But whenever he is confronted forcefully, he gives in like a wet noodle. Eventually he plots to kill both Bergman and Sanders whom he suspects of carrying on an affair behind his back, even though he goes out of his way to create situations where they will be alone together.
Montgomery, past his dapper youth, making no attempt at a British accent, gives a listless performance that is so inappropriate to the situations at hand that it occasionally works as "insanity" and one begins to think that he's on to something, but that something turns out to be no more than the proverbial broken clock that is correct twice a day. His character is more interesting as written than as enacted. It is based on the paranoid type: one who acts out by creating opposition and threats where there are none so that he can lash out against them, but is powerless against real obstacles that originate outside his own control.
Bergman takes the acting honors as the innocent "Continental European" wife who marries this man impulsively for no apparent reason, only to suffer from his cruelties. Sanders and Watson are passable. The hammiest performance comes from Oskar Homolka as a wacky psychiatrist from whose institution Montgomery had escaped at the beginning of the story. He reappears toward the end to tie up the plot in a most unconvincing manner.
W.S. Van Dkye II's style-free direction appears to consist of moving bodies in and out of rooms or to and from chairs, tables and beds. This was routine factory film-making at its most routine. Whoever was available was just assigned to duty with little thought given to the right mix of creative participants.
The plot itself offers numerous opportunities for strong audience engagement, all wasted. A wealthy man (Robert Montgomery), heir to a British steel manufacturing fortune, escapes from a Parisian mental institution where he has been admitted under the name of an old school chum of his (George Sanders). When the two subsequently cross paths in a hotel bar, Montgomery invites Sanders to a reunion at the palatial country estate of his mother (Lucile Watson). There they encounter Watson's recently hired companion/nurse (Ingrid Bergman). Both men fall in love with her, but she agrees to marry Montgomery for no apparent reason. Soon he begins perpetrating psychological cruelties on his bewildered, innocent bride (shades of "Rebecca," "Suspicion" and "Gaslight"), and on employees of the steel plant he is encouraged to helm by his ailing mother. He spends his time at the office doing crossword puzzles and firing any managers who disagree with his ill-conceived policies. If workers demand better housing or basic rights, he calls the police. But whenever he is confronted forcefully, he gives in like a wet noodle. Eventually he plots to kill both Bergman and Sanders whom he suspects of carrying on an affair behind his back, even though he goes out of his way to create situations where they will be alone together.
Montgomery, past his dapper youth, making no attempt at a British accent, gives a listless performance that is so inappropriate to the situations at hand that it occasionally works as "insanity" and one begins to think that he's on to something, but that something turns out to be no more than the proverbial broken clock that is correct twice a day. His character is more interesting as written than as enacted. It is based on the paranoid type: one who acts out by creating opposition and threats where there are none so that he can lash out against them, but is powerless against real obstacles that originate outside his own control.
Bergman takes the acting honors as the innocent "Continental European" wife who marries this man impulsively for no apparent reason, only to suffer from his cruelties. Sanders and Watson are passable. The hammiest performance comes from Oskar Homolka as a wacky psychiatrist from whose institution Montgomery had escaped at the beginning of the story. He reappears toward the end to tie up the plot in a most unconvincing manner.
W.S. Van Dkye II's style-free direction appears to consist of moving bodies in and out of rooms or to and from chairs, tables and beds. This was routine factory film-making at its most routine. Whoever was available was just assigned to duty with little thought given to the right mix of creative participants.