I'm putting a spoiler warning on this because you might feel it is somewhat spoiled. I do take careful pains not to give the best parts away.
I often wonder why James Mason isn't better remembered. I guess it is because he played so many gray or outright sinister characters in his career. He really was "the odd man out" career wise.
Here he plays a man giving a lecture in criminology on "sane" criminals. He tells the story of a brain surgeon who is permanently and unhappily married to his wife from whom he has been separated for years. And then one day into his cold therapeutic life comes a woman with a child who is going blind. Her maternal devotion touches him, as everything about her is different from his own estranged wife. He operates on the girl and says for the first time he feels nervous about it, because for the first time he is personally invested in a patient.
The girl recovers and he and the woman begin to spend time together outside the professional arena. They end the relationship when they both realize neither could ever be free - she is married too - and she especially doesn't want anything to negatively impact her only daughter. And then comes word that the woman has died by falling out of an upper story window in her home. The man investigates and realizes that her death was neither an accident nor straight up suicide, but that the guilty party could never be brought to justice under British law. So he plots a course to murder the person responsible which comes off without a hitch with the police never suspecting it even was a murder.
From the dramatization I have never seen such a cooperative murder victim. And then you realize that is because the murder has not happened yet. I'll let you watch and find out what really does happen and how it actually does happen.
I will say this much - at one point the murderer gives himself away because he takes it upon himself to help someone he did not have to help. He saves a life. The other person involved who finds him out calls him insane. But this other person is coldly indifferent to whether the person who is saved lives or dies. He was perfectly willing to let the person who lived just die, and advises the murderer to let it go too. Who is the worse person?
Produced by as well as starring James Mason, this one, produced outside the range of the American production code of the time, is worth seeing. Highly recommended. With Mason's own wife as the villainess.
I often wonder why James Mason isn't better remembered. I guess it is because he played so many gray or outright sinister characters in his career. He really was "the odd man out" career wise.
Here he plays a man giving a lecture in criminology on "sane" criminals. He tells the story of a brain surgeon who is permanently and unhappily married to his wife from whom he has been separated for years. And then one day into his cold therapeutic life comes a woman with a child who is going blind. Her maternal devotion touches him, as everything about her is different from his own estranged wife. He operates on the girl and says for the first time he feels nervous about it, because for the first time he is personally invested in a patient.
The girl recovers and he and the woman begin to spend time together outside the professional arena. They end the relationship when they both realize neither could ever be free - she is married too - and she especially doesn't want anything to negatively impact her only daughter. And then comes word that the woman has died by falling out of an upper story window in her home. The man investigates and realizes that her death was neither an accident nor straight up suicide, but that the guilty party could never be brought to justice under British law. So he plots a course to murder the person responsible which comes off without a hitch with the police never suspecting it even was a murder.
From the dramatization I have never seen such a cooperative murder victim. And then you realize that is because the murder has not happened yet. I'll let you watch and find out what really does happen and how it actually does happen.
I will say this much - at one point the murderer gives himself away because he takes it upon himself to help someone he did not have to help. He saves a life. The other person involved who finds him out calls him insane. But this other person is coldly indifferent to whether the person who is saved lives or dies. He was perfectly willing to let the person who lived just die, and advises the murderer to let it go too. Who is the worse person?
Produced by as well as starring James Mason, this one, produced outside the range of the American production code of the time, is worth seeing. Highly recommended. With Mason's own wife as the villainess.