Douglas Sirk - Sleep, My Love (1948)

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Though dismissed by Sirk himself, and far from equal to his superb work of the mid to late '50s, this is a fine thriller in the Gaslight mould, with Colbert's demise being planned by her apparently loving husband Ameche. From the opening moments aboard a train rushing through the night, the tension is kept up by taut pacing and Joseph Valentine's expressionist photography, giving rise to a suitably nightmarish evocation of insanity and shifting appearances; while the acting is strong throughout, nowhere more so than a sinister Coulouris as a bogus psychiatrist.
-- GA, Time Out Film Guide 13

Sleep, My Love is Douglas Sirk's crack at Gaslight. Dabbling in drugs and Mesmerism, Don Ameche rigs up psychotic "episodes" starring his wife, Claudette Colbert, so he can inherit her money. Befriended by Robert Cummings during one of these arranged "fugue" states, she unwittingly enlists an ally whose affections, and suspicions, grow. (The film takes on inadvertent Charlie Chan overtones when Cummings goes sleuthing with his blood-brother Keye Luke, who often played the Honolulu detective's eldest offspring.)
Unlike Cukor's claustrophobic Gaslight, with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer, Sleep, My Love is less psychologically nuanced and more plot-driven. It benefits from Hazel Brooks, delivering an icily stylized vamp turn as The Other Woman; she appeared in one other noir, Body and Soul, during her disappointing brief career. George Couloris (the guardian in Citizen Kane) adds color as a confederate of Ameche's, while Raymond Burr is wasted as a minion of the law.
That leaves the three principals as well as some problems. The amicable Ameche can't summon up the cold, controlling menace that Boyer spread through Gaslight; his adversary, the equally amicable Cummings, succumbs to terminal blandness. Colbert is more problematic. Unlike the languorous, instinctive Bergman, she made her name in part due to her quick wits; you can't buy her as a submissive wifey who hasn't cottoned on to her husband's philandering -- at the very least -- without having it spelled out to her by Cummings, whose acumen seems as low-wattage as his star power. (On the other hand, she was to find herself in a similar pickle the next year in The Secret Fury.) Sirk's direction here, as in Lured, lacks the distinctiveness he showed in his other noir, Shockproof, and was to develop lushly in the haut-fifties melodramas like Written on the Wind for which he is justly renowned.
-- bmacv, imdb reviewer

As the latest arrival on an extremely long line of psychological melodramas, "Sleep, My Love" is a sleek entry which manages to run its course without coming a cropper. An intelligent script, facilely handled, for the most part, helps matters along but a general lack of suspense, familiar plot and somewhat uneven direction keep "Sleep, My Love," which came to the Criterion yesterday, a fairly obvious chapter in cinema psychology.
Whether the hypnotic procedures used by the producers will gratify the Adler, Jung and Freud schools or give those professional gentlemen an aggravated anxiety neurosis, is hard to say. Suffice it to say that this excursion has a young matron being slowly driven mad by her husband. This sly citizen, hoping his spouse will eventually commit suicide and thereby leave him free to marry a sexy Lilith, keeps doping her cocoa nightcap and suggesting all sorts of frightening things to the lady in her drugged state.
As the harried mistress of a fashionable Sutton Place establishment, Claudette Colbert gives a convincing portrayal of the terrified and mystified lady. Hazel Brooks, as the siren who is the reason for all this scientific skulduggery; George Coulouris, as the malevolent, phony psychiatrist, and Robert Cummings, as Miss Colbert's helpful and inquisitive vis-a-vis, lend able support. It is rather difficult to judge whether Don Ameche's characterization as the husband is a distillate of script and direction. But the truth of the matter is that he hardly runs the gamut of emotions, his portrait being merely one of square-jawed, stony-faced determination. As the first Mary Pickford presentation in a very long while, "Sleep, My Love" can be marked down as a generally competent job, which has its absorbing moments but which hasn't strayed much from the norm.
-- NYT, February 19, 1948

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Monday, May 10, 2010

Douglas Sirk - Sleep, My Love (1948)

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