Joan Bennett and James Mason star in "The Reckless Moment," a 1949 film directed by Max Ophuls and featuring Geraldine Brooks and Shepperd Strudwick.
I actually saw the remake of this movie, The Deep End, with Tilda Swinton and Goran Visjnic of "ER" fame. Both films are excellent, though the emphasis in each is slightly different.
Bennett plays Lucia Harper, mother of two, a teenage daughter and a younger son. Her husband works out of town currently - he appears to be an engineer - so Lucia has to hold it all together for her family, which includes her father. They have a house on the beach and lead a comfortable life, but her family needs and depends on her in every way.
Lucia doesn't like Darby,(Strudwick) the man her daughter Bea (Brooks) is seeing -- he's older than she is and seems on the sleazy side. She goes to see him in Los Angeles and asks him to stay away. Darby is happy to, for a price. When Lucia relates this to Bea, Bea doesn't believe her and that night, sneaks off to meet him in the family boathouse. When she learns that he did indeed want money, she hits him and runs away. He chases her, becomes woozy from being hit, and falls through an insecure railing to his death. I believe he impales himself on an anchor, as he did in the remake, but truthfully I couldn't see that shot clearly enough.
Lucia finds the body and, not knowing it was an accident, gets Darby into the family boat and dumps it in a lagoon; Bea doesn't know Darby is dead until the following day, when his body is found and the police and press descend. Bea becomes hysterical and Lucia has to calm her.
That should be the end of it but a man named Donnelly (James Mason) appears demanding $5000, on behalf of a man named Nagel, for letters that Bea wrote Darby. Lucia is frantic - how can she get her hands on that kind of money without raising her family's suspicion? Seeing the stress she's under and her protectiveness, Donnelly is moved by her plight.
This particular version of the story focuses on thin veneer of normalcy that Lucia operates under, and he emphasizes this by having her son ask innocuous questions constantly, her daughter's hysteria throughout the film, and all the while, her father takes to the blackmailing Donnelly and invites him for drinks and dinner. It also focuses on the veneer of the class system that was quickly fading after World War II. For Lucia, going to a bar, a pawn shop, a loan company, for her to even admit she needs money, is difficult. And ultimately she confides in her black maid and needs her help. Joan Bennett, with her educated accent and sophistication, does a marvelous job of portraying this as well as the stress of Lucia's life.
One couldn't ask for a better actor than James Mason as Donnelly. His presence, his voice, his attractiveness give him a veneer of respectability, but he's quick to point out he's not of Lucia's class. "She's lucky to have a mother like you," he tells Lucia about Bea. "Everybody has a mother like me," Lucia snaps. "You probably had one yourself." They become partners to satisfy the cruel Nagel.
Max Ophuls keeps the atmosphere dark and the suspense tight throughout the film, juxtaposing the bright home with the inquisitive, bothersome teenage boy and the relaxed father with the dark and foreboding beach front and lonely roads. Very powerful.
In the "Deep End," the story has been modernized - the son is gay, and the focus is on the character of the mother more than what she has to cope with, in my opinion -- it's a fascinating character study. And her connection to Visjnic is explored more.
I highly recommend both versions of this film, each on its own merits.
