Sylvia Russel is akin to Harriet Craig ,one of Joan Crawford's triumphs (1950) ; and Sonia Dresdel's impressive performance compares favorably with her American colleague's.
Sylvia is even more terrifying than Harriet: if eyes could kill ,hers certainly would."Mother's always watching us, her eyes are X rays ". She's a monster , a mentally-ill person , a frustrated woman who hates mediocrity (represented by her meek husband's world which consists of his dog and his roses),who wants power and uses the others as puppets .
She's got everything to live a comfortable bourgeois life: her son and her son-in-law are both doctors .But a routine life does not satisfy her ,the coming of handsome Austin makes her even more destructive .
But it had begun before: a woman asking the vet to put a good old dog to sleep? A mother who warns her daughter against her husband? Who urges her maid to seduce her son-in-law by making her read "lady Chatterley's lover",a book forbidden in the UK till 1960 (an under-the- counter French edition : the novel was first tranferred to the screen by Yves Allégret in 1955 in this country ,but in a chaste way)?
Sylvia gets her kicks by destroying her family's life ; you should see her sweetly smile when she sees her "power" on the others .
This is first-rate film noir ; Sonia Dresdel's piercing eyes (when she watches her sick husband , they will give you the jitters)will haunt you after the viewing .Try to forget them!
