El caso Arnelo

The Arnelo Affair has John Hodiak in the title role of a nightclub owner with tax troubles getting an affair going with his lawyer's wife Frances Gifford.

Frances is a woman with an itch and Hodiak is quite willing to scratch it. But as it turns out he's doing a bit of two timing himself on actress Joan Woodbury. Later on when Woodbury is murdered Hodiak is on the short list of Detective Warner Anderson suspects, but so is Gifford.

This film is a great example of the Code strangling the creativity of film making. Today it would be quite explicitly filmed with proper sex scenes in their place.

George Murphy played Gifford's husband and his is a strangely underwritten role. If I were doing the film and being that Hodiak is having tax troubles, when Murphy does find out there are hundreds of creative ways he could have done Hodiak good and proper.

Eve Arden is in the film in an Eve Arden part. Though in this one she's sporting a hint of jealousy that Hodiak isn't giving her a tumble. That too should have been brought out more.

The Arnelo Affair if someone decides to remake it has lots of room for improvement.

In The Arnelo Affair, the letter `A' keeps cropping up again and again - as a monogram on a dressing gown, a compact, a key. Ostensibly it signifies one of the two main characters: Tony Arnelo (John Hodiak ), a predatory nightclub owner, or Ann Parkson (Frances Gifford), wife of Arnelo's square-rigger of an attorney (George Murphy). But really the `A' serves to remind us that the story is chiefly about the Scarlet Letter of Adultery - the Affair of the title.

The movie's sinister, noirish elements are not quite an afterthought, but almost. During the first half of the movie, ignored and restive, Gifford sulks nobly in the household she shares with Murphy, forever working late on his legal briefs, and her nine-year-old son (Dean Stockwell) who thinks he could benefit from psychoanalysis. (She, however, may be a riper candidate for the couch, given as she is to swoons and passive-aggressive feigned headaches.)

When smooth-talking Hodiak flatters her and hires her as decorator, she obliges and soon finds herself with the key to his apartment and an inclination to use it for naughtier purposes than updating the chintz. But she soon finds out that Hodiak has many another slip in which to dock his dinghy; and when one of his stable of lady friends is found murdered, Gifford's initialed compact is found with the body. With the prompting of police detective Warner Anderson, Murphy is jolted out of his complacency and sets out to find the truth....

Like The Unfaithful of the same year (a sweetened-up remake of The Letter), The Arnelo Affair seems geared to the women in its audience, more a weeper than a noir. Even the redoubtable Eve Arden, as a dress-designing upstairs neighbor, gets paraded out as much for her eye-popping post-war get-ups as for her trademark mordant lines (and she's a welcome foil to all Gifford's suffering saintliness). The Arnelo Affair holds interest, if slackly; its director, Arch Oboler, hadn't much of a feel for the possibilities inherent in the script or the knack for bringing them out. It's telling that the most memorable characters in the movie are not the principals but Anderson, Arden and the nine-year-old Stockwell.

You want to scream at the character as she stumbles into an obvious man hole, lacking the minimal effort it would take to prevent it. But, that's the storyline. Once you see that happening, you have the choice to either turn it off or put up with it to the finish. I did the latter.

Gifford had to be at the height of her beauty in this - flawless. Obviously, hubby got over it, as makes a case for beauty being only skin deep, and she sure was passive.

George Murphy is one of those "leading men" that cause you to scratch your head and figure it must have been who was available at the time after better choices were not.

John Hodiak is contemptible, as was his usual film persona. Our heroine is repulsed, but drawn to him; again, the frustrating element that sadly made up the story.

I think Eve Arden does help in this. She's always a refresher, and did relieve the intensity. Actually, she seemed to have a fuller part than usual.

The child's situation, again, was frustrating to watch. Why didn't this dame get her focus off herself, get actively involved in her child's life, school, friends, volunteer work, learn to make potholders - anything to get herself off the severely underemployed roster.

But, that's the way of this type of story, and once bit, you have to endure to the cure. I wouldn't say not to see this, but if you are easily frustrated, better skip it.

FRANCES GIFFORD had one of the best roles of her career as the troubled wife of lawyer GEORGE MURPHY in THE ARNELO AFFAIR, but the director fails to get more than worried looks and a coma-like expression that she wears most of the time--while looking very beautiful. Facially, she bears a strong resemblance here to Donna Reed.

She's a woman who feels neglected by her busy husband and falls prey to the flattery of a womanizing man (JOHN HODIAK) who later kills a woman and sets up Gifford as the murderess. Only through the keen detective work of a doggedly determined officer (WARNER ANDERSON) and the gradual realization of her husband that she's been seeing Hodiak, do the deceptive Hodiak's schemes fall apart as clues are unraveled. EVE ARDEN, as a dress designer friend of the heroine, has her usual quips but none of them are particularly inventive.

It's strictly a B-film that has all the MGM gloss but falters because of a weak script and a poorly directed actress in the leading role. Miss Gifford gives a bland performance in a role that calls for more than close-ups of a fixed expression.

Hodiak is fine as the cunning predator and nine year old DEAN STOCKWELL is lively as Gifford's loving son. GEORGE MURPHY is unable to do much with the role of the neglectful husband, a thankless role that he plays in stolid style.

A relentlessly glum 86-minutes. I don't know who's to blame for Gifford's unrelieved stony face, but it's like she and Hodiak are having a dour-off to see who can be more expressionless. As a romantic couple, they have all the charm and plausibility of robots. Even the usually affable Murphy gets little chance to beguile. Between that and a relentlessly talky script, the movie takes an unfortunate nose-dive into monotony.

The premise is pretty standard crime fare—a neglected wife (Gifford) is drawn from her comfortable shell by a handsome shady character (Hodiak). Since the wife's also a mother, she struggles with the temptation, but is constantly reminded how neglected she is by her lawyer husband (Murphy). Soon a murder connected to Hodiak occurs. Now a potential scandal hangs over the luckless Gifford's and her attempt break with the heartless Hodiak.

Writer-director Oboler was an interesting talent. His background in radio, however, shows up in the talky script. But he was also capable of fascinating flashes of imagination as in the post-apocalyptic Five (1951) and the psychodrama Bewitched (1945). I suspect he was hemmed in here by requirements from the notoriously conservative MGM. Thanks to that airbrushed studio, we can't even be sure there was an actual affair between the wife and the practiced seducer. That way, the wayward wife doesn't have to be punished more than she is, and audiences could go home feeling good.

Too bad RKO didn't produce this. That way, Oboler might have been drawn in a noirish direction, which the material richly deserves. Anyway, only the presence of sassy cynic Eve Arden and canny kid Dean Stockwell lend the film any spark. I especially like that scene with dad Murphy and son Stockwell fixing the broken stool. That showed needed life and imagination. Too bad the rest of the movie doesn't.