La mort n'était pas au rendez-vous

Richard Mason (Humphrey Bogart) kills his wife Katherine on a remote hill road. With a good alibi he feels it is the perfect crime and plays the role of the concerned husband as the police follow up a missing persons report. However things begin happening that convince Richard that his wife is very much alive.

This is not a classic Bogart role. He is quite good as the murderer who begins to unravel as his crime begins to catch up with him, he quite convincingly gets increasingly frantic during the film as things keeping happening that couldn't happen unless his wife was alive. However it isn't as strong a role as some of his classics. The strongest performance is Sydney Greenstreet as Doctor Hamilton who supports Bogart through his loss.

The story requires on two mysteries to keep your interest - one, is his wife still alive or is he being played by someone with an ulterior motive? and two - will he get away with the murder? As a mystery it doesn't quite grab you as much as it should. The two mysteries are not enough to drive you until the end but are quite entertaining - especially where Bogart believes he is losing his mind when someone plays games with him. But it's not that great a mystery - we know that either she's alive or she's not - the options are limited so the solution doesn't exactly come out of left-field! The ending is therefore not great, although it is clever, in particular finding out the mistake that Bogart made in his otherwise perfect crime. But it's all a bit of an anti-climax and you feel that you suspected as much the whole way through.

A reasonable mystery film but it doesn't have the tension or mystery that it needed to keep it's audience on a knife's edge for the duration