A Hiena da 5ª Avenida

This is an ordinary chamber play all taking place in one house, but it is astoundingly efficient especially staged on film that by appalling close-ups turns it into one of the ghastliest nightmares ever rendered alive, mainly because of perhaps the grisliest female characters in film history played by Mary Morris in all too convincing horror. She is just a kind old lady that wishes everybody well, no one can but believe the best of her, everyone trusts her, but she has an obsession: a heritage of a precious pearl necklace, that she doesn't want to part with, when her younger brother imperils her control of the estate when he marries, so she does anything to prevent that marriage, in a positive warfare campaign of intrigues verging on virtuosity. It's a masterful play, and its screening does it more than justice, as Charles Vidor successfully underscores and enhances all the effects, that constantly keep piling up to ever more overwhelming strokes of innovation. No wonder the play kept Broadway on edge. In character it reminds a little of J. B. Priestley's "An Inspector Calls", but this is much more gruesome. In short. It's a killer.