An Act of Murder

This film's relentless plotline marches straight-ahead forward as you squirm, fascinated, in your chair. The story is the familiar one about the onset of terminal illness within a solid American family of the 1940s. Never mind that it delves into MGM-style sermonizing; the great real-life husband/wife team of Fredric March and Florence Eldridge portray the couple whose once-comfortable lives are now being separated by an unstoppable and fast-advancing disease. The helpless husband, the uncomplaining wife, and their final attempt to recapture happier days with a doomed weekend outing is the stuff of deep film drama indeed. The sense of onrushing darkness is tangible through the film-noir camera shadings of Hal Mohr (Captain Blood, Phantom of the Opera [1943], The Climax), and Daniele Amfitheatrof's rich musical score. "An Act of Murder" makes a profound statement on the value, and the fragility, of life.

Caught this tough 1948 drama on TCM, which seems to have been out of circulation for a while. It's about a tough, by-the-book judge (Fredric March) who discovers his wife (Florence Eldridge, March's real-life spouse) has a fatal, painful disease, and rather clumsily plots a mercy killing. This means that for much of the film's length we have to watch Eldridge suffer, suffer, and it's quite uncomfortable viewing. There are plot conveniences that one other poster lists, and also the debatable position posed by the family doctor (Stanley Ridges, also good) that Eldridge should be lied to about her prognosis. Hal Mohr's photography thrusts itself deep into the Marches' anguish, and plot and subplot are contrivedly merged when Edmond O'Brien, as the liberal attorney who's romancing the Marches' daughter (Geraldine Brooks), injects himself into March's murder trial. Then there's some unconvincing, unsolvable philosophizing about euthanasia, and fadeout. I find a number of faults: Daniel Amfitheatrof's hyperactive musical score, which needlessly underlines everything, and was there ever a less appealing juvenile than pudgy, charmless Edmond O'Brien? But the issues are real, the debate is tense, and Mr. and Mrs. March are superb. Now if only TCM would find a way to show their other excellent co-starring vehicle from back then, also Universal and also directed by Michael Gordon, "Another Part of the Forest."

There's something quite remarkable at the heart of this honest and direct portrayal of a very human crisis. The leads here - Frederic March and Florence Eldridge, real-life husband and wife - are completely and thoroughly a middle-aged couple and depicted as such, in all their wrinkles and folds and reflections on lives that have been lived. It's a reminder that the two kinds of people we see in movies are the very young and beautiful and the very old. The Cookes here are seemingly fully filled in, a husband and wife with grown children, in the midst of real lives, inhabiting their marriage with the deep love that is far beyond the romantic love that's the staple of motion pictures. This isn't the dashing Frederic March of the 1930s but a mature, restrained father and husband. It's a bit melodramatic at times - director Michael Gordon is a journeyman professional and not William Wyler, director of the great film of that era starring March, The Best Years of Our LIves. But watch for the details, such as the sharp, discordant strings stabbing along as windshield wipers swipe across the screen. I think I saw that in another movie made a few years later.

Preachy moralizing on a downbeat subject, "An Act of Murder" is somewhat redeemed by outstanding performances by Frederic March and his actress wife, Florence Eldridge. A strict judge is faced with a moral dilemma, when his wife of 20 years is struck with a fatal disease that is incurable and increasingly painful. Most of the film's running time deals with the judge's home and work life, his daughter's relationship with an attorney the judge dislikes, and visits to a doctor, who is a personal friend of the couple.

Movies about terminal illness are often cloying TV fodder and difficult to endure; few are entertaining and tolerable like "Dark Victory," in which Bette Davis overcame a dire prognosis by sheer force of her personality. Directed by Michael Gordon and adapted from a novel by Ernst Lothar, this low-budget film does avoid maudlin moments and is no tearjerker. Eldridge as Catherine Cooke faces her crisis with courage and dignity, even while her symptoms worsen and her health declines. March's Judge Calvin Cooke stoically witnesses his wife's pain and addresses the imminent loss of his partner without self pity. However, the story reaches tedious sermonizing during a climactic courtroom scene. Edmund O'Brien, who plays the daughter's improbable love interest, steps into the court proceedings to make a point, after which a judge, portrayed by John McIntire, delivers a lesson about heart in the law, and March closes the film by declaring himself a changed man.

To say that "An Act of Murder" is entertaining is a bit of a stretch given the subject matter. To say that the film's moral teaching is groundbreaking would be untrue for most people. However, the sensitive portrayal of a loving couple facing loss after twenty years of marriage acted out by a loving couple after twenty years of their own marriage is reason enough to endure the sermonizing.

There has been no shortage of films in recent decades dealing with the highly emotive subject of Euthanasia but such was not always the case.

Although Willi Forst's 'The Sinner' from 1951 is generally credited with breaking the taboo, he was beaten to it by Richard Pottier's 'Meutres' a year earlier whilst devoted cinephiles will no doubt be aware of Wolfgang Liebeneiner's controversial 'I accuse' from 1941 which has been airbrushed out of film history because of its promotion of the Aktion T4 Euthanasia programme. The most effective episode of a mediocre British film from 1954 called 'Front Page Story' features a trial of a wife accused of 'mercy killing'.

Imagine one's surprise therefore to stumble across this novelty from Hollywood of the late 1940's adapted from Ernst Lothar's novel 'The Mills of God' and directed by Michael Gordon before he fell foul of the confounded HUAC.

Although a courageous, gripping and very well made film with committed performances from its first rate cast, it has been obliged neither to condemn nor condone the actions of a Judge who can longer bear to see his beloved wife suffer from a devastating and terminal disease. The final speech delivered by the brilliant Fredric March in which he declares that although legally innocent of murder he remains morally guilty, very much reflects the ethical and religious sensibilities of the time and the need not to offend them!