Shadow of Fear

Mona Freeman comes back to her desirable mansion ,to be confronted to a stepmom's ominous plans ; the plot owes a lot to Daphné Du Maurier's "My cousin Rachel "; very nasty things happened when the poor unfortunate heiress was away;but it lacks Du Maurier's finesse and ambiguity; the action is too hurried for comfort and one knows or guesses almost everything from the start ; the screenwriters reveal the stepmom's true intentions much too soon and it spoils the suspense .You won't believe a single minute that the girl has turned an alcoholic overnight .

Nevertheless ,the movie possesses appeal for fans of female feuds :Jean Kent ,as the villain,effortlessly walks out with the honors.

The problem with this film is that Mona Freeman overdoes it from beginning to end, while Jean Kent stays calm and cool long enough to be more or less absolutely convincing. You tend to react against Mona's overreactions from the beginning, and it is unavoidable to come to think that she plays her cards as bad as possible, while in such a situation prudence would have been vital, especially since she has no proof at all, and the only proof that is ever produced appears after her supposed death. She is just a young immature girl who hasn't even come of age, while Jean Kent is a qualified nurse with a lifetime of experience. When all the cards at last are being shown in the end, you also have to wonder why no one in the entire village, including two qualified doctors, never even suspected the truth or could consider anything else than the palpable outward appearances. The script could have been made more subtle, and then the thriller could really have been something for Hitchcock, but as it is, Mona Feeman hopelessly falls in the category of amateurs, while Jean Kent remains unassailable as a very professional expert on intrigue. She was always good at ambiguous roles of clandestine deceit, and here she is also the expert at such role-play, while poor Mona Freeman definitely needs to grow up.

Mona Freeman comes home for her father's funeral in England -- her American accent explained by four years in college in California -- to find ice-cold Jean Kent her new stepmother. Jean purports to want to be chums, but Mona comes to the conclusion that Miss Kent had killed her father, and her mother earlier, and now intends to kill her, the principal heir of her father's estate.

Hitchcockian? Yes, indeed it is. Like NORTH BY NORTHWEST, it's filled with bits and bobs of oft-used Hitchcockian plot points. Miss Kent with her Mrs. Danvers coldness from REBECCA; the near-accident of the car going off the road, and the glass of milk from SUSPICION, the evil lurking in a nice market town, the blonde heroine... Choose your own tropes. They all reek of Hitchcock. Even the title is Hitchcockian.

However, director Albert Rogell never was Hitchcock, and the only suspense is supplied by Miss Kent's veneer, which the audience sees through immediately. It was Rogell's last movie as director. Neither does the shooting script permit cinematographer Jack Asher much in the way of the dazzling camerawork that Hitchcock used, beyond some tracking shots; even the murder attempts are shot conventionally. The result is a watchable thriller that does not extend the art of cinema, as Hitchcock so often did, nor the imagination of the audience.

For a British film noir with a far from famous cast, I have to say that the quality of BEFORE I WAKE (SHADOW OF FEAR in the UK) really amazes me, beginning with impeccable direction by Albert Rogell, who manages to keep the spectator on edge with Mona Freeman and Jean Kent appearing on the screen almost nonstop, engaging in razor-sharp dialogue. I liked the fact that Freeman never hid her suspicions about the former nurse now running the house that used to be hers, where everything has been changed, and former personnel dispatched since Freeman's departure to California.

Rogell extracts superb performances from the female leads (Jean Kent is truly memorable in her subtle evil; Maxwell Reed's name comes in second in the credits, but he has a far shorter and less significant part than the two women).

The action is so riveting that I was desperate to see what would happen in the end, as fate seems to stack things up against Freeman, who has already lost her parents very likely under Kent's murderous hand.

Reminiscent of REBECCA, with a house and inheritance at the heart, and exchanges reminiscent of the Joan Fontaine-Judith Anderson duel in the Hitchcock film. Naturally, Reed is no Olivier and Freeman no Fontaine (she is also clearly older than 20), but Kent is not the inferior of Anderson in this part.

Fit depiction of how small town gossip can turn locals against one, and tar one's good name, even one's mental condition.

Wonderful cinematography. Strongly recommended to anyone interested in film noir.

Though it's all entirely predicable, this, I still quite enjoyed it. "April" (Mona Freeman) returns home for the funeral of her father who was tragically killed in a boating accident. Her stepmother "Florence" (Jean Kent) shows all the outward signs of sympathy, but as the details of her father's death emerge, "April" beings to smell a rat. Things are only compounded when the reading of her father's will doesn't quite deliver what was expected! Is "Mona" just an hopeless paranoiac or might there really be danger? It's all just a little to rushed and convenient at the end, but the story is quite menacingly delivered by a jobbing cast rattling through a simple story of greed. Maxwell Reed features sparingly but adds very little to what is really a film about two strong women, some cigarettes and a few bottles of VSOP.