Shadow of Fear

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.

This British thriller benefits from a solid she versus she conflict between wonderfully evil Jean Kent and empathy-inducing threatened damsel Mona Freeman, but the screenplay piles on way too obvious details, events and behavior under the guise of "suspense". Other than one quality red herring (the ambiguous hero playing Mona's doctor/boyfriend), the movie plays on a single note: the heroine's growing paranoia is anything but that -she's being constantly set up to be Jean's next victim.

Kent's acting is only matched on film by such greats as Dame Judith Anderson, who had the same uncanny ability to appear placid and even perfectly reasonable on the surface, while hiding malevolence under the surface. The movie would have been far more successful had there been some possiblity that Mona's character was imagining things, rather than spoon feeding the viewer a constant stream of evidence that her suppositions are all true. The story's final twist and instant happy ending don't ring true at all.

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.

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.

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.