A Night of Terror

An extraordinarily entertaining thriller. The acting is melodramatic, and rightly so. A clever plot by Agatha Christie (how could it be otherwise?) keeps things moving along at a rapid clip. Two wonderful players -- Basil Rathbone and Ann Harding -- give bravura over-the-top performances that are breathtaking in their high-wire daring. Ann Harding especially was a revelation -- a gorgeous blonde with poise and class who had beautiful diction -- an American mid-Atlantic "Seven Sisters" voice that was as melodious as a cello. Basil Rathbone never ceases to amaze. Here, he is frightening and charming simultaneously. And two cheers for the Art Deco furnishings that grace one scene. Were those Lalique glass-paneled doors?

Love from a Stranger (1937)

*** (out of 4)

A poor woman (Ann Harding) wins the lottery and soon she's swept off her feet by a nice man (Basil Rathbone) but after they're married she begins to think he has a few secrets including murder. Director Rowland V. Lee does a good job on this story by Agatha Christie and builds some nice atmosphere, which helps matters. Harding is very good in her role but the real key here is Rathbone who, as later in Son of Frankenstein, goes through a nervous breakdown, which is wonderful to watch. Some might call it over the top but I think he does a good job at showing the character losing his mind. Some slow segments hamper the film but the ending certainly makes up for that.

Once this gets moving, it's a good thriller with an interesting story that is well worth watching. It has a good cast, led by Basil Rathbone and Ann Harding. The last half of it builds up the suspense very nicely in leading up to a tense climax.

The story is a fairly straightforward one about a young woman who is swept away by a charming man, and then quickly marries him, but then begins to wonder if he is really what he seems to be. The first part is rather slow in setting everything up (the Agatha Christie story on which the play and movie are based is much more economical, and just as suspenseful), but stick with it, because the last part is more than worth waiting for. It squeezes quite a bit out of the possibilities that the situation offers, and you'll definitely want to find out what happens.

I love Basil Rathbone. He made a wonderful Holmes. Too bad the scripts didn't match the performance. But that's another issue. Here he plays a type of Bluebeard who marries women who come into money and then bumps them off. He is a mass of psychoses, depression, and a bad ticker. He goes from being suave and successful, to maudlin and manic. A modern psychologist would have a field day. The tension that builds as he goes through his rant is a little like Jack Nicholson in "The Shining." There's a moment where the bride becomes cognizant of the fact that she is married to a lunatic. And, of course, she had been warned and has married him anyway. Anyway, the last scene where they spar intellectually is delightful and shows both actors at their best. There's a wonderful moment of realization on the young woman's face where she realizes that her life depends on what she says. It is one of the most claustrophobic bits I've ever seen and is very effective in showing that there is just a little tilt to the scales on both sides.

All right, it creaks a bit, now, and suffers from the staginess which afflicted many if not most British films of this period, but the Agatha Christie plot (with a strong family resemblance to that other hyper-theatrical melodrama, "Gaslight") is gripping, and the necessary claustrophobic atmosphere is established and maintained -- with help from the excellent score from a very youthful Benjamin Britten (I have, by the way, never come across a reference to this early effort in any Britten biography; it is unmentioned in the long article in Grove's Dictionary). Most of all, it's worth seeing for the terrifying performance by Basil Rathbone, which again reminds us what an accomplished and versatile actor was all-but obliterated in his later absorption into Sherlock Holmes. No goalie-mask, no retractile steel claws, no camera-tricks, he scares the pants off you using only an actor's equipment, and you'll never forget his portrayal of a psychotic, obsessive Bluebeard.