The Arnelo Affair

You want to scream at the character as she stumbles into an obvious man hole, lacking the minimal effort it would take to prevent it. But, that's the storyline. Once you see that happening, you have the choice to either turn it off or put up with it to the finish. I did the latter.

Gifford had to be at the height of her beauty in this - flawless. Obviously, hubby got over it, as makes a case for beauty being only skin deep, and she sure was passive.

George Murphy is one of those "leading men" that cause you to scratch your head and figure it must have been who was available at the time after better choices were not.

John Hodiak is contemptible, as was his usual film persona. Our heroine is repulsed, but drawn to him; again, the frustrating element that sadly made up the story.

I think Eve Arden does help in this. She's always a refresher, and did relieve the intensity. Actually, she seemed to have a fuller part than usual.

The child's situation, again, was frustrating to watch. Why didn't this dame get her focus off herself, get actively involved in her child's life, school, friends, volunteer work, learn to make potholders - anything to get herself off the severely underemployed roster.

But, that's the way of this type of story, and once bit, you have to endure to the cure. I wouldn't say not to see this, but if you are easily frustrated, better skip it.

Frances Gifford gets mixed up in "The Arnelo Affair," a 1947 film also starring George Murphy, John Hodiak, Eve Arden and Dean Stockwell. In fact, the film was on TCM as part of Dean Stockwell's birthday. He certainly was an adorable little boy.

Gifford plays Anne Parkson, the neglected wife of a successful attorney, Ted Parkson (Murphy). One night, Ted brings home a shady client, Tony Arnelo (Hodiak), who owns a nightclub. Arnelo has an immediate attraction to Anne and, upon learning that she has dabbled in room design, he invites her to decorate his club. Of course, he couldn't care less if his club ever gets decorated or not. Though Anne hasn't yet said "yes," he gives her a key to his place after their first meeting and invites her back the next day at 2. She arrives the next day and is confronted by an actress-girlfriend of Tony's. Tony slaps the woman and the frightened Anne runs away, the compact that her husband gave her falling out of her purse. The next day, she sees in the paper that the woman has been killed. In exchange for the compact and a letter he later steals, Tony wants Anne.

This is a good-looking film, with beautifully tailored mens suits on Hodiak and Murphy and smashing clothes for Gifford and Eve Arden, who owns her own dress shop. And that's about it. The dialogue is totally predictable - when Anne asks her husband to go away with her, the words were out of my mouth 30 seconds before she said the line. The attractive Gifford is a bore and gives no shading to her role at all. MGM never could figure out what to do with Laraine Day - why didn't she make this? Murphy has a pleasant way about him and Hodiak is okay, but frankly, Dean Stockwell as Anne's son steals that show. That's not saying much. Eve Arden is good but wasted.

The music is overpowering, and the pacing is slow. "The Arnelo Affair" needed a strong actress in the lead, better dialogue and faster pacing. Without those elements, it's pretty dull.

A relentlessly glum 86-minutes. I don't know who's to blame for Gifford's unrelieved stony face, but it's like she and Hodiak are having a dour-off to see who can be more expressionless. As a romantic couple, they have all the charm and plausibility of robots. Even the usually affable Murphy gets little chance to beguile. Between that and a relentlessly talky script, the movie takes an unfortunate nose-dive into monotony.

The premise is pretty standard crime fare—a neglected wife (Gifford) is drawn from her comfortable shell by a handsome shady character (Hodiak). Since the wife's also a mother, she struggles with the temptation, but is constantly reminded how neglected she is by her lawyer husband (Murphy). Soon a murder connected to Hodiak occurs. Now a potential scandal hangs over the luckless Gifford's and her attempt break with the heartless Hodiak.

Writer-director Oboler was an interesting talent. His background in radio, however, shows up in the talky script. But he was also capable of fascinating flashes of imagination as in the post-apocalyptic Five (1951) and the psychodrama Bewitched (1945). I suspect he was hemmed in here by requirements from the notoriously conservative MGM. Thanks to that airbrushed studio, we can't even be sure there was an actual affair between the wife and the practiced seducer. That way, the wayward wife doesn't have to be punished more than she is, and audiences could go home feeling good.

Too bad RKO didn't produce this. That way, Oboler might have been drawn in a noirish direction, which the material richly deserves. Anyway, only the presence of sassy cynic Eve Arden and canny kid Dean Stockwell lend the film any spark. I especially like that scene with dad Murphy and son Stockwell fixing the broken stool. That showed needed life and imagination. Too bad the rest of the movie doesn't.

In The Arnelo Affair, the letter `A' keeps cropping up again and again - as a monogram on a dressing gown, a compact, a key. Ostensibly it signifies one of the two main characters: Tony Arnelo (John Hodiak ), a predatory nightclub owner, or Ann Parkson (Frances Gifford), wife of Arnelo's square-rigger of an attorney (George Murphy). But really the `A' serves to remind us that the story is chiefly about the Scarlet Letter of Adultery - the Affair of the title.

The movie's sinister, noirish elements are not quite an afterthought, but almost. During the first half of the movie, ignored and restive, Gifford sulks nobly in the household she shares with Murphy, forever working late on his legal briefs, and her nine-year-old son (Dean Stockwell) who thinks he could benefit from psychoanalysis. (She, however, may be a riper candidate for the couch, given as she is to swoons and passive-aggressive feigned headaches.)

When smooth-talking Hodiak flatters her and hires her as decorator, she obliges and soon finds herself with the key to his apartment and an inclination to use it for naughtier purposes than updating the chintz. But she soon finds out that Hodiak has many another slip in which to dock his dinghy; and when one of his stable of lady friends is found murdered, Gifford's initialed compact is found with the body. With the prompting of police detective Warner Anderson, Murphy is jolted out of his complacency and sets out to find the truth....

Like The Unfaithful of the same year (a sweetened-up remake of The Letter), The Arnelo Affair seems geared to the women in its audience, more a weeper than a noir. Even the redoubtable Eve Arden, as a dress-designing upstairs neighbor, gets paraded out as much for her eye-popping post-war get-ups as for her trademark mordant lines (and she's a welcome foil to all Gifford's suffering saintliness). The Arnelo Affair holds interest, if slackly; its director, Arch Oboler, hadn't much of a feel for the possibilities inherent in the script or the knack for bringing them out. It's telling that the most memorable characters in the movie are not the principals but Anderson, Arden and the nine-year-old Stockwell.

Okay crime drama is helped by the competence of the film makers but hindered by the flat performance of one of the leads.

The actual story of a bored housewife seemingly framed for murder by a cad certainly isn't fresh but Frances Gifford is properly anguished in the lead. MGM was giving her the big push at this time but almost immediately after this was completed she was involved in a major car accident in which she sustained severe injuries which effectively ending her career and causing her mental problems for the remainder of her days.

Hodiak is also quite good as the rotten Arnelo of the title who manages to shade his rather contemptible character with a bit of conflict. The divine Eve Arden is also in the cast proving once again she's the best friend a leading lady ever had. In addition to being a bright spot she looks sensational in one glamorous outfit after another.

Where the film suffers is in the role of the husband portrayed by George Murphy. He could not possibly have played the role more flatly if he actually tried. It's as if everyone else learned their lines and he's reading them off a cue card, badly. He's a major flaw in the film.

Shot when noir was in its heyday the film is full of shadows and deep focus. Not a classic of the genre but a decent entry of its type.