The Arnelo Affair

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.

The Arnelo Affair has John Hodiak in the title role of a nightclub owner with tax troubles getting an affair going with his lawyer's wife Frances Gifford.

Frances is a woman with an itch and Hodiak is quite willing to scratch it. But as it turns out he's doing a bit of two timing himself on actress Joan Woodbury. Later on when Woodbury is murdered Hodiak is on the short list of Detective Warner Anderson suspects, but so is Gifford.

This film is a great example of the Code strangling the creativity of film making. Today it would be quite explicitly filmed with proper sex scenes in their place.

George Murphy played Gifford's husband and his is a strangely underwritten role. If I were doing the film and being that Hodiak is having tax troubles, when Murphy does find out there are hundreds of creative ways he could have done Hodiak good and proper.

Eve Arden is in the film in an Eve Arden part. Though in this one she's sporting a hint of jealousy that Hodiak isn't giving her a tumble. That too should have been brought out more.

The Arnelo Affair if someone decides to remake it has lots of room for improvement.

The thriller side only appears in the second part ;the first one,the best , is essentially psychological drama : a marriage on the rocks even though the husband does not realize it:when his wife tries to talk it over with him,he soliloquizes and his answer has nothing to do with her woman's concern ; he does not see that she's fascinated by Arnelo's charm (John Hodiak's look is real magnetism );as for the son (played by wunderkind Dean Stockwell,the future star of Fleischer's "compulsion" ) ,when he tinkers about with his dad ,most of the work is "too dangerous" for him ,and the boy has a relevant question:"what are you going to do when I grow up?";also revealing is his dream where everything is made of ice -cream,candy and chocolate ,but his mouth is sewn and he cannot take advantage of it .

Thus the characters are more detailed than the average thriller,and the murder mystery is more run of the mill stuff : the clues , the suspects ,the investigation , all is derivative .But Frances Gilford is pretty and moving , Georges Murphy gives an adequate performance as the indifferent husband obsessed by his nine to five work ;nonetheless,the stand out is arguably Hodiak as the refined and selfish womanizer.

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.

This movie is unsuccessful as a noir, a crime drama -- as anything, really.

John Hodiak is always compelling, though he isn't a convincing villain here. George Murphy is barely adequate.

Frances Gifford -- whose bio I just read here, and who had a tragic life -- is very beautiful but directed to act as if in a coma.

Even Eve Arden's quips fall uneasily flat in this context.

The best performance is given by Dean Stockwell, as the strangely troubled child Murphy and Gifford profess to adore but who seems to be ignored by his father and to have an extreme affection for his mother.