Mirages de la peur

I love a good noir - but this isn't one. The plotting and dialogue (especially the voice over going on on in Loretta Young's head) is so poor that at times it is utterly laughable. In fact this film gave me more laughs than the entire Abbott and Costello box set my estranged ex gave me for Xmas. For me this made the film impossible to take seriously, and very difficult to get involved in as a serious thriller or drama. The leads flounder a bit, but Corey and Jaffe stand out and are rather decent. The romance doesn't work, and neither does the ending.though I was glad it came.

This movie starts in an unusually interesting place. A woman is fleeing some deed, under cover of noir night. It continues to another interesting place. The woman is a psychology instructor, who in 1949 is allowed to speak intelligently & authoritatively on the topic. Then we flashback to the crime. The crime is passable. But unfortunately after that, the movie which started so interesting descends into bland convention and melodrama. Seeking the quickest route to audience identification, the movie selects "romance" as our pathway through things. It makes the movie less engaging by the minute, and really shrinks the possibilities of what it can be. The noose tightens for way too long, forcing the writers to draw out the tension and run it against the romance all the while. The weak frisson just doesn't create much engagement in a viewer. Cummings is not terribly interesting and Wendell Corey plays yet another irksome investigator.

This movie begins quite well,and,unlike some people wrote,it's not that much dated.Douglas Dick is as disturbing a student as he is handsome.But his part is too underwritten and he disappears too soon. What remains is much too predictable: as soon as Bill's guardian appears ,you know what they're up to from mile off;for instance guess with whom,this respectable man,portrayed by Robert Cummings will fall in love with? In a thriller,the hero(or here the heroine) must be in jeopardy:we know early in the story that the teacher is not risking anything ;maybe if they did not show the scene by the sea? maybe? We are left with the Cummings/Corey duel :both actors deserved a better script. Loretta Young plays a very educated professor (she teaches psychology of course) and she 's got to show tricky to frustrate the enemy (that is to say the cops) in his plans. Aren't there better movies to remember Loretta Young ? "heroes for sale" "a man's castle" "the crusades" "the bishop's wife".....

The Accused is the kind of movie that begins promisingly, but then the script loses its nerve. That we root for the movie to be better, indicates the promise it showed, but then lost after the first third of the movie. Loretta Young plays a repressed psychology professor who kills one of her students in self defense, then covers up her crime. For a short time, Young actually stays in character before the script changes her from a frumpy spinster to the glamorous movie star, the better to hide her original appearance from a truck driver who gave her a ride on the evening of the killing. The movie displays many nice touches provided by director William Dieterle. Wendell Corey makes us wish he had been given better roles and the untalented Robert Cummings makes us ask if he was cast as a favor to someone.

Good film noir concerning a prudish, but attractive, college prof that kills a student, during what today would be considered 'date rape.' Cummings and Corey are capable co-stars, and the lovely Young as always, is easy on the eyes.