Mitchell Leisen's Bride of Vengeance was a box-office flop on its release in 1949 and, as far as I can tell, has not received much critical attention since. It doesn't rank with Leisen's best work but it doesn't deserve to be called "minor" either. It tries to bridge two disparate stories, which do not mesh very well. One is a sexy "woman's picture" about the haughty and fiery Lucrezia Borgia and the other is a would-be "rousing adventure" film about the casting, testing and deployment in battle of a new huge cannon. The audience that would have appreciated the one were uninterested in the other and, realizing they'd only be getting "half a loaf, stayed away in droves. While the film has a few dull spots (all the scenes involving the court painter are dead wood), it avoids the absurdities that inevitably turn up in DeMille's films and, indeed, in most costume pictures set in a distant era.
Paulette Goddard was one of the most charming and delightful actresses on the screen (and, needless to say, a real hottie) and I'm happy to report that she carries off the part of Lucrezia quite well, aided by some very judicious camera placement by Leisen. (We are also given revealing glimpses of her lovely bosom.) The part of the Duke of Ferrara is played by the seriously miscast John Lund, who often tries to cope by affecting an air of amused sophistication a la William Powell. But where Powell always looked like he was having fun, with Lund it's just to compensate for how uncomfortable he feels in the part. Unforgivably, he throws away the script's best double-entendre: "All the same, I should like to show you my Big Jupiter when next you visit our little Ferrara." (Imagine what Powell or Cary Grant would have done with that line!)
Macdonald Carey is far from ideal as Cesare Borgia but reasonably effective in the part and certainly makes Cesare's lust for his sister believable (not hard to do if your sister is Paulette!). He is too suburban-earnest to give the part the conviction it requires. He is overshadowed by Raymond Burr as his henchman, or "tool villain," Michelotto. Burr gives the film's strongest performance (though he overdoes the glowering and dies grimacing in hammy fashion) and one wishes he and Carey had switched roles. Burr's flamboyant costume must have been a favorite of Leisen's; he's given plenty of opportunity, too much maybe, to stride about displaying it.
Leisen's direction displays the care, taste and tact he brought to all his films. Perhaps the best scene, certainly the most Leisen-like, is the one where Lucrezia teasingly refuses to sleep with her new husband (Lund) on their wedding night, giving Paulette a chance to display her talent as a sexy light comedienne. In her more serious love-and-scheming scenes, Leisen uses some carefully composed Hitchcock-like shots with Goddard's face partly concealed, emphasizing her flashing, devilish eyes. When we get to the actual use of the cannon ("Big Jupiter") by the Duke of Ferrara to counter the assault by Cesare's troops, Leisen stages impressive battle scenes, though devotees of the rough and tumble action cinema of William Witney and Phil Karlson might complain that too many of the shots look too obviously "designed" to capture the frenzy and confusion of war.
It is now fashionable to discuss movies made under the strictures of the Code in terms of hidden sexual subtexts. Much as I deplore this tendency, I will indulge in by pointing out three such "subtexts."
Leisen stages the brutal strangling of Lucrezia's first husband, the Prince, by the False Physician in a way that emphasizes the feeling of orgasmic release he feels. Hitchcock had a similar moment in the opening scene of Rope but Leisen makes it even more emphatic. One caveat: the Prince's chamber is so overstuffed with decor as to be distracting, an error Hitch would never have allowed.
The fadeout at 25.30 implies that Cesare, after getting Lucrezia excited at the prospect of poisoning the Duke of Ferrara and getting her in a near-frenzy thinking about "righteous revenge," they were in such a state that they must have had sex right then and there.
Finally, then Lucrezia, overcome with curiousity, ventures down into the dank cellar where the highly secret Big Jupiter is stashed, from her POV the camera slowly travels the length of the hugh phallic cannon and then we see the awestruck Paulette's eyes bugging out hilariously--a proto-Frank Tashlin moment that some might well think the highlight of the movie!
I suspect that if censorship had permitted, Leisen would have liked to dissolve from Paulette daydreaming of orgasmic bliss to Big Jupiter firing off one mighty blast in battle--an effect achieved with unabashed bluntness 11 years later in Karlson's Hell to Eternity.
To anyone not turned off by costume pictures and the expected period mannerisms, I recommend this film highly.
