Spoiler alert
A taut thriller. Although I've seen this film many times, it wasn't until the most recent viewing that the many ways in which it is about theater/"play acting" became apparent to me. How could it be otherwise, when the two main characters are a playwright (Myra) and an actor (Lester)? When Myra learns of the plot against her, we see her plan for revenge as it unrolls in her mind, like a play, and when she decides not to go through with it, it is because she gets a glimpse of her frantic, gun-toting self in a mirror. When Lester affirms his love for Myra, he quotes from her play. At various times, in Myra's mansion, people excuse themselves from a gathering, and go into another room, to connive; we follow them, as though going "offstage" to see what a character is up to.
There are wonderful bits of business for Crawford to do, as when she fakes an injury--first excusing herself from her guests, then going to a bedroom, unsnapping garter belt, rolling down stocking, applying stage makeup for the "bruise," etc, and ultimately "falling" down some stairs, in view of her guests. What dexterous fingers she had! In view of the brutal reality of her marriage, the title of her play, in which she meets her future husband before having him fired, is ironic--"Halfway to Heaven." Also paradoxical is the use of the beautiful and meditative bedtime reading that Lester provides for Myra (she is at this point on to his murderous conniving): "Let mystery have its place in you. Leave a little fallow corner in your heart...." The author is the 19th-century Swiss writer Henri Frederic Amiel and the quote is from his "Journal Intime."
A taut thriller. Although I've seen this film many times, it wasn't until the most recent viewing that the many ways in which it is about theater/"play acting" became apparent to me. How could it be otherwise, when the two main characters are a playwright (Myra) and an actor (Lester)? When Myra learns of the plot against her, we see her plan for revenge as it unrolls in her mind, like a play, and when she decides not to go through with it, it is because she gets a glimpse of her frantic, gun-toting self in a mirror. When Lester affirms his love for Myra, he quotes from her play. At various times, in Myra's mansion, people excuse themselves from a gathering, and go into another room, to connive; we follow them, as though going "offstage" to see what a character is up to.
There are wonderful bits of business for Crawford to do, as when she fakes an injury--first excusing herself from her guests, then going to a bedroom, unsnapping garter belt, rolling down stocking, applying stage makeup for the "bruise," etc, and ultimately "falling" down some stairs, in view of her guests. What dexterous fingers she had! In view of the brutal reality of her marriage, the title of her play, in which she meets her future husband before having him fired, is ironic--"Halfway to Heaven." Also paradoxical is the use of the beautiful and meditative bedtime reading that Lester provides for Myra (she is at this point on to his murderous conniving): "Let mystery have its place in you. Leave a little fallow corner in your heart...." The author is the 19th-century Swiss writer Henri Frederic Amiel and the quote is from his "Journal Intime."