Linsey DuncanThey Won't Believe Me
September 12th 2008 14:52
I don't actually know what I'm going to write so I thought I'd start with the picture from the cool Film Noir Film I saw just the other night til 2am in the morning.
I love it when they are on that time, it enhances the experience. It is one reason why my sleeping patterns are entirely out of wack, the other is coffee. I think I am a night person but it could just be the caffeine.
Whatever it is I'm so grateful to be wired enough to savour this time. I can retreat into the films world so much more completely as there are no distractions just silence and stillness.
Perhaps it is a form of sleep anyway as films noirs are definitely like strange dreams. This became most obvious when I woke up the following morning and tried to explain the plot to a family member. Whilst caught up in the confusion it all made sense but when reduced to words the convolution and craziness render me speechless. My garbled explanation becomes like a tongue twister and unintelligible. I think I trailed off. I hope I can do a better job of discussing it here.
I missed the start, I inevitably do turn it to the right channel far too late. It was all about Larry, a character played by Robert Young. He had been the husband of a rich wife of whom he was currently under suspicion of having killed. Well I say current. It didn't really present like that. It was one of those films where the character is in a witness box narrating and the film is made up of flashbacks to the events and transitions between the current time and the past. Larry had married his wife for her money. She was played by Jane Greer and her name was Janice. She was quite well cast. The Angelic possessive wife who knew he was only with her for her money but so desperately wanted to be with him she took advantage of the fact to keep him by her side.
He bores quickly of the marriage and finds love with Rita Jenson who was called Greta and is pictured. She was the Good woman led astray by her feelings for a married man but not standing for the secrecy. She gave him an ultimatum and he couldn't part himself from the money and his wife who very cleverly had arranged a move to a job and location he most desired. Her solution throughout was to try and move them away. She was really just running from the truth he didn't love her.
The next woman he inevitably becomes involved with in Verna played by Susan Hayward. She is a gold digger yet she does become attatched to him and inevitably wants the same thing, for him to leave his wife. Once again he can't leave the money and his wife moves them to an isolated Ranch where she is happy but he is stifled and miserable.
Eventually he does run away with Verna, planning to steal money from his wife through having Verna access the account he has joint access too. However they rip up the check once together and it seems he has finally committed himself to love and freed himself from money.
Unfortunately albeit inevitably as they were happy which is generally at foreshadowing of tragedy, they are in a freak car accident with a truck and Verna dies. An idea hatches in his mind when he wakes up in the hospital and everyone believes Verna was his wife, that if he can get rid of his real wife everyone will not see her death as suspicious as they will all believe she died in the accident.
He returns to the Ranch. His wife is nowhere to be seen. Finally he thinks to go to her favourite spot by a pool in a valley. Her horse is there yet she is at the bottom dead having thrown herself into the valley on reading his note that he had run away with Verna. He is quick to see the advantage in just hiding her body there yet he can't get away from the guilt t
He tries to run away from it through travel. It is Greta who finally meets him overseas and persuades him to come home. Secretly she is working with his former employer who is suspicious about whatever happened to Verna. Some investigations have been started into her death. The police end up searching his ranch and finding the horse down in the valley dying as it has broken it's two front legs trying to get to its mistress.
So of course everyone believes he killed his wife. The truth he tells in court about her having killed herself does acquit him but he doesn't wait for the verdict. Having listened to his sorry tale as he told it he comes to terms with his own guilt and trys to throw himself out the window before the verdict is read. The policeman shoots him, the verdict was not guilty.
I really liked this ending. It made it such an interesting journey of suspense from the title of "They won't believe me". He is trying to prove his innocense all the way through the film yet when you finally discover and everyone finally concludes he is innocent he comes to recognise his guilt.
It was interesting also they line up of woman they had in the film. The innocent good woman was in a way his wife, Although her love for him corrupted her as she became like a jailer with her money the key. She as much brought about the tragedy of their lives as he did through his mistreatment of her because she didn't let go when she should have. They both fell into the trap of thinking money could buy them what they wanted.
The other good woman representative was Greta. She was corrupted by her love for him but by having the principles to give him an ultimatum she becomes the redeeming character who could have saved him if he'd only had the strength to choose her over his wife's money when he had the chance.
Verna is the classic femme fatale. She doesn't at first care a bit about morality. She just wants money herself. However love for him redeems her from that base and empty attitude. In fact it redeems them both for a moment when they have run away together and in the happiness of that instant are able to free themselves from the chains of money they thought they couldn't live without.
Love is subsequently set up as a redeeming force and money as a destructive one which destroys all their lives.
I guess what I most liked about this film was that the male character in a Noir film so often by having the voice over and the point of view controls the tale as a journey into his own self pity and blame shifting. The woman is the evil, the woman leads to his destruction etc. In this film by telling his own tale he comes to face his own guilt in the whole drama and to realise he should have felt sorry for his wife, not blamed her.
I would love to see it again from beginning to end it was well worth staying up for.
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