I guess I should preface whatever remarks I'm going to make with the admission that I did not watch the whole movie. I got as far as maybe the first ten minutes after Ann Sheridan's appearance. I didn't finish it because I just didn't have the patience for it; didn't have the patience for the musical score, beautiful as it was, because I found it intrusive in so many scenes; didn't have the patience for Robt. Cumming's wide-eyed, little-boy line delivery; didn't have the patience for the stereotypical ladies' maid breaking down in tears at the death of her mistress; nor for the histrionic performance of Betty Field. Less is more, Betty, a lesson she learned and put to use more than effectively fourteen years later in "Bus Stop." What else didn't have the patience for? How about for the stilted dialog and the stilted way the performers would respond to each other, as if they were thinking, "Okay, my line's next; I'll deliver it now," rather than making it seem as if they were really listening to one another. In fact, The only character I really believed in was Claude Rains's (sp?) Dr. Tower. Sorry, guess I'm a crank, but I found the whole thing overwrought and amateurish.
