Journeyman director Lance Comfort never did much that wasn't ephemeral and here he turns in another ho-hum melodrama from a novel by Vera Caspary, which the author set in the New England of 1913, on the eve of one war and which now finds itself in Old England in 1945, at the end of another. Margatet Lockwood is clearly hiding a secret or why else would she refuse vehemently to have her photograph taken and Barry K Barnes is equally clearly something more than the artist he purports to be. Alas, it's hard to work up much of a sweat about any of this and though we do stick around for the revelation that Bedelia (Lockwood) is a serial rich husband killer and Barnes is really an insurance investigator it's hard to care one way or the other. The whole thing is done well enough with all departments - script, photography, directing, acting being up to snuff but it really does lack that 'little something extra' that Ellen Terry spoke of. Worth a look but that's all.
Review of Bedelia
