Review of Bedelia

Bedelia (1946)
6/10
Caspary Story Gets A Top Cast And Decent Handling
26 February 2020
Ian Hunter is honeymooning on the Riviera with Margaret Lockwood. She doesn't like having her picture taken, and thinks no artist can draw her, but Hunter strikes up a friendship with artist Barry K. Barnes and persuades Miss Lockwood to sit for him. She begins to act odd, and they Return to Britain with the picture unfinished. Barnes shows up with a painting by her first husband; Hunter wants one for his wife, who has none. The reason is that Barnes is not an artist, but a private detective and Miss Lockwood is.... an, well that's the point of this weird and sad little picture.

It's from a story by Vera Caspary, so you know it's going to be about people behaving weirdly, and their motivation slowly being revealed. Director Lance Comfort directs it with a shadowy air. He had been a sound technician and special effects cameraman before he began to direct the prestigious but dull THE COURAGEOUS MR. PENN. His work after that was erratic: an Old Mother Riley picture here, a crime picture there. Clearly he was a director with ambition, but he rarely got the chance to work with a top cast and crew. When he did, as here, he got a good movie, but it's hard to say if he added anything to it. He worked through his death in 1966, aged 58
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