A curious, claustrophobic drama about adultery, sibling rivalry and (possibly) murder, Without Honor never leaves the confines of a modest ranch house in the San Fernando Valley, save for brief excursions down the highway that fronts the house and into the orange groves that lie behind. It's stagy and contrived, but it manages to hold your attention.
Housewife Laraine Day is threading meat and vegetables on skewers when the doorbell rings. The caller is her illicit lover Franchot Tone, bearing some bad news: A private detective has uncovered their affair, and Tone wants to break it off. Day, locked in a childless marriage with a husband (Bruce Bennett) who neglects her for nights of poker with his younger brother (Dane Clark) and his high-living pals, grows hysterical suicidal. She grabs one of the skewers to end it all; when Tone tries to stop her, he impales himself on it and slumps in a heap on the laundry-room floor.
As Day wipes up the blood with paper towels, the darn doorbell rings again, admitting Clark, whose forced bonhomie has a malicious edge to it. Seems that for years he's been nursing a grudge against Day for rejecting his drunken advances when he was only 18. In revenge, he hired the detective and has invited Bennett, Tone and Tone's wife (Agnes Moorehead), to the house so he can publicly humiliate Day with the dirt he's dug up. Moorehead (who's known about her husband's dalliances for some time) and the clueless Bennett duly arrive. But to Clark's consternation, Tone never shows up....
Tone, on the downslide of his career, vanishes quite early on, and isn't missed. Desperately though he strives, Clark was never a John Garfield. The underrated Bennett is always welcome, though it's a chump's part. Moorehead is all the more delicious for craftily underplaying. That leaves Day, who spends most of the short movie mute, close to catatonic, striking silent-movie attitudes of anguish for the camera as the drama swirls around her.
Without Honor, directed by Irving Pichel, doesn't sit too comfortably on the screen. At times, it suggests an adapted radio play (or a script for early television? There's a needless episode of a new TV being delivered to the bungalow). But no such provenance seems in evidence. Then again it brings to mind the conventions of a one-acter by Strindberg (notably, The Stronger). It explores the same Southern California territory as the novels of James M. Cain, if less lustily. But Cain never would have stood for the unexpectedly rosy resolution it's a bunny plucked out of a very soiled and battered hat.
Housewife Laraine Day is threading meat and vegetables on skewers when the doorbell rings. The caller is her illicit lover Franchot Tone, bearing some bad news: A private detective has uncovered their affair, and Tone wants to break it off. Day, locked in a childless marriage with a husband (Bruce Bennett) who neglects her for nights of poker with his younger brother (Dane Clark) and his high-living pals, grows hysterical suicidal. She grabs one of the skewers to end it all; when Tone tries to stop her, he impales himself on it and slumps in a heap on the laundry-room floor.
As Day wipes up the blood with paper towels, the darn doorbell rings again, admitting Clark, whose forced bonhomie has a malicious edge to it. Seems that for years he's been nursing a grudge against Day for rejecting his drunken advances when he was only 18. In revenge, he hired the detective and has invited Bennett, Tone and Tone's wife (Agnes Moorehead), to the house so he can publicly humiliate Day with the dirt he's dug up. Moorehead (who's known about her husband's dalliances for some time) and the clueless Bennett duly arrive. But to Clark's consternation, Tone never shows up....
Tone, on the downslide of his career, vanishes quite early on, and isn't missed. Desperately though he strives, Clark was never a John Garfield. The underrated Bennett is always welcome, though it's a chump's part. Moorehead is all the more delicious for craftily underplaying. That leaves Day, who spends most of the short movie mute, close to catatonic, striking silent-movie attitudes of anguish for the camera as the drama swirls around her.
Without Honor, directed by Irving Pichel, doesn't sit too comfortably on the screen. At times, it suggests an adapted radio play (or a script for early television? There's a needless episode of a new TV being delivered to the bungalow). But no such provenance seems in evidence. Then again it brings to mind the conventions of a one-acter by Strindberg (notably, The Stronger). It explores the same Southern California territory as the novels of James M. Cain, if less lustily. But Cain never would have stood for the unexpectedly rosy resolution it's a bunny plucked out of a very soiled and battered hat.