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Sunday, June 11, 2017

Rage in Heaven (1941) [NR] ***


A film review by Bosley Crowther for the NY Times, March 21, 1941.

At a time when the world is already sufficiently concerned with paranoiacs, MGM has oddly seen fit to create yet another - and a thoroughly unsympathetic one - in its new film, Rage in Heaven, which opened at the Capitol yesterday. True, the depredations of this wholly fictitious marplot (a person who mars or defeats a plot, design, or project by meddling) are comfortably confined to the screen - and that is a blessing, at least. But why he should ever have been invented, why he should have been so clumsily conceived and why Robert Montgomery should have been chosen to play him is hard to understand.

Certainly, the picture itself fails to offer any adequate justification. For the story which is told is that of a wealthy young Englishman named Philip Monrell who, for reasons never clearly explained, is a hopeless manic depressive. He has spells when the moon is full; he wishes to take his own life. And then, for another reason which is never sufficiently based, he marries his mother's young secretary Stella (Ingrid Bergman) and presumably intends to reform. But always in the back of his brain gnaws the canker of disease. He suspects his wife and his best friend Ward Andrews (George Sanders) of being in love and against him; he bullies his business associates; things go from bad to worse. Finally he takes his own life in a manner which appears to be murder at the hand of his old friend, and the end of the story is devoted to the freeing of the latter and the wife.

The basic fault, of course, is that the emphasis of the drama is confused. At first the intention seems to throw sympathy to the sick man, to solve his pathetic case. But nothing of the sort is accomplished; he grows progressively worse. Suddenly he's tossed overboard and attention is directed to his victims. The whole thing becomes a futile mix-up without dramatic point. The screenwriters, Christopher Isherwood and Robert Thoeren, who adapted the film from a novel by James Hilton were apparently quite as confused as the miserable, neurotic hero (or hero that should have been). As the wife, Ingrid Bergman plays with a warm and sincere intensity which is deeply affecting, and George Sanders takes the friend in his usual self-assured stride. But Mr. Montgomery in the focal role is inclined toward a deadpan deliberateness which grows monotonous. Obviously it isn't altogether his fault, but he never really suggests a mental crack-up. He is just a fellow with a mean disposition - a pointlessly diabolic wretch.

It has been reported from Hollywood that Mr. Montgomery was compelled to play this role as discipline for some things he said in public about motion pictures. That may be an explanation for the general obtuseness of the film, but it seems like a desperate device. There is such a thing, you know, as cutting off one's nose to spite's one's face. And, in turning out Rage in Heaven, MGM hasn't done itself any favors.

Labels: drama, Ingrid Bergman, thriller

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