SO EVIL MY LOVE
UK/US, 1948, 112 minutes, Black and white.
Ray Milland, Ann Todd, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Leo G. Carroll, Raymond Huntley, Raymont Lovell, Martita Hunt, Moira Lister, Finlay Currie, Hugh Griffith.
Directed by Lewis Allen.
So Evil My Love is a film about evil. It is based on a number of actual cases of murder and poisoning in the United Kingdom at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th.
This fiction is very strong on atmosphere. Ann Todd portrays the widow of a missionary returning to England by boat where she meets a charming man in the form of Ray Milland. When they get back to England, she is so in love with Milland and under his control that he involves her in plans for theft. There is a death, a trial – and the woman finally realising how she has been used and turning on her evil mentor.
Ray Milland had just won the Oscar for The Lost Weekend and gives a charmingly sinister performance. Ann Todd was in Hitchcock’s The Paradine Case in the previous year but had most of her success in films in England. The supporting cast is very strong with excellent leads from Geraldine Fitzgerald and Martita Hunt.
Lewis Allen was a prolific director of brief films and television material – although he had some success with the atmospheric The Uninvited as well as the Frank Sinatra western, Suddenly and the thriller Illegal.
1. The interest and appeal of this kind of films crime, romance, melodrama?
2. The significance of the title and its irony and its themes? In a film of the forties, with its sets, style, black and white photography? The impact now?
3. The dramatic staucture of the films the meeting of Olivia and the scoundrel, her initial selfishness and capacity for nobility, the weaving of the web and her being a victim, her downfall, deaths? Audience involvement and suspense?
4. The film's focus on Olivia? First meeting her, her weakness and selfishness, her second noble instincts, a widow and her prospects? The narration of her background - at school and her feeling deprived, her wanting to be an adventuress? Her opportunity and the way that she lived it?
5. The irony ot her saving a scoundrel's life? Fascination with him, victim of his contriving, meeting and falling in love, involvement, her believing in him? Overcoming a repulsion for hie plans? Could she have helped herself?
6. What kind of villain was Mark? In himself, his artistic background, his schemes and frauds, his girlftlends and his duplicity? Using and compromising Olivia in the boarding house? Siezing opportunities, for example with Susan's letters and playing emotionally on Olivia? His dominance of her?
7. The evil of the plan and Olivia’s succumbing to it? Their expertise, Olivia’s talent commending itself even to Susan’s husband? The nature of the evil and its exercise over Susan and her husband?
8. The portrayal of Susan as sympathetic? A weak woman, dominated by a cold husband, dominant mother-in-law, manness and position in society and parliament? Her being confined, drinlging, humiliated? Her gullible nature, yet good natured? Allowing herself to be used? Wishing her husband dead, the dramatics of his heart attacks? The inevitibility of her believing herself his murderer?
9. The growth of the plot, the gaining of the money, the blackmail techniques? Yet open to error and the investigator's following Mark and Olivia?
10. What had happened to Olivia when she was in so deep? Her capacity for love, for murder? Letting Susan hang? The contrast and clash of conscience and callousness?
11. Her being hurt by the truth? The inevitability of her killing Mark? What had happened to her? The investigator’s tribute to her?
12. How good a study of a complex character and complex motivations? Man and woman and their combination for evil?
13. The contribution of the minor characters, for example the husband, his mother, the investigator?
14. The value of this film as entertaining melodrama? Study of human nature? A mirror up to the audience’s own evil inclinations?
