Cast a Dark Shadow (1957)

In "Cast A Dark Shadow", Dirk Bogarde should have hired a professional. He certainly wouldn't have run into the snags and problems he encounters during the story, a character study with excellent acting performances down to the smallest part. It holds your interest throughout with an absorbing tale of cupidity and stupidity.Besides the beleaguered Bogarde, Margaret Lockwood and Kay Walsh turn in great performances, as well as Robert Flemyng as the suspicious family barrister who is on to Bogarde. The movie plays like a filmed stage play,and in fact was adapted from the stage, with only a few token exterior shots.The website bills "Cast A Dark Shadow" as a thriller but it is neither a thriller or a mystery, just a competent and engrossing drama which is worth your time, and it is time well spent. It was on ol' reliable TCM the other morning.

Looked forward to Margaret Lockwood especially, but didn't like her switch in this. What a waste for a beautiful, elegant woman to do bourgeois vulgar, regardless of the talent it took to do it. Someone mentioned a plot hole in this and there's misunderstanding about the cad's misunderstanding of the new will. I agree there's a plot hole, but it's the fact that the brakes worked in the car Teddy tampered with. Remember, Charlotte Young stopped and came back. Maybe they weren't cut through and could stop a little, but not make the big brake on the dangerous hill. Regardless, I can't like this one. It compares unfavorably with similar others such as Rebecca and My Cousin Rachel, dark motive venues with many question marks and instability. Those were keepers in my view. This one just gets on the nerves for the wrong reasons. The Lockwood character is so tacky, she's difficult to endure. Bogard is too raw in his hungry greed. Both of these detract and distract from anything else. Definitely would not wish to view again.

Margaret Lockwood is so good as the hardened widow Mrs. Jeffries, it's almost scary. Those initial encounters between her and Bare (Bogarde) are like two sharks searching for a soft spot. Seldom has a courtship been more cynically reduced to a conjugation of bank balances than in this bleak little exercise. I love that tacky seaside club where they first meet with its empty tables and off-key musicians that reeks of faded gentility. Bogarde is all oily charm and greed, while Lockwood has seen it all, yet somewhere still wants to believe. Their prickly coupling is to marriage what he Hitler-Stalin pact was to peace treaties. Certainly, no one can accuse the writers of loading up with sympathetic characters. In fact, only the pathetic housekeeper Emmie invites empathy—Kathleen Harrison in a slyly bravura performance.In my book, the movie's an excellent little thriller up to the point where the screenplay has Bogarde go bonkers. To that point, he's been all cold calculation and self-possession, an impressive study in ruthless boyish charm. However, by suddenly collapsing that cold confidence into a blubbering psychotic, the screenplay undercuts both the character menace and the dramatic tension. I'm just wondering whether some watchdog group insisted that the character be exposed as a weakling in order to undercut Bogarde's appeal as a villain. However that may be, the movie remains an atmospheric, well-mounted little thriller, unusually well acted.

Good thriller/dark comedy with Dirk Bogarde as a completely amoral, compulsively watchable wife murderer. Bogarde is Edward "Teddy" Bare (geddit?)who knocks off his older, wealthy wife to collect her estate. But she has left him only the house, and virtually none of her money. So he marries a blowsy, rich and newly widowed Margaret Lockwood, to get her fortune. Problem? Lockwood may be common, but her brain works like clockwork. So dear Teddy sets his sights on a new target, in Kay Walsh.I admire Bogarde greatly as an actor. He made unusual, daring choices when he could have so easily taken the "matinee idol" route. Here we take great enjoyment in watching Teddy's plotting, much as we enjoy Louis Mazzini (Dennis Price) in Kind Hearts And Coronets nailing his relatives one-by-one on his way to a dukedom. Lockwood got one of her best parts ever. Is that woman with the guttural laugh the young lass who played plucky Iris in The Lady Vanishes? Or buxom Barbara in The Wicked Lady? You bet it is. Overall it's a entertaining film, but not without it's flaws. The ending is pretty predictable, as is the "big revelation" later in the picture. Still, well worth your time.