THE LOCKET (1946)
Directed by John Brahm
RKO Pictures, 85 minutes, Not Rated.
★★
I’m such a film noir fan that some of my friends tell me I like them all. Not so! Here is one you should avoid like a case of Lyme Disease. I’d be tempted to give it a single star except this might have high camp value among psychiatrists.
As shrinks like to say, it all started in childhood. Ten-year-old Nancy Monks (Sharyn Moffett) was a happy child, even though her mother (Helen Thimig) had to clean apartments to make ends meet. Nancy is given a locket by her playmate, the daughter of New York socialite Mrs. Willis (Katherine Emery). It turns out it’s an heirloom that Nancy must return, but she throws a wobbly when Willis accuses her of stealing it.
Nancy (Laraine Day) grows up to become a sultry seductress and kleptomaniac who winds men around her neck like a locket on a chain. Her first victim is Norman Clyde (Robert Mitchum), a struggling artist for whom Nancy solicits clients. When she steals and he no longer makes excuses for her lies, including framing a man for a murder she committed, she has him committed to an asylum.
Nancy divorces Norman, who shows up five years later in the office of Dr. Harry Blair (Brian Aherne), a Park Avenue psychiatrist, on the eve of the execution of the man Nancy framed. He spills the beans, but Blair, Nancy’s new fiancée, thinks Norman is still delusional and recommends pills and counseling. Instead, Norman smashes through a window and leaps to his death. The timeframe is unclear, but Nancy eventually divorces Harry as well.
After another uncertain period of time, we find Nancy about to marry John Willis (Gene Raymond), the very son of the woman who accused young Nancy of theft. (Was this intentional? The movie never tells us!) Blair arrives to warn Willis of Nancy’s treachery. Willis doesn’t believe him and goes ahead with the wedding. However, when Mrs. Willis gives her a post-wedding gift that just happens to be the very locket from decades ago, Nancy falls into a catatonic state and is institutionalized.
Oh dear!!! Can you say histrionic? The story is told in flashbacks and, to be fair, that was way cooler in 1946. Today, we’d call it a “device,” but not in a good way. Everything else about The Locket makes you wonder if script writer Sheridan Gibney was in need is some of Dr. Blair’s little white pills. About all that rings true is that we still like to pretend that when well-to-do people steal, we call it kleptomania, but it’s “theft” if it’s associated with the underclasses, aka/ the 99 percent.
Where to begin? Do you buy the beefy Robert Mitchum as an avantgarde painter? He’s the kind of guy you expected to pick up a gun for a war movie or a cowboy picture. Maybe even the sort who would do a deodorant commercial about how a guy like he needs all the protection he can get. But with a sable paintbrush in hand? Nah! And he’s certainly not the kind who can be driven insane by a dame.
Continuing on the psychology side of the ledger, if Sigmund Freud hadn’t already been dead for seven years, this would have killed him. But given an era in which figures of authority were treated with utmost deference, wouldn’t a guy like Willis take Blair’s words seriously enough to at least pause his wedding plans? Or maybe this happens to you all the time. A psychiatrist shows up at your house and is the ex-spouse of your intended you never knew she had–let alone one before him–and you casually dismiss his words. I kind of get it; I might have been a more convincing physiatrist than Brian Aherne.
I do give credit to Laraine Day for staying in character. She’s a forgotten figure, but was a respected actress during her heyday. What’s particularly compelling about her in The Locket is that she successfully plays against type. By this I mean she was more cut out for wholesome parts and comedic roles, not a sexy vamp.
Vamp and camp. That’s about it. The rest of The Locket has enough ham to make you order lumber to build a pigsty.
Rob Weir
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