A real ungainly mess of a film noir crime drama. Worth watching just to see how crucial casting and the actors approach makes to these kinds of movies. I love film noirs and am willing to forgive the sometimes lapses in logic and plot when you get juicy melodrama, good cinematography, music and smart attitude from the players. All the things that make noir great. This is just awful. Where to begin? Caroll Ohmart, as the scheming wife, is asked to do so many outlandish things and change her character's emotions contradictorily so many times I just felt sorry for her. Meryl Streep couldn't have pulled this off. She's far better, and seems to be having more fun, as a similar scheming wife a few years later in "The House on Haunted Hill". Tom Tryon is a hunk but seems completely out of his depth here. But again, I fault the screenplay which requires him to change his mind on whether he loves Carol or Jody Lawrence so many times. Poor Jody acts more like his mother and keeps inviting him over for "stew". Tom and Jody say "stew" so many times I started to wonder if it was a euphemism for something else. Her character is a total drag and is a total killjoy. There is a somewhat suspenseful scene where a crucial plot point is revealed. Think about her character in relation to this and later in the movie when it comes up again. It makes absolutely no sense at all! Normally I don't get hung up on these kind of inconsistencies but the whole time, I was aware of the screenplay just pushing the characters around willy nilly with absolutely no consistency to their characterizations and actions. The less said about the Laurel and Hardy comic relief thieves the better. Was Curtiz asleep on the set when they filmed their scenes? The only person I cared about was David Lewis as the criminal mastermind undone by the absolute stupidity of the rest of the characters. I was actually hoping he would get away with it and Carol and Tom would go to jail. A youngish Elaine Stritch as Carol's best friend, is delightful to see as always but she's in a completely other movie in terms of tone and performance. In "The Scarlet Hour" I fear director Curtiz actually thinks he's making a significant, moving drama about people's relationship that happens to included crime elements which is the totally wrong approach given the screenplay and what happens. Sometimes, outrageous plotting can work in a film noir. "Too Late for Tears" is a great example of a completely nutty plot with whiplash changes in character but the movie moves so fast and the entire cast sells the hell out of it, especially Lizabeth Scott that you're completely entertained. In fact, why don't you just go rent "Too Late for Tears" instead of "The Scarlet Hour"?
Review of The Scarlet Hour
