The film is suspenseful enough, but when it's over, you begin to wonder how someone could have pulled off the ruse that had Ellen Ewing (Claudette Colbert) going temporarily insane. It would have taken her attorney Kent (Philip Ober) considerable resources in time and money to get so many people to identify Ellen as having been married four months earlier. Not to mention having someone commit murder to foil David McLean's (Robert Ryan) investigative effort to get to the bottom of the mystery. The closed room murder of Ellen's purported husband (Dave Barbour) also has to be questioned. What did the guy do to deserve getting killed to pull off a gaslight job like Gregory Kent intended? All those question marks pop up in the story after the fact of watching it, making the film somewhat questionable in terms of credibility. The one interesting casting decision here was that of Vivian Vance as the hotel housemaid. I think this is the only role I've ever seen her in where she's not Lucy's pal.
Review of The Secret Fury
