The Reckless Moment (1949) User Reviews

A great Joan Bennett performance

[jjnxn-1 · 8/10 · 23 January 2012]

Taut drama with the always underrated Joan Bennett great as the panicked mother and James Mason just right as the conflicted anti-hero. They interact so well it's a pity they only made this one film together.

Wonderfully directed by Ophuls and atmospherically shot this was updated as The Deep End with Tilda Swinton also a fine film but this has a distinct allure of its own.

Most of the supporting cast isn't given much to do which helps focus the film but an interesting character is the faithful maid Sybil played well by Frances Williams. Always in the background but seemingly all seeing she emerges with a nice showing of grit and understanding at a climatic moment.

For fans of noir and melodrama this is a pleasure from start to finish.

A Subtle & Intriguing Domestic Melodrama

[seymourblack-1 · 8/10 · 9 August 2010]

"The Reckless Moment" is a domestic melodrama which features blackmail, the violent deaths of three of its characters and a number of unexpected plot developments. Most of all however, it's the story of a mother who is prepared to go to extreme lengths to protect her family and the lifestyle that she values so highly.

Lucia Harper (Joan Bennett), a middle class housewife whose husband is away on business, could not have imagined the events that would follow when she decided to confront her daughter's boyfriend about their relationship.

Ted Darby (Sheppard Strudwick) is a man of dubious character who is significantly older than Lucia's daughter Bea (Geraldine Brooks) and he soon makes it clear that he'd be perfectly willing to stop seeing Bea for an agreed sum of money. Lucia doesn't pay up because she's confident that Bea wouldn't want to continue seeing a man whose feelings for her are so shallow. Lucia's judgement turns out to be wrong as Bea makes it clear that she doesn't believe what her mother says about Ted and also has no intension of ending their relationship.

When Ted and Bea meet next in the Harpers' boathouse, their discussion of what transpired in Ted's meeting with Lucia triggers an argument which culminates in Bea striking him with a torch and him accidentally falling to his death. When Lucia discovers what's happened, she disposes of his body in the nearby harbour and returns to her normal domestic routine.

Unexpectedly, after Ted's body is found the police don't establish any connection between him and Bea but a threat to the tranquillity of the family's life comes from a blackmailer called Martin Donnelly (James Mason) who surprisingly turns out to be a charming, generous and completely unthreatening person who gradually falls in love with Lucia.

Lucia finds it impossible to raise the full amount of money that she needs to pay the ransom without the signature of her husband and this leads to the intervention of Martin's violent partner called Nagel (Roy Roberts) and an unpredictable series of incidents follow which gradually lead to a resolution of Lucia's problems.

Events show Lucia to be someone who had a fierce compulsion to protect the social standing, lifestyle and perceived respectability of her family at all costs and this made her prepared, without hesitation, to dispense with all moral or legal concerns about what she needed to do to achieve her aim. When it also becomes apparent that she suffers from feelings of being suffocated by the demands and constraints of her family life, the presence of this ambivalence serves to illustrate just how strong her protective instincts really are.

Joan Bennett and James Mason's excellent performances, the elegant and effective direction by Max Ophuls and some wonderfully stylized photography by Burnett Guffey all contribute strongly to the success of this subtle and intriguing movie.

"Everyone has a mother like me"

[blanche-2 · 8/10 · 12 July 2013]

Joan Bennett and James Mason star in "The Reckless Moment," a 1949 film directed by Max Ophuls and featuring Geraldine Brooks and Shepperd Strudwick.

I actually saw the remake of this movie, The Deep End, with Tilda Swinton and Goran Visjnic of "ER" fame. Both films are excellent, though the emphasis in each is slightly different.

Bennett plays Lucia Harper, mother of two, a teenage daughter and a younger son. Her husband works out of town currently - he appears to be an engineer - so Lucia has to hold it all together for her family, which includes her father. They have a house on the beach and lead a comfortable life, but her family needs and depends on her in every way.

Lucia doesn't like Darby,(Strudwick) the man her daughter Bea (Brooks) is seeing -- he's older than she is and seems on the sleazy side. She goes to see him in Los Angeles and asks him to stay away. Darby is happy to, for a price. When Lucia relates this to Bea, Bea doesn't believe her and that night, sneaks off to meet him in the family boathouse. When she learns that he did indeed want money, she hits him and runs away. He chases her, becomes woozy from being hit, and falls through an insecure railing to his death. I believe he impales himself on an anchor, as he did in the remake, but truthfully I couldn't see that shot clearly enough.

Lucia finds the body and, not knowing it was an accident, gets Darby into the family boat and dumps it in a lagoon; Bea doesn't know Darby is dead until the following day, when his body is found and the police and press descend. Bea becomes hysterical and Lucia has to calm her.

That should be the end of it but a man named Donnelly (James Mason) appears demanding $5000, on behalf of a man named Nagel, for letters that Bea wrote Darby. Lucia is frantic - how can she get her hands on that kind of money without raising her family's suspicion? Seeing the stress she's under and her protectiveness, Donnelly is moved by her plight.

This particular version of the story focuses on thin veneer of normalcy that Lucia operates under, and he emphasizes this by having her son ask innocuous questions constantly, her daughter's hysteria throughout the film, and all the while, her father takes to the blackmailing Donnelly and invites him for drinks and dinner. It also focuses on the veneer of the class system that was quickly fading after World War II. For Lucia, going to a bar, a pawn shop, a loan company, for her to even admit she needs money, is difficult. And ultimately she confides in her black maid and needs her help. Joan Bennett, with her educated accent and sophistication, does a marvelous job of portraying this as well as the stress of Lucia's life.

One couldn't ask for a better actor than James Mason as Donnelly. His presence, his voice, his attractiveness give him a veneer of respectability, but he's quick to point out he's not of Lucia's class. "She's lucky to have a mother like you," he tells Lucia about Bea. "Everybody has a mother like me," Lucia snaps. "You probably had one yourself." They become partners to satisfy the cruel Nagel.

Max Ophuls keeps the atmosphere dark and the suspense tight throughout the film, juxtaposing the bright home with the inquisitive, bothersome teenage boy and the relaxed father with the dark and foreboding beach front and lonely roads. Very powerful.

In the "Deep End," the story has been modernized - the son is gay, and the focus is on the character of the mother more than what she has to cope with, in my opinion -- it's a fascinating character study. And her connection to Visjnic is explored more.

I highly recommend both versions of this film, each on its own merits.

Blackmail, murder, and dark secrets

[didi-5 · 7/10 · 22 January 2005]

An unusual film, this slow-burner starring Joan Bennett and James Mason seems like a straight-forward murder and blackmail case, but that's only part of the story. Joan Bennett is the mother living apart from her husband (he's working away), and coping with her growing son and daughter, and their maid. James Mason is an Irish low-life, who hopes to make money from Bennett's family misfortunes.

From the start, where we see the 'murder' and find out what really happened, to the startling ending, this film, directed by Max Ophüls, grips. Aside from the two leads, Geraldine Brooks is good as the teenage daughter struggling with a lost love affair and the hormonal rage of puberty; and Kathryn Card is suitably condescending as she refuses to loan money to the increasingly desperate Bennett.

'The Reckless Moment' has a frisson of noir, and a strong script. It is a minor film, certainly, but a rewarding one.

Joan Bennett highlights Max Opuls' nuanced, ironic film noir

[bmacv · 9/10 · 17 December 2001]

The sultry temptress of Fritz Lang's Scarlet Street and The Woman in the Window, Joan Bennett dons spectacles and a harried mien as a respectable mother in a California coastal town. Family life is proving nettlesome, what with a husband traveling the globe on business, a teenage son drawn to inappropriate states of attire, and two live-ins, a father-in-law and a cook/housekeeper. The nettle-in-chief, however, is her handful of a daughter (Geraldine Brooks). Like her predecessor Veda Pierce, she fancies herself a worldly woman and has taken up with a penniless but pretentious lecher, who winds up dead. Bennett's battle to cover up the death becomes the story's meat. Into the mix ambles James Mason, wanting $5-grand for incriminating love letters.... Mason, with an Irish lilt, is the film's most intricately shaded character (and he gets top billing) but Bennett delivers a controlled, expert performance, possibly her finest. The star of The Reckless Moment, however, is the great Max Ophuls (though the directorial credit has it "Opuls"). Displaying evocative chiaroscuro -- Burnett Guffey was cinematographer -- and voluptuous slow takes, Ophuls creates a rich texture ranging from shabby seaside respectability to the grungy sidewalks of nearby Los Angeles. This splendidly nuanced work has emerged as one of the standouts of the noir cycle, its ironies so understated that their oppressive weight isn't felt until long after the film has unspooled.

It was my way of doing something that made everything wrong!

[hitchcockthelegend · 6/10 · 26 January 2010]

During an argument Bea Harper {Geraldine Brooks} strikes out at her unsavoury lover, Ted Darby {Shepperd Strudwick}, felling him with a blow that sends him tumbling to an accidental death. When her mother Lucia {Joan Bennett} finds the body she quickly hides the body out at sea to hopefully make things look better. But soon the menacing Martin Donnelly {James Mason} turns up with love letters that Bea had sent Ted and sets about blackmailing Lucia. But all is not going to be straight forward as Martin & Lucia are strangely drawn to each other.

The Reckless Moment is directed by Max Ophüls, it's adapted from a shorty story titled "The Blank Wall" and cinematography comes from Burnett Guffey. A tight enough picture technically, it is however something of let down considering the plot involves blackmail, murder, deception and sacrifice. Highly regarded by some notable critics, the film's strength, outside of the two excellent lead performances, comes by way of its flip-flop of the sexes plot. Reversing the roles of an innocent involved with a shady good for nothing gives the film a unique feel, but it also makes the film play as a melodrama as opposed to being a darkly noirish potboiler. Add in to the mix that Ophüls is content to go for emotion over criminal drama and it's an uneasy sit all told.

Where Ophüls does very well is with the distinction between Lucia's two differing worlds. She's from comfortable suburbia in Balboa, the epitome of contented respectability. But as she arrives in L.A. and does her "reckless moment," the landscape and tone changes. She herself significantly wears sunglasses at key moments and Messrs Ophüls & Guffey bring on the shadows and swirling cameras to portray the feeling of entrapment for our protagonists as they get deeper into it. The key scenes revolve around the Harper boathouse and the guys get maximum impact from this darkly lit venue. There's also some suggestion of manipulation that offers an intriguing train of thought, while the final shot begs to be given far more dissection than just seen as being a standard film closer.

Visually smart and acted accordingly, but not to my mind the nerve frayer that others have painted it as. 6/10

Top notch suspense melodrama with excellent cast.

[haroldg-2 · 10/10 · 13 July 2001]

'The Reckless Moment' is Max Ophuls' excellent 1949 suspense melodrama, starring James Mason as a blackmailer who falls in love with his desperate victim (Joan Bennett).

Ophuls direction is superb, with the suspense mounting in every scene as housewife Bennett, mistakenly believing her daughter has killed a man, disposes the body and tries desperately to hide the girl's involvement from the police and her family. Then Mason appears, demanding money for incriminating love letters he has which the daughter had written to the dead man. The plot thickens from there, with Bennett trying to shield her family from scandal as the blackmailer begins to admire and then love the devoted housewife and mother.

James Mason is always excellent in sinister roles, and his performance here is one of his best, though his character's motivation isn't quite clear. By his own admission, he's a loser who's never done a decent thing in his life, so why he suddenly develops a conscience is never fully explained.

But who wouldn't fall in love with beautiful Joan Bennett, giving the performance of her career as the desperate mother who's commonplace life is suddenly turned upside down by crime and blackmail. Ophuls, who the year before had guided Joan Fontaine through one of her greatest performances in 'Letter From an Unknown Woman,' drew from Bennett her most natural, believable performance. She's never been better.

Highly recommended for the outstanding direction and two great stars in peak form.

Suspenseful Melodrama

[claudio_carvalho · 7/10 · 16 August 2010]

In the charming community of Balboa 50 miles from Los Angeles, the middle-class housewife Lucia Harper (Joan Bennett) travels to Los Angeles to meet the scoundrel Ted Darby (Shepperd Strudwick). Her seventeen year-old daughter Beatrice (Geraldine Brooks) is in love with Ted that is a worthless man. He asks for money to leave Bea, but Lucia refuses to give. Bea does not believe on her mother and during the night she sneaks out to the boat garage to meet Ted that admits that Lucia told the truth. Bea pushes him and Ted falls on an anchor immediately dying. On the next morning, Lucia finds the body and assumes that Bea has killed her lover. She decides to get rid of the corpse and puts it in her boat and dumps far from home. When the police find Ted, the stranger Martin Donnelly (James Mason) visits Lucia to blackmail her on behalf of his partner Nagel (Roy Roberts) that has several letters that Bea had written to Ted, asking US$ 5,000 for the letters. The desperate Lucia tries to raise the amount since her husband is working in Berlin. However, Martin falls in love with her and tries to help her. But the dangerous Nagel wants to receive the amount at any price.

"The Reckless Moment" is a suspenseful melodrama of Max Ophüls. The despair of Lucia is impressive trying to protect her family and specially her teenage daughter from the scandal. The plot point is when the criminal falls in love with her and as he says, he had never done a decent deed in his life but he decides to help his beloved victim. Joan Bennett is fantastic in the role of Lucia and James Mason is a nice villain in the end. David Bair plays the annoying son of Lucia that is irritating. In 2001, Tilda Swinton played the lead role in "The Deep End", a good remake of "The Reckless Moment". My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Na Teia do Destino" ("In the Web of the Destiny")

Not a wasted frame

[christopher-underwood · 9/10 · 20 July 2007]

Near perfect, this is a marvellous and magical non stop emotional thriller with the camera moving with such fluidity we can only stare in wonder. As the camera swirls, so does the middle class family of Joan Bennett. She is constantly keeping the plates in the air, cheering them along chiding them at dinner or suggesting changes of clothes. When trouble strikes it is she who has to confront the big bad world and visit the boat shed, the less salubrious parts of town and confront people and issues she never has before. All seems to depend upon her and James mason's character appears forcing financial worries on top of all else. Until he falls for her and begins to relent and finally even more. Not a wasted frame.

Don't Go In The Boat House

[rabrenner · 6/10 · 15 December 2007]

A very different movie from Max Ophuls' masterpiece, THE EARINGS OF MADAM DE…While her husband is away for Christmas, lonely, harried housewife Joan Bennett is blackmailed by handsome, suave extortionist James Mason. Romantic complications ensue when they fall for each other. In the end, Mason dies nobly to protect Bennett's reputation, and Bennett goes back to her husband. Mason and Bennett don't even kiss, much less sleep with each other. The plot is pure Hollywood hokum, but Mason shines as always—has he ever turned in a bad performance?—and there is some of Ophuls' signature gliding camera work. Ophuls appears to be sending up the film noir genre as much as celebrating it.

Excellent 40's thriller.

[thebigheat · 10/10 · 24 September 2009]

This movie is result of an unusual combination, of a foreign movie director working within limitations of Hollywood in the 40's. This is really one most impressive thrillers and of my favorite movies. Ophuls does a great job working within pretty simple story line and illustrating how strong of a grip a family can have on a person life and how quickly it can come apart when fate intervenes. Ophuls camera creates nagging, dark atmosphere out of this middle class community, sort of like on a Twin Peaks episode. The story deals with a housewife, played by Joan Bennett, having to manage her family while her husband is abroad. Her daughter's relationship eventually escalates into blackmail and Joan has to deal secretly by herself with this problem, while trying to manage her family and keep everything under control. Bennett is excellent at portraying a person whose world is slowly caving in under pressure. Ophuls cleverly uses just about every scene to illustrate the tensions and inner conflicts of Bennett's character. James Mason is great as a refined crook who suddenly finds himself feeling empathy for others. Can't think of too many actors who could pull this off, or other places in time where this character would work. In addition to strong acting performances, there are lot of interesting allegory in the things which Ophuls shows and a very strong ending make this movie a masterpiece.. A + most strongly recommended.

Good but not great

[forbiddenfilms · 7/10 · 24 January 2021]

Once you get past the unrealistic scenario of Joan Bennett's character dumping the body, I slowly got into this one. James Mason is good, but I wasn't entirely sold on Joan Bennett's performance, but in the end her performance was effective. Interesting camera work, good lighting, and it was interesting how there was a lot of casual dialogue not designed to propel the story, but to add an element of authenticity to the scene (irritating at times, but mostly interesting). Overall, the film was a rather satisfying noir.

What would you do...?

[MikeMagi · 5/10 · 2 February 2014]

Question #1: Your 17 year old daughter is in love with an older man. When she goes to meet him at your boathouse, there's an accident and the next morning, you find him dead on the beach. Do you protect your little girl by roping the stiff to the back of your motorboat, giving him an anchor necktie, heading for open water and tossing him overboard? Question #2: When a surly Irishman turns up with a sheaf of your daughter's love letters to the late Lothario and offers to sell them to you -- or send them to the newspapers -- do you hock everything you own in a desperate attempt to raise the blackmail? Question #3: As a Columbia Pictures exec, when you're told this claptrap would make a great starring vehicle for Joan Bennett and James Mason, do you politely decline or line up the stars and film the hokum? Question #4: And this is the most puzzling of them all -- how come so many IMDb contributors consider "The Reckless Moment" a minor masterpiece? Okay, Mason turns in a stunning performance, as always. But you'd probably say the same thing if he simply read the phone book. And that might actually make more sense than this story.

When Worlds Collide

[dougdoepke · 17 January 2011]

Upperclass mother (Bennett) is blackmailed because of her indiscreet daughter.

Director Ophuls' leisurely camera work tends to soothe rather than jar, resulting in a style not particularly well suited for the jagged world of classic noir. Still, it is well suited for bringing out character traits as they emerge on a specific background.

Here, a rather ordinary, if upperclass, housewife gets to show her toughness by protecting her family (while Dad's away) from the ignominy of apparent murder and blackmail. So, move over Ozzie&Harriet and Leave It to Beaver, because by implication those well-coiffed housewives of 50's sitcoms are a lot tougher than they look.

Ophuls' dollying camera effectively contrasts the seedy world of the blackmailers with mother Lucia's amiable home life. The problem is that the criminal virus has established a beachhead in her boathouse, and now she must keep it from crossing the yard and invading the family home. Ironically, in order to do that, this law-abiding woman must herself break the law (the reckless moment), resulting in a noirish downward spiral.

Halfway between the worlds of crime and respectability is reluctant blackmailer Donnelly (Mason). In a sense, Lucia meets him there, halfway, but the pull of their respective worlds is too strong to open up a third possibility. I guess my big reservation is with the highly contrived climax that wraps these things up too neatly in typical Production Code fashion. Nor, for that matter, is Donnelly's sudden life-altering devotion that plausible.

Nonetheless, it's a good atmospheric production (check out the moody use of the beach-front breeze), with a fine central performance from Bennett who refuses to go over the top. To me, however, the most unexpectedly jarring part is that very last phone scene—see if you agree.

Short and bitter-sweet thriller

[Lejink · 7/10 · 3 January 2010]

Ignore the awful title, which put me in mind of some portentous period drama and you'll find a tough little mid 40's thriller. The BBC showed it this Christmas in a series dedicated to film noir, although I didn't detect too many noir-ish attributes in either the plotting, characterisation or cinematography.

That's not to gainsay its charms, however, as this taut tale of accidental death and blackmail takes you from start to finish in the seeming blink of an eye, underplaying, thankfully, any tendency to melodrama in place of character development and pace of narrative.

Joan Bennett is very good as the protective mother hen, who'll stop at almost nothing to protect her wilful teenage daughter from a disastrous affair with a nefarious older man to the extent of covering up said daughter's accidental killing of her now-revealed blackguard of a lover. James Mason comes onto the scene as the "human" half of a blackmailing duo, intent on extorting $5000 from Bennett (her husband conveniently abroad at the time), whose outlook towards both her and himself changes as his admiration for her grows.

To be fair, I'm not sure enough time was devoted towards Mason's near-Damascene type conversion to Bennett's side, making it seem a trifle improbable and unexpected, certainly Bennett rarely has a polite word to say to him as she strives valiantly to raise the necessary funds to buy back her daughter's offending letters. No, for me the strength of the film is in the depiction of Bennett as a typical 1940's American matriarch, not too proud to take the whole problem on her shoulders, dirty her hands or even pawn her best jewellery to protect her precious family. The conclusion, involving a self-defence murder and car crash which sees Mason conveniently clear Bennett with his dying breath, does run counter to a lot of the realism that has gone before but I suppose some concessions had to be made to the audience of the day in delivering thrills and absolution for the heroine.

The best acting is unquestionably by Bennett. Mason's "Oirish" accent comes and goes a bit with the tide and he also struggles at times to convince you of the sincerity of what is, admittedly a trickily written part, but his marvellous speaking voice will convince me of most things, even as a cheap conscience-stricken blackmailer as here.

The direction by Max Opuls is crisp, occasionally making good use of exterior locations and is all about moving the story along within its brief screen-time.

In the end, the movie comes across as what it probably was, a superior B-picture, not strong enough as a main event, but one you'd enjoy on a double-feature.

Motherhood's dark side

[marysz · 10/10 · 23 January 2012]

The Reckless Moment is a mesmerizing post-war film about a housewife, Lucia Harper (Joan Bennett) who is forced to enter the underworld to protect her teenage daughter. Other reviewers have mentioned director Max Ophuls' fluid camera-work, which carries the viewer along as surely as Lucia Harper's complacent middle-class life is swept away by her husband's absence and the seedy blackmailer Nagel, who threatens to implicate her daughter in her lover's murder. Lucia is constantly referred to as Mrs. Harper throughout the film; in her world, she has no existence outside of being a wife and mother. But despite living in a beach community in Southern California, she's incongruously shown wearing masculine-looking heavy coats and tailored suits. She has to "man up" to protect her family. This is a movie of opposites; the Harper family's wholesome, bright family life is contrasted with the tawdry Los Angeles streets that Lucia (appropriately in dark glasses) is forced to prowl as she scrounges around for money to pay off Nagel. But she has two allies, Donnelly, Nagel's accomplice, who falls in love with her and Sybil, her shrewd African-American housekeeper (Frances Williams). Traumatic as Lucia's experience is, Donnelly's devotion to her connects Lucia with the love and sexuality that may be missing from her marriage. Sybil, whose quick thinking helps save the day in the film's climax, calls into question Lucia's (as well as the viewers') assumptions about race and social class. This is an extraordinary film that belongs in the National Film Registry.

Enamored Bad Men

[date1969-697-374378 · 7/10 · 6 January 2014]

I just got through watching this movie and two things stood out. One is that the bad man, James Mason(Martin Donnelly) played by James Mason, in this blackmail scheme fell for the mark,(Lucia Harper) played by Joan Bennett, with only a couple of conversations. In fact in the second conversation Lucia chastises and belittles Martin but somehow it turns the tide and he falls for Lucia. The second is the "Help" (Sybil)played by Frances E. Williams who is ever present when the blackmailer(s), Martin and (Nagel) played by Roy Roberts, come to the house. She sees them and seems to be privy to the fact they aren't exactly good guy's though she develops a liking for Martin. Though not credited in the movie the character plays an essential roll in the story. Overall it's not a bad movie which gets to the suspense quickly and resolves with the loose ends all tide up.

And the Crook has a regret for love...

[elo-equipamentos · 8/10 · 16 March 2018]

Joan Bennett was one the most important femme fatale of Noir, but in this one she is no longer so young, she plays a protector mother which has an absent husband, when your teenage daughter gets involved in love with an older man, she has to take a hard decision, tries keeps away this crook who wants money to do it, but has a fatal accident and the older boyfriend gonna die, the mother moved the body to another place to protect her daughter, suddenly appears another crook (Mason) to blackmail her, maybe the latest Max Opuls success!!!!

An absorbing noir melodrama undercut by a weak resolution...

[Doylenf · 6/10 · 23 January 2012]

Joan Bennett effectively handles the central role of a harried housewife who finds out she has to deal with a blackmailer (James Mason) in an effort to shield her daughter (Geraldine Brooks) from murder charges.

Interesting that this noir-like drama is played out mostly in sunlight with only a few night scenes to give it the full atmospheric effect of a thriller. However, the final boat house scene is given the sort of shadowy photography one expects for a physical confrontation between the blackmailer and his corrupt partner.

Despite a taut script, the production has the look of a low-budget melodrama boosted by the admirable work of a good cast. Joan Bennett has one of her best roles as the tough-minded wife who is challenged to keep one step ahead of the authorities while dealing with a blackmailer who falls in love with her while her husband is overseas.

Good supporting performances from Shepperd Strudwick, Henry O'Neill and David Blair are a help...but the weak resolution for the ending undercuts the film's effectiveness as a satisfying thriller and keeps it in the minor league among Max Ophul's films. He does keep the story down to a brisk running time.

Trivia note: The outstanding B&W photography is fluid and on the move in endless tracking shots, one of the film's best virtues.

Joan Bennett is, as usual, superb!!!

[kidboots · 8/10 · 10 February 2009]

Joan Bennett was certainly the most versatile of her acting sisters. Starting out as a beautiful blonde ingenue, she was a compliment to any actor who was lucky enough to play opposite her. Twenty years later she was still dazzling. After a few femme fatale roles, she turned up as a bespectacled, harassed mother, juggling doing the nightly accounts with coping with her teenage daughter's first love affair. "The Reckless Moment", unappreciated at the time, was a story of blackmail, skilfully directed by Max Ophuls.

The film opens with Lucia Harper (Joan Bennett) driving over to the mainland from Balboa. It isn't a shopping trip - she is going to meet her daughter's lover, to persuade him to stop seeing Bea. Bea is played very intensely by Geraldine Brooks, an under appreciated actress. Bea refuses to give him up and will not believe that he was willing, for the right kind of payment. On top of this Lucia's husband, Tom, rings, to say he will not be home for Christmas. That night Bea meets Ted Darby (Sheppard Strudwick) secretly in the boathouse. They have a fight and Bea mistakenly thinks she has killed him. The next morning, while walking on the beach, Lucia finds Darby's body. In an amazing and suspenseful scene she somehow gets the body into their rowboat and leaves it on another beach.

Lucia then gets a visit from Mr. Donnelly (James Mason) - a blackmailer who is acting on behalf of Mr. Nagle, who has some indiscreet letters that Bea wrote to Darby. Donnelly is drawn into Lucia's world and is instantly attracted to her and her family (the type of life he has never known). At one point he says something like "your kids are lucky to have a mother like you" - she replies "everyone has a mother like me". She doesn't believe there is a third party - a Mr. Nagle, but there is and he is nasty.

The film follows Mrs. Harper as she desperately tries to raise the $5,000, from the bank, to a humiliating interview at a loan office and finally a pawnbrokers where she raises $800 on her jewelry. When the police arrest a man for the murder, Donnelly, who has been increasingly reluctant about taking her money - tells her she doesn't have to find the money anymore. Nagle has other plans and visits Lucia at the boat house to threaten her.

A lot more happens but the ending where Lucia, surrounded by cage-like wooden bannisters, is talking to her husband on the phone - you get the feeling that she will put all that has happened behind her and try to go on with her day to day life.

Highly Recommended.

The Shallow End

[grahamclarke · 6/10 · 25 July 2005]

A couple of minutes into "Reckless Moment" it became apparent to me that this is the original on which 2001's "The Deep End" was based. From that moment onwards, I found myself playing an involuntary ping pong match between the two versions. While both are worthy films in their own right, a comparison weighs heavily in favor of "Deep End'.

"Reckless Moment" is made with great style in fitting with the noir melodrama. The photography is superb, and director Ophuls is served excellently by both James Mason and Joan Bennett. However the very linchpin of the story is the ambivalent and complex relationship between the blackmailer and his victim and it's in this area that the movie falters badly. It's handling of the relationship is straightforward, shallow and basically unbelievable. "The Deep End" handled this particularly well; it's the very source of the film's power. It also shrewdly updated the protection of a daughter by her mother, from having the love letters she wrote exposed, to a mothers protection of her gay son's videotaped sexual escapades.

Still "Reckless Moment" remains a worthwhile experience, but misses making the grade of a "classic" thanks to an unimaginative, simplistic and shallow screenplay.

A fine movie of fierce family love and subtle personal feelings...as well as death and blackmail

[Terrell-4 · 8/10 · 6 February 2008]

Is The Reckless Moment a noir or a melodrama? I'll vote for both. Whatever it is, the film is a superb drama of, as one person has said, "maternal overdrive." And if the plot sounds familiar, think of that wonderful movie, The Deep End starring Tilda Swinton from 2001. The Deep End is a remake of The Reckless Moment.

Lucia Harper (Joan Bennett) is an upper-class wife and mother with a young, teen-age son and a 17-year-old daughter. Lucia's husband is away. The family lives in a fine ocean-front home in "the lovely community of Balboa," fifty miles south of Los Angeles. Bea Harper is just old enough to get herself in trouble with men and just young enough not to want to listen to her mother. The older man she's been seeing is a sleazy, charming opportunist. When Lucia realizes what's going on, she warns the man away...and soon she finds him dead at their boat house. She thinks her daughter was responsible. With little hesitation, Lucia Harper does what she thinks she must to protect her daughter and her family. She drags the body into a small boat and dumps it on the far side of the ocean inlet. When the body is eventually discovered, murder is suspected. And then Lucia is visited by a dark Irishman, Martin Donnelly (James Mason). He has letters written by her daughter to the man, letters which could be interpreted in a compromising way if they were turned over to the police or to the press. The price for silence? Thousands of dollars which Lucia can find no way to raise. In a subtle, slow rearrangement of feelings, Donnelly, who is a disreputable man hardened to pleadings, finds himself sympathetic to Lucia's determination to protect her family. Donnelly's partner, however, is made of harder and more cynical stuff. The conclusion takes place in the darkened boathouse and then in an act of sacrifice that may have you wondering about what you would have done.

I think this is at least a semi-noir because of the desperate fix Lucia Harper finds herself in. The more she tries to protect her daughter and the more she tries to raise the money the blackmailers want, it seems the more the consequences of her actions close in around her. The flip side of that noir coin is the role and personality of Martin Donnelly. Ever so slowly we can see him drawn to Lucia Harper. But he's drawn not simply to her as a person as he is to what she represents...love and determination, a stable family, a fierceness to protect those she loves. If Lucia Harper may be doomed by circumstances she wants to control but can't, Martin Donnelly may be doomed by feelings he never expected to have and for which there can be no happy ending.

The Reckless Moment starts out as Joan Bennett's movie. In my view she remains one of the least appreciated of Hollywood actresses. She played heartless women so effectively (Scarlet Street, for instance) that her versatility was obscured. Yet she could match Myrna Loy in good-natured irony and desirability, and was equally good at portraying lovingly exasperated mothers. She was shrewd, as well, being quite willing to play mothers of grown children as she moved into early middle-age. The Reckless Moment, however, becomes a two-person movie as soon as James Mason appears at Lucia's home bearing those letters. Mason was one of the great film actors. With a face that could stay calm but imply all sorts of feelings, some unpleasant and nearly all conflicted, just below the skin, with an incomparable voice and with great acting technique, Mason could turn dross into gold. Matched with Bennett, the two of them perform a kind of dance where each needs the other to do well.

How does The Deep End compare to The Reckless Moment? I think they are both first-rate movies.

It only takes a moment

[atlasmb · 6/10 · 12 May 2013]

In the noir-ish world of The Reckless Moment, society is divided into two parts--the Main Street world of families and respectable business, and the "underworld", where men stand in doorways and transactions are made in the dark. What separates these two worlds is, sometimes, only one street or a set of railroad tracks, or--sometimes--only a moment.

Lucia Harper is the mother in a conventional family. Her husband is the breadwinner and the protector, but he is temporarily away on business. Lucia plays the role of household organizer and nurturer. But circumstances intervene, and Lucia--in her husband's absence--is forced to play the role of protector. This is a natural role, for every mother will defend her brood against dangers. Lucia makes a momentary, risky decision in defense of her daughter.

James Mason plays Mr. Donnelly, the man who visits her household with the threat of blackmail. Lucia must protect her family at all cost and is drawn into the shady world of Mr. Donnelly and his threatening partner.

Likewise, Mr. Donnelly is drawn into the world of Lucia. Her influence changes him, sending the story down an unforeseen path.

The Reckless Moment is a simple story. Although there is no true hero, the main characters compelled my interest. And the stylish cinematography created a compressed world in which the actions and emotions of the characters fill the screen.

Not that good

[fluffchop · 4/10 · 29 January 2022]

The ratings clowns have come out to give this about a 7/10 overall but it's very lacking to be anywhere near that score. It's about half that in reality. All these old films seem to get a high score just for being old. You need to be discerning enough to realise when you're looking at a bad movie. This isn't bad, but it's not all that good.