REVIEW: A RECKLESS MOMENT
Lately, I’ve been attempting to review a single movie from every year starting with 1947 and ending with 1960, hoping to gain a better understanding of the early Cold War historical period from an American perspective. The first film I reviewed as part of this series, Crossfire (1947), featured a male-dominated world grappling with prejudice and violence on the domestic-front in the wake of WWII. The men depicted in the film appear noticeably adrift— lacking the stabilizing anchor of home and hearth— gathering instead in seedy bars and hotel rooms. Crossfire’s argument, that reintegrating these men back into respectable family life is a crucial component to preventing total social chaos, would reverberate continuously as the late 1940s became the early, middle and late 1950s.
The focus of the second film I discussed, The Snake Pit starring Olivia de Havilland, shifted the postwar thematic narrative to the perspective of a working woman. Virginia, that film’s protagonist, is a newlywed who’s life is turned upside-down when a schizophrenic episode lands her in the looney-bin. Like I stated briefly at the end of that review: on one hand, The Snake Pit is a progressive call for compassionate treatment of the mentally ill. On the other, as more modern critics have noted, Virginia’s arc implies that part of her healing process involves taking on a more conventional female role at home with her husband— dependent, lovely and prepared to start a family as soon as he’s ready. Many women in the 1940s experienced greater independence than they would have otherwise because of the war effort. But by 1948, they were being asked to return home.
Joan Bennett and James Mason in A Reckless Moment (1949)
This time around, we’re going to be talking about our final film of the 1940s: A Reckless Moment— much lower profile and much less well received compared to the others. It follows Lucia Harper, a suburban mother from a sunny, coastal California town. When her teenage daughter’s actions accidentally lead to the death of a disreputable older man, Lucia stumbles across the body and hides it to save her family from scandal. Unfortunately, this desperate act snowballs into a bigger problem when Martin Donnelly, an Irish blackmailer, enters her life possessing an incriminating letter confirming a relationship between her daughter and the dead man.
Joan Bennett, who plays Lucia, became famous at the start of the decade for her seductive, moody performances in films like Fritz’s Lang’s Scarlet Street. However, she was beginning to transition out of femme-fatal roles by 1949, into more “mature” socially acceptable alternatives. For A Reckless Moment, she cut her long, dark hair into a shorter plain-style to fully take on the appearance of a burdened, suburban mom. The narrative of this picture goes to great lengths to highlight the absence of Lucia’s husband, away on business in Europe. The point appears to be that Lucia, without the help of a patriarch, can barely hold her family together— his very absence creating a vulnerability exploited by various local ne’er-do-wells. This is obviously to underscore the prevailing belief in the 1940s and 1950s that a father’s guidance is imperative for keeping a family safe and on the straight and narrow.
For Martin Donnelly, the leading male role, James Mason was cast. He had recently arrived in the United States from the U.K. A Reckless Moment was his third American movie, and his second with director Max Ophüls. Additionally, Geraldine Brooks stars at Bea, Lucia’s daughter.
The movie, based on a Ladies Home Journal serial story, was actually cobbled together by Joan Bennett’s husband at the time— Walter Wanger, a notable indie producer. Off-screen, he kept a close eye on the film as it was made. Upon its release, A Reckless Moment unfortunately failed at the box office, pulling in about $17,000 on its $882,000 budget. Director Ophüls, fed up with American moviemaking, moved back Europe where he directed a string of masterworks. James Mason went on to star in bigger hits, eventually earning an Academy Award nomination for A Star is Born in 1954.
Wanger and Bennett were a respected couple in Hollywood’s high society at the time, which made it all the more shocking when their personal lives publicly imploded before Christmas in 1951. Jealous, suspicious and totally out of his mind, the producer shot and wounded his wife’s talent agent while they were seated in a parked car— believing the two were in the midst of an affair. The agent survived, but the public’s horrified reaction unfairly torpedoed Bennett’s career, and she soon found herself blacklisted by the major studios, wary of negative publicity. Wanger was sentenced to prison for assault, emerging again the following year. He would go on to produce Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). Bennett pivoted to stage work and later to television, finding success with the 1960s gothic soap-opera Dark Shadows.
A Reckless Moment isn’t a great movie, but its not worthless. The constraints of everyday life for women are portrayed realistically— for example, in one scene Lucia learns she is not allowed to borrow money from the bank without her husband’s signature. And she’s portrayed as brave and competent for the most part. In this way, the film almost critiques the image of the untroubled housewife enshrined by the impending 1950s, making it— like Crossfire and The Snake Pit— a mid-century cultural snapshot as well as a comment on it.