REVIEW: A RECKLESS MOMENT
The first film I reviewed as part of this series, Crossfire (1947), featured a male-dominated world grabbling with domestic violence and prejudice in the wake of WWII. The men depicted in the film appear adrift— lacking the stabilizing anchor of home and hearth. They gather instead in seedy bars and hotel rooms. Crossfire’s argument, that reintegrating these men back into 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, the films protagonist, is a newlywed who’s life is turned upside-down when a schizophrenic episode lands her in an asylum. Like I stated: on one hand, The Snake Pit is a progressive call for compassionate treatment of the mentally ill. On the other, as some 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 wouldn't have otherwise as a direct result of the war. But by 1948, they were being asked to return home. Virginia’s illness can easily be read as a symptom of the era’s severe gender-role related stress.
This time around, we’re going to be talking about our final film of the 1940s: A Reckless Moment— a much lower profile and much less well received film compared to the others. It follows Lucia Harper, a suburban mother from a sunny, coastal California town. When her teenage daughter 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 and James Mason in A Reckless Moment
Joan Bennett, who plays Lucia, became famous at the start of the decade for her performances in films like Scarlet Street. She was beginning to transition out of femme-fatal roles by 1949, into more mature wife-mother characters. She cut her hair into a plain-style to more fully take on the appearance of a suburban mom-type. Uniquely, the narrative of the picture explicitly highlights the absence of Lucia’s husband, who’s 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 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. Geraldine Brooks stars at Bea, Lucia’s daughter.
The movie, based on a Ladies Home Journal serial story, was 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 in late 1949, A Reckless Moment 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 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— in one scene Lucia learns she is not allowed to borrow money from the bank without her husbands signature. And she is also still painted 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 product of its time and a comment on it.