SO EVIL, MY LOVE: Blu-ray (Paramount, 1948) Kino Lorber

What becomes of a young missionary lass under the corrupting influence of an elegant homme fatale is the subject of director, Lewis Allen’s So Evil, My Love (1948) – a thoroughly dark and morose, yet utterly sophisticated noir crime/thriller. The picture benefits greatly from Mutz Greenbaum’s evocative and shadowy cinematography, not to mention stellar star turns from Paramount fav’, Ray Milland as Mark Bellis, the wicked usurper of innocence, and a marvelous Ann Todd as Olivia Harwood, travelling home aboard the fastest clipper following the death of her missionary husband in the West Indies. Aboard, Harwood is encouraged by the captain (Findlay Currie) to attend a sick passenger. Sick, indeed. Mark is ill at ease, having only just eluded authorities, suspected of murder, and relying on Olivia’s goodness and naiveté to buoy his escape once their ship has docked at Liverpool. Ronald Millar and Leonard Spigelgass’ expertly concocted suspense story is based on Marjorie Bowen’s 1947 novel (published under the non de plume, Joseph Shearing). However, the writers have also borrowed from the curious 1876 suspicious death of English barrister, Charles Bravo, and another case file, this one from 1905 and gleaned from New York, involving Cesar Young, stabbed by his lover, Nan Patterson. As for Bravo, he was the victim of antimony poisoning, a terrible way to die, prolonging his suffrage on route to the ever-after by three hellish days, yet leaving no discernible traces of the crime itself. Henceforth, the murderer was never brought to justice.

So Evil, My Love falls into a subcategory of picture-making, circa the mid-1940’s whose affinity for mysterious and wicked little tales, mostly told in a hermetically sealed English Victoriana, first hit its stride with MGM’s remake of Gaslight and Fox’s reboot of The Lodger (both released in 1944), almost immediately to be followed up by Hangover Square and The Picture of Dorian Gray (both in 1945). For one reason or another, Hollywood’s yen for sinisterly purposed tales of the macabre set in Europe endured for some time thereafter. Arguably, it has never entirely faded into obscurity. So Evil, My Love sports all the conventional trappings of this subgenre; Thomas N. Morahan’s production design, a veritable menagerie of Victorian stylized bric-a-brac. So too are Sophie Devine’s costumes exquisitely tailored vintage garb, to suggest an age of propitious decorum beneath which all sorts of unspeakable sins are committed – some, even in the name of love, or rather, jealousy to possess it at any and all costs. Ray Milland, who had begun his association with Paramount Pictures as a matinee idol, steadily advanced his position from second-tier male pin-up to a solidly situated actor’s actor – a move that would bode well for his longevity in pictures as the bloom of his youth began to fade into a curiously unattractive pudginess in middle-age. As for Ann Todd – the Hartford, Cheshire-born, English lass (of mixed Scottish/English heritage) had studied hard, landing her first film in 1931. Her wit and beauty, duly noted by the critics, procured her steady work in England thereafter, until Perfect Strangers and then, The Seventh Veil (both in 1945), the latter in which she played a suicidal concert pianist to perfection. Signing an American contract with producer, David O. Selznick, in what is, today, still considered the most ‘lucrative’ ever for an English talent (over a cool million in its clauses), Todd later pointed out $880,000 was reclaimed by the taxation laws of the day. For Selznick, Todd appeared in The Paradine Case (1947), one of Hitchcock’s rare flops.  And while So Evil, My Love remains an infinitely more intriguing effort on all fronts, it too performed poorly at the box office, as did her follow-up for ‘then’ husband, David Lean – The Passionate Friends (1949). By 1961, Todd’s film career was a thing of the past.

So Evil, My Love opens with the great William Allwyn’s memorable love theme under the main titles – a gorgeous orchestral arrangement overused later and throughout to signify the burgeoning romance between Milland’s sinful scamp and Todd’s tea-toddler. We digress to a ship bound for England from the West Indies where newly widowed Anglican missionary, Olivia Harwood is prevailed upon by the ship’s captain to nurse Mark Bellis below decks who is presumably suffering from a bout of malaria. Bellis is deceptively vague about his past. Even so, the couple strike up a friendship. Fully recovered by the time the ship docks, Mark inveigles himself into Olivia’s reluctant ‘good graces’ to take up residence in the lodging house she has inherited from her late husband. Mark plies his wily charm to seduce Olivia, all the while, skulking off to indulge his sexual passion with the vulgar chorine, Kitty (Moira Lister). We also learn of Mark's spurious past as an art thief and forger when he is reunited with ex-partner-in-crime, Edgar Bellamy (Raymond Lovell). Together, the two conspire on a ballsy daybreak art heist at the museum. Alas, the crime goes horribly awry. The men are intercepted by police and forced to split up. Returning to Olivia, Mark convinces her of embarking upon a fresh start with him in America. Completely under his romantic spell, Olivia is prepared to do anything to ensure this destiny. Alas, they are penniless. Olivia, however, latches upon the idea of insinuating herself into the home of her wealthy former schoolfriend, Susan Courtney (Geraldine Fitzgerald), who has wed an elder and thoroughly heartless barrister, Henry (Raymond Huntley). Olivia’s ability to calm the highly neurotic Susan, who is also put upon by her husband’s cruel-hearted mother (Martita Hunt) highly pleases Henry and he invites Olivia to move into the manor as his wife’s companion. With Mark's urging, Olivia pilfers stocks and bonds, as well as other small valuables from the Courtney household, passing them on to Mark to fence into cash.

Having discovered an old bundle of letters from Susan to Olivia, containing youthfully indiscreet romantic dalliances, Mark concludes Olivia could use these to blackmail the Courtneys, hence preserving their faux respectability. At first, Olivia finds the idea thoroughly repugnant. But when her alternative plan, to run away from Mark and resume her missionary work fails, Olivia agrees to Mark’s ruthless betrayal instead.  Meanwhile, Mark dallies with Kitty, bestowing on her the gift of a magnificent locket previously given to him by Olivia. Unknown to either Olivia or Susan, Henry is plotting to have his wife committed to a sanitarium because she has been unable to carry his child to term. Inadvertently, Henry’s hiring of a private detective (Leo G. Carroll) results in the exposure of Olivia and Mark’s thieving. Stepping up the threat of blackmail, Olivia is confronted by Henry with her own duplicity in Mark’s crimes. But before Henry can expose any of this, he suffers a life-threatening heart attack. While the family bustles around the patient, Olivia breaks into Henry’s study, reclaims the detective’s report and the letters of blackmail, and then, to ensure Henry will never be able to tell any of it to the police, poisons his medicine, instructing the naïve Susan to administer the lethal dose under the ruse she is actually helping to save her husband. At the inquest, Susan is indicted for murder. The private detective confronts Olivia, informing her of what he suspects but cannot prove without her confession. Tortured in her deliberations, Olivia is promised by Mark they can, at last, begin their lives together and anew in America. He instructs Olivia to pack her things post haste and prepare for the voyage abroad. At first, it seems a reprieve may indeed be in store for these malignant lovers. Ah, but then Kitty arrives at Olivia’s home in search of Mark, wearing the incriminating locket. Her illusions about her lover destroyed, Olivia nevertheless awaits Mark’s hansom cab.  Again, he proceeds to fill her mind with promises of the future. Alas, now his words fall on deaf ears. Her heart turned to stone, Olivia brutally stabs her lover to death, instructing the cabbie to drive her to the nearest police station where she intends to make a full confession.

So Evil, My Love is deliciously overwrought. Some critics of the day found the ever-evolving plot too heavily weighted in needless complications to delay the final outcome. My impressions, however, veer toward a more appreciative re-examination. While there are several sequences that occasionally drag, so much of the picture is expertly acted, so superbly realized and deftly directed by Lewis Allen, that the end result is an exquisitely underrated masterpiece with only minor caveats to derail our total enjoyment. Oh, did I mention, this one was produced by the legendary Hal B. Wallis, whose spate of impressive contributions to American cinema otherwise need no introduction? Milland and Todd strike the right chord of master and mate – his usually callous puppet-master doomed precisely at the moment when his heart begins to genuinely soften for the woman, he has thus far supremely taken advantage of in the most diabolically grotesque ways one can subvert another’s virtue and good nature. Todd’s conversion from morally forthright missionary to rank schemer and ultimate murderess is wholly believable. If the tired old clichés about ‘what one good woman can do’ or vice versa, and ‘hell hath no fury…’ play their part here, then the hyperbole is nevertheless well-concealed as the Millar/Spigelgass screenplay steadily unravels into a series of perversely entertaining vignettes, neatly collected into a menacingly wicked plot, illustrating the ultimate theft of one’s happiness from under the girth of sin, otherwise denied.

So Evil, My Love arrives on Blu-ray via Kino Lorber’s alliance with Universal, the current custodians of Paramount’s pre-war film library. And, predictably, the elements used here toggle between moderately acceptable to downright gritty and careworn. Universal continues to resist the urge to preserve their formidable catalog in anything better than these pre-existing film elements, archived at a time before the modern-age of technological wizardry might otherwise have lent greater support to correcting many – if not all – of the ravages of time afflicting these deep catalog titles. Fair enough, the Uni fire from the mid-1990’s wiped out a great deal of their archives. But new scans of surviving elements, remastered in 4K and given further consideration in both clean-up and alignment are long overdue for the Paramount library. So Evil, My Love fairs on the average. While there are age-related artifacts, none are egregious or overly distracting. What is distressing is the constant toggling of image clarity. While some scenes are marked by an almost razor-sharp precision with excellent contrast and gorgeous gray scale tonality, others suffer from a marked boost in contrast, to completely wipe out the mid-range and create a rather deliberately ugly looking video master. Film grain ranges from practically non-existent, to overly amplified to the point of being gritty and unnatural. The 1.0 DTS audio is adequate but unremarkable, and, intermittently, even suffers from a slight tinny characteristic. Extras are limited to a newly recorded audio commentary from Imogen Sara Smith and a badly worn theatrical trailer. Bottom line: So Evil, My Love is a moodily magnificent thriller that should surely please in performance. The Blu-ray is merely adequate. Judge and buy accordingly.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

3.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

3

EXTRAS

1