#victorian meodrama

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Experiment Perilous

Hedy Lamarr turned down LAURA and GASLIGHT (both 1944) before agreeing to let MGM loan her to RKO for Jacques Tourneur’s EXPERIMENT PERILOUS (1944, Criterion Channel, TCM), a film combining elements of both. As in the former, the leading man (George Brent here) falls in love with the leading lady (Lamarr) after seeing her portrait, and though talked about extensively, she’s kept off-screen until well into the running time. As in the latter, it’s the tale of a woman whose husband (Paul Lukas) is trying to make her appear insane. The filmmakers even changed the setting of Margaret Carpenter’s novel from the present to 1903, ostensibly feeling the passive heroine wouldn’t be believable as a modern woman (had they seen other Hollywood films?), but possibly to ride on GASLIGHT’s coattails. The film is quite beautiful to look at, with Tourneur’s careful attention to period detail, Tony Gaudio’s shadowy photography and RKO’s art department turning studio streets into New York City in the winter. Sadly, any resemblance to GASLIGHT ends there. Lukas’ motivation for manipulating the leading lady, jealousy, isn’t as focused as Charles Boyer’s or Clifton Webb’s. Critics have suggested he’s trying to control her sexuality, but since she’s presented as beautiful but innocent, that doesn’t ring true. And Brent, in a role originally intended for first Cary Grant and then Gregory Peck, is a big neutron star of acting here. There are a lot of scenes in which he’s on-screen alone, and it’s like staring at nothing, which is a pity given his strong work opposite Bette Davis and Barbara Stanwyck. It’s a relief when the film moves into an extended flashback without him. Lamarr and many critics have hailed her performance as her best. She’s very effective when we first see her as Lukas’ nervous, uncertain wife and in the flashbacks in which she convincingly plays a wide-eyed country girl. But after a while it becomes clear that she isn’t really connecting to her co-stars. She turns to face the camera a little too often to create big dramatic moments with nothing behind them. And she has a confrontation that’s supposed to be climactic but seems as committed as her ill-advised Joan of Arc in the more ill-advised THE STORY OF MANKIND. Lukas, however, is very strong, even when the character makes no sense, and you also get good support from Albert Dekker as Brent’s sculptor friend, Olive Blakeney as Lukas’ sister, Margaret Wycherly as Brent’s maid, Stephanie Bachelor as the woman he dumps for Lamarr and Julia Dean as Lamarr’s maid.

#hedy lamarr #film noir #victorian meodrama #jacques tourneur #george brent #paul lukas #albert dekker