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Portrait in Black
Portrait in Black is a glossy but overwrought 1960 soap opera that features melodrama queen Lana Turner doing what she does best, but the film produces a few more unintentional giggles than it should.
Sheila Cabot (Turner) is the glamorous trophy wife of a dying shipping magnate named Matthew Cabot (Lloyd Nolan) who is having an affair with her husband's doctor, David Rivera (Anthony Quinn). When David reveals he has accepted a job in Zurich, he and Sheila figure the only way for them to be together is to get rid of Matthew via lethal injection, but their plan goes awry when it is revealed that someone knows exactly what they've done.
The other pertinent players in this drama include Mason (Richard Basehart), Matthew's attorney who has been secretly lusting after Sheila for years; Sheila's stepdaughter, Cathy (Sandra Dee) who is dating Blake Richards (John Saxon) a Matthew Cabot wanna-be who gets screwed out of a contract with him and a chauffeur with a gambling problem named Cobb (Ray Walston).
This movie provides the same kind of unintentional giggles that the previous Ross Hunter/Lana Turner/Sandra collaboration Imitation of Life did. Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts have adapted their own stage play for the screen but director Michael Gordon plays most of his storytelling cards too quickly. From the moment we see Sheila and David onscreen together for the first time, we KNOW their having an affair, despite the fact that the actual reveal comes a little later. It would have been more interesting to have a little suspense regarding the plot point around which the whole story revolved.
I must credit Goff and Roberts for constructing a classic soap opera story rich with what we think are red herrings but turn out to be anything but. There is a moment near the beginning of the film where Matthew is livid to learn that Sheila has gotten a learner's permit so that she can learn to drive, which seems pointless during the scene, but it definitely becomes important later on in the story. I just wish director Gordon hadn't laid on the melodrama with such a heavy hand and trusted the story and his actors a little more. There's a moment where David looks at the hippocratic oath hanging on his office wall and goes into a meltdown that was supposed to be high drama but just made me laugh out loud.
Lana Turner does some of her best hand-wringing here wearing some gorgeous Jean Louis gowns, but the real pleasure here was watching Anthony Quinn as her leading man. Soap opera was never really Quinn's thing as an actor, but he completely invests in this character and definitely keeps this movie worth checking out. Basehart was appropriately greasy as Mason. Also loved Walston as Cobb and Anna May Wong as an Asian variation on Mrs. Danvers. First rate production values are a given with a Ross Hunter production, but I got the feeling this film produced a few more giggles than intended.
Portrait in Black is a glossy but overwrought 1960 soap opera that features melodrama queen Lana Turner doing what she does best, but the film produces a few more unintentional giggles than it should.
Sheila Cabot (Turner) is the glamorous trophy wife of a dying shipping magnate named Matthew Cabot (Lloyd Nolan) who is having an affair with her husband's doctor, David Rivera (Anthony Quinn). When David reveals he has accepted a job in Zurich, he and Sheila figure the only way for them to be together is to get rid of Matthew via lethal injection, but their plan goes awry when it is revealed that someone knows exactly what they've done.
The other pertinent players in this drama include Mason (Richard Basehart), Matthew's attorney who has been secretly lusting after Sheila for years; Sheila's stepdaughter, Cathy (Sandra Dee) who is dating Blake Richards (John Saxon) a Matthew Cabot wanna-be who gets screwed out of a contract with him and a chauffeur with a gambling problem named Cobb (Ray Walston).
This movie provides the same kind of unintentional giggles that the previous Ross Hunter/Lana Turner/Sandra collaboration Imitation of Life did. Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts have adapted their own stage play for the screen but director Michael Gordon plays most of his storytelling cards too quickly. From the moment we see Sheila and David onscreen together for the first time, we KNOW their having an affair, despite the fact that the actual reveal comes a little later. It would have been more interesting to have a little suspense regarding the plot point around which the whole story revolved.
I must credit Goff and Roberts for constructing a classic soap opera story rich with what we think are red herrings but turn out to be anything but. There is a moment near the beginning of the film where Matthew is livid to learn that Sheila has gotten a learner's permit so that she can learn to drive, which seems pointless during the scene, but it definitely becomes important later on in the story. I just wish director Gordon hadn't laid on the melodrama with such a heavy hand and trusted the story and his actors a little more. There's a moment where David looks at the hippocratic oath hanging on his office wall and goes into a meltdown that was supposed to be high drama but just made me laugh out loud.
Lana Turner does some of her best hand-wringing here wearing some gorgeous Jean Louis gowns, but the real pleasure here was watching Anthony Quinn as her leading man. Soap opera was never really Quinn's thing as an actor, but he completely invests in this character and definitely keeps this movie worth checking out. Basehart was appropriately greasy as Mason. Also loved Walston as Cobb and Anna May Wong as an Asian variation on Mrs. Danvers. First rate production values are a given with a Ross Hunter production, but I got the feeling this film produced a few more giggles than intended.