Fri 14 Sep 2018
A Movie Review by Dan Stumpf: SLEEP, MY LOVE (1948).
Posted by Steve under Mystery movies , Reviews[7] Comments
SLEEP, MY LOVE. United Artists, 1948. Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, Robert Cummings, George Coulouris and Hazel Brooks. Written by Leo Rosten, St Clair McKelway, Decla Dunning and Cy Endfield. Directed by Douglas Sirk.
A stylish variation on Gaslight, with Claudette Colbert waking on a train to Boston with no idea how she got there, aided by a too-helpful and rather snoopy stranger (Queenie Smith) and bundled back home in the charming company of Bob Cummings.
Cut to her New York mansion where we see her presumably distraught husband (Don Ameche) reporting her missing to a somewhat sinister police detective (Raymond Burr), and it’s easy to see she’s “the victim of some diabolical mind control†as they say in the Movies.
What could have been a simple copycat film emerges as a gripping, humorous, real and very elegant movie, thanks to witty writing, clever acting, and the emotive direction of Douglas Sirk. Sirk always had a feel for décor, but here he evokes Colbert’s mansion-prison into a landscape that seems to determine the fate of the characters in it; people are constantly struggling up and down staircases, perching on furniture, darting from bedroom to bedroom… and there’s a frosted glass door that hides a meaning all its own.
Ms Colbert in her 40s radiates a mature sensuality, perfectly matched by Don Ameche’s slippery solicitude. Both of them come up against George Coulouris’ obsessive would-be mastermind, and whoever wrote Cummings’ dialogue had a perfect feel for Bob’s bemused charm. His encounters with the bad guys show off a vivid contrast of acting styles that translates into real conflict on the screen.
But the most arresting screen presence in Sleep, My Love belongs to an actress whose career went nowhere: Hazel Brooks as Daphne, a femme fatale whose merest glance could freeze molten lava. Next to her, the bad girls of Detour and Double Indemnity look like the Flying Nun — even more effective because she never does anything very criminal here, but always looks like she’d rather be pulling the wings off flies.
In all, this is a superb film, one that should be better-celebrated in the realms of Noir and Romantic Suspense. And one you should seek out for a fine, fun evening.
September 14th, 2018 at 9:56 pm
Often lost among better known Noir films, even better known Sirk Noir films, this is as close to a sleeper as you can get with that cast and those credits. Everyone and every scene is letter perfect here, the actors playing on multiple levels as the dialogue keys you to with every inflection.
Cumming’s shines in what could be just another bland good-guy role here so that you don’t really feel he is too weak to stand up to the likes of Ameche and Burr, and Brooks almost defining the fatale femme role in the genre.
Better still, Colbert gives a fine performance never letting the film forget it’s darker roots when it would have been so easy to play this as a woman’s picture rather than noir.
That Sirk and Rosten craft this so well around the eye and the word reminds you what this sort of film could be in the hands of those who understood the form.
It says something too about the quality of films coming out in that era that this one could be seen as less than the stunner it is. I’ve long thought it was neglected among noir enthusiasts, perhaps because Colbert’s presence might lead them to expect more a woman’s picture than the dark exercise in noir it is.
September 15th, 2018 at 2:42 am
A woman’s picture. Exactly right. That’s what I’ve always thought this movie was, if I ever thought about it, which was seldom. How wrong could I be?
Fairly damn wrong, obviously.
September 15th, 2018 at 2:45 am
PS. Hazel Brooks made only four movies for which she received onscreen credit, including this one. From the little I’ve read about her, she received a lot of publicity for her short-lived career. It’s good to know that she had some talent, too.
September 15th, 2018 at 2:56 am
What a fabulous movie this is! Who cares if the basic plot is oh so familiar – it’s done with so much style and panache that everything and everyone shines gloriously. I loved everything about it from it’s truly thrilling opening to the very last scene. When I wrote about this movie for my blog back in 2012 (when it was first made available on DVD) there were hardly any photographs online so I made my own by painstakingly stopping the movie I downloaded and creating screenshots. Now all over the web there are dozens more screenshots many taken from the very same sequences I used. Obviously, the movie has caught on with film addicts and avid noir fans alike.
IMO, SLEEP NO MORE is one of the best “Hitchcock movies” not directed by the master. This is better than LURED the only other crime movie directed by Sirk I liked. Much more stylish, the story is so well done and the acting from the entire cast is top notch.
As Dan so astutely remarks above SLEEP NO MORE has one of the best villainous sultry dames in *any* noir movie of the 1940s or 1950s — the stunningly gorgeous and thoroughly base Daphne played with femme fatale relish by Hazel Brooks. She wears only one dress in the movie, at all other times she appears in negligees. I loved it! The way she appears in her scenes — she is almost always standing above or seated above the men. Sirk makes her look like a goddess being worshipped. She has one of the best lines in the movie, so simple but uttered with such fervent hatred and greed: “I want everything she has. I want it all!” Brooks appeared opposite John Garfield in BODY AND SOUL and then all but disappeared. Really she only had those two memorable supporting roles and then back to cameos and walk-ons. She eventually gave up acting and modeling sometime in the late 1950s and became a professional photographer.
September 15th, 2018 at 10:01 pm
Though it is based on Rosten’s novel, the film and the book have many of the qualities of Cornell Woolich in terms of suspense and story. Whether that was Rosten’s model or not I don’t know, but he certainly succeeds with it, replete with the eccentric Coulouris and Queenie Smith characters, Brooks, and Ameche’s charming fraud (I’m not sure this is his first villain, but if so he does it damn well).
September 15th, 2018 at 10:12 pm
David, I have been trying to figure out if Ameche played another villain, and I doubt that he did, at least not in his starring days.
September 16th, 2018 at 12:23 pm
Now that is an interesting question!
It would be even more interesting if I had a definitive answer, but I don’t.