Movie Monday: Conflict

Movie Monday: Conflict

Filmed in 1943 but not released until 1945, Warner Brothers’ film noir Conflict starred Humphrey Bogart, Sydney Greenstreet, and Alexis Smith (an actress who made quite a few movies, but I’d not heard of). A cameo appearance is also made by the Maltese Falcon statue. The movie is based on The Pentacle by Alfred Neumann and Robert Siodmak. Despite the “heavy-hitting” cast, the movie didn’t do well.

Bogart and Greenstreet starred in several movies together, but Conflict is the only one in which Bogart played the villain. And played it he did even though he was somewhat blackmailed to take the role. Several sources quote the actor telling Jack Warner “I’m sorry, Jack. I just can’t do it. My stomach will not let me. I am an honest man, and I have to be honest with myself in this manner. If you want to get tough with me…I will feel that I have lots a friend.” However, he accepted after Warner threatened to block production of Passage to Marseille or cast a different actor in the lead role.

On the surface, the plot is a good one and fairly straightforward: Richard and Kathryn Mason appear to

be a happily married couple. Unfortunately, Richard has fallen in love with Kathryn’s younger sister, but he’s resigned to the fact that his wife won’t grant him a divorce. Kathryn derides him every chance she gets, and a series of events occur prompts him to murder her. After the police determine that he “did the deed,” they set him up with a bit of gaslighting to catch him. A pawn shop ticket is mailed to him, and the envelope appears to be addressed in Kathryn’s writing. When he goes to the shop, he finds her locket and what appears to be her signature in the register. He takes the police to the shop, but the locket is gone, and the register is different. Then on the street, he sees a woman who looks and dresses like Kathryn, so he follows her to her apartment, but it’s vacant and no one is inside.

Now convinced Kathryn is still alive, he returns to the crime scene to see if her body is still in the car where he left her. Bad news for Richard: the police are waiting for him.

Bogart and Greenstreet were both lauded for their performances, however, more than one critic commented that neither actor was “good enough to save the film.” Complaints of too many artificial devices and plot holes litter most of the reviews of the time. Since then, critics have been a bit more forgiving.

Personally, I thought the movie’s suspense, cinematography, and psychological aspects make it very watchable, especially for those who enjoy “noir” films.

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A Lesson in Love

He thinks he’s too old. She thinks she’s too young. Can these teachers learn that love defies all boundaries?

Born and raised in London, Isobel Turvine knows nothing about farming, but after most of the students in her school evacuate during Operation Pied Piper, she’s left with little to do. Then her friend Margery talks her into joining the Women’s Land Army, and she finds herself working the land at a manor home in Yorkshire that’s been converted to a boys’ school. A teacher at heart, she is drawn to the lads, but the handsome yet stiff-necked headmaster wants her to stick to farming.

Left with an arm that barely works from the last “war to end all wars,” Gavin Emerson agrees to take on the job of headmaster when his school moves from London to Yorkshire, but he’s saddled with the quirky manor owner, bickering among his teachers, and a gaggle of Land Army girls who have turned the grounds into a farm. When the group’s blue-eyed, raven-haired leader nearly runs him down in a car, he admonishes her to stay in the fields, but they are thrown together at every turn. Can he trust her not to break his heart?

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