A wonderful 35mm print of “one of the fifty greatest films in the history of cinema,” as selected by an international critics’ poll in Time Out. Remade as The Deep End with Tilda Swinton, The Reckless Moment thrusts an affluent American family into an underworld of murder and blackmail when the mother (Joan Bennett) accidentally kills the seedy LA art dealer who has been romancing her teenaged daughter. (Some critics have associated the moral chaos that engulfs the family with the absence of the father who is, tellingly, in Europe.) A suave blackmailer (James Mason) surfaces to turn mere misadventure into premeditated murder. Housewife and extortionist begin to have feelings for each other—how could she resist the darkly attractive Mason?—and Ophüls masterfully employs his visual arsenal to equate the world of vice and crime with the snug, smug domesticity of that suburban brick fortress, “the American home.” “One of the most radical critiques of the patriarchal family to be found in the American cinema” (Robert Lang), The Reckless Moment is “a marvellous, tantalizing thriller, featuring never-better performances from Mason and Bennett” (Time Out).
|
|
 |