The Man Who Cheated Himself

Released Dec 26, 1950

1h 26m

Crime

Drama

List

100%

7 Reviews

Tomatometer

52%

250+ Ratings

Audience Score

A woman (Jane Wyatt) in the process of divorce shoots her husband and gets her police lieutenant boyfriend (Lee J. Cobb) to help hide the body.

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Sean Axmaker

Stream on Demand

Director Felix Feist, a noir veteran, directs this independently-made film noir shot on location in San Francisco with brisk efficiency, moving it along its paces and taking the camera out of the studio and into the city.

Dec 3, 2022

Full Review

David Nusair

Reel Film Reviews

...a terrific premise that is, for the most part, employed to engaging and thoroughly satisfying effect by Feist...

Rated: 3/4

Nov 19, 2022

Full Review

Scott Nye

Battleship Pretension

Fantastic by-the-numbers noir.

Dec 8, 2020

Full Review

Mattie Lucas

From the Front Row

Under Feist's watchful eye, the film takes the hard-boiled noir and turns it into visual poetry.

Rated: 3/4

Jun 3, 2019

Full Review

Jeffrey M. Anderson

Combustible Celluloid

Thoroughly satisfying film noir.

Rated: 4/4

Oct 2, 2018

Full Review

Michael Barrett

PopMatters

Within the limitations of this sort of tightly wound melodrama, it delivers an entertaining morsel sure to please fans of noir and postwar unease.

Rated: 6/10

Oct 2, 2018

Full Review

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Billy L

awesome film .. todays films can't compare

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

08/03/23

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Bill B

Surprisingly, I very much enjoyed this. Cobb plays his character with a stoic realism that others might have overplayed. Dall was a fine actor that was underutilized in his career, and Wyatt was terrific. Good plot.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

05/28/23

Full Review

Deke P

1950. Great critics reviews! But middling current audience reviews cuz they don't appreciate B&W & old movies in old style. Good murder suspense crime detective drama. Good views of 1950 Frisco. Note to sef, watch yet again and pay ticular attention to large middle section. Watched it 3.23.23 on the tv screen. Saw it again, 7.9.23. Also stqrred JANE WYATT, the mother on the old FATHER KNOWS BEST tv series. She glookn in 19fiddy.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

07/10/23

Full Review

don k

Once we get past the romantically drippy dialog of the two leading couples, the movie begins to wind and unwind in a tense back-and-forth dance between the two leading men, Lee J Cobb and John Dall. As the tension builds, so does the cinematography. Truly outstanding uses of black and white throughout, and each frame of the final scenes at Fort Point is spectacular—even Hitchcock would have been awed. The plot is a bit too obvious and the dialog too conventional for today's tastes, but the direction, sets, location (San Francisco), editing and Cobb's performance rise to timelessness. The cinematography, which masterfully stitches all scenes together, swells to uncommon artfulness with a daring sublimity—hence, the high star rating.

Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

Full Review

Audience Member

The comically bad colorization of the version I saw made it hard to judge the film objectively. If you're going to watch this, find a print in the original black and white.

Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars

02/17/23

Full Review

paul d

This is a compelling noir crime drama from 1950, with a very good LJ Cobb, a chilling, manipulative Jane Wyman, and a very convincing John Doll as Cobb's brother and a straight-arrow detective. Lisa Howard is a bright presence in a smaller role. This is a very good movie, with a plot that invites good storytelling, but It misses a couple of things that could have made it great. First, although it has plenty of good cinematography, it doesn't have any shots that are so dramatic or inspiring that they rise to a higher artistic level. Second, there isn't enough sexual and dramatic tension at the beginning of the picture to explain how Cobb's character could abandon his professional duties to cover up a murder. The film is a compact 82 minutes, and perhaps another ten minutes at the beginning to develop Wyman's character more, and her relationship with Cobb, could have made it convincing. Among the movie's nice touches are many shots of a beautiful San Francisco and many convincing scenes with Italian immigrants (speaking genuine Italian!). Lot's of these same San Francisco scenes would come back to colorful life eight years later in Hitchcock's magnificent Vertigo. Unfortunately, there is also a continuity mistake that really stuck out for me (and probably for other car buffs), namely the switching in mid-film of Cobb's Chevrolet with a Nash. Yet because the car has a central role in the film's plot, this mistake really is inexcusable.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

Full Review

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Felix E. Feist

Director

Lee J. Cobb

Lt. Ed Cullen

John Dall

Andy Cullen

Jane Wyatt

Lois Frazer

Lisa Howard

Janet Cullen

Alan Wells

Nito Capa

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Synopsis

A woman (Jane Wyatt) in the process of divorce shoots her husband and gets her police lieutenant boyfriend (Lee J. Cobb) to help hide the body.

Director: Felix E. Feist
Production Co: Phoenix Film
Genre: Crime, Drama
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Dec 26, 1950, Limited
Release Date (Streaming): Jul 16, 2016
Runtime: 1h 26m

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