The Reckless Moment

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Stephen Jules R Jan 15 top notch for what it is..any fan of history thru film...noirs..mood... California history a tad ..a glimpse at the world not always shown esp when it was made so well with w stellar cast...a noir gem that would appeal to any true movie lover ..an old school noir of moral dilemma See more Blobbo X @Blobbo 11/27/2024 Kept thinking "This much better than most old movies Blobbo watch." Much loving attention invested in details --- background and fore. Score perfect and unobtrusive. Great storytelling! (Someone cared.) (Title weak.) See more nick s @Nick_S 03/11/2024 Very well done noir, with great acting and directing. Lots of nice camera work and scene blocking. Character development a little rushed, but always hard to balance that against keeping the story moving. See more jordan m 04/28/2022 I was looking forward to seeing this in the few days leading up to it, partially because it'd been quite a while (97 days according to my LB journal) since I'd watched an old black & white movie, but also because I've really not seen much from the noir genre. Its 82-minute runtime had me suspecting I would enjoy this pretty thoroughly, and indeed I did up til about the halfway point, where her efforts to acquire money got a little monotonous. It's hard to put myself in the shoes of a parent who would spend $5,000 in 1949 money (equivalent to $60,400 today according to this inflation calculator) for the sole purpose of hoping that some bad guys wouldn't tell the whole town that my kid was dating someone she shouldn't have, particularly one who has every intention of leaving said town for an art school soon. I think the plot would have been more believable if they were threatening to tell on her for tampering with the dead body, an act she probably shouldn't have gotten away with. However, it was easy enough to look past those problems and enjoy the movie for its interesting spin on motherhood and its use of a beleaguered parent as the star of the show and the primary love interest. I wish I'd read in advance about Ophuls, I would've paid more attention to the tracking shots! See more stu b 01/11/2022 A tight and tidy suspenser--only 80 minutes long--starring Joan Bennett as a suburban Cali mom who sets out to slam the brakes on the relationship between her daughter and the girl's shady, much older boyfriend, only to find herself knee-deep in blackmail, murder, and an unexpected romantic entanglement of her own. The action begins with Bennett confronting her daughter's lover, segues into a series of visits from the mysterious blackmailer (James Mason, in one of his first American screen roles), and never lets up. Great noir? No. But enjoyable? Yes. Based on a novel, "The Blank Wall", by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding. See it. See more paul d @PaulusLoZebra 10/15/2021 Max Ophuls' The Reckless Moment is a very good film. Typical for that era, it tells its story in a taut, economical way. It's ostensibly a crime drama but really a human drama and a love story. The censors of the late 40s kept this under control, but made in a different era it might have been quite steamy. James Mason and Joan Bennett are both excellent. See more Read all reviews

The Reckless Moment

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