The Dark Mirror

One of the great actresses of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Olivia de Havilland delivered not one but two compelling performances as Ruth and Terry Collins, identical twins who come under suspicion of murder, in Robert Siodmak’s The Dark Mirror. While Siodmak eschews his typical noir visual effects here, he instead incorporates some outstanding special effects (even by today’s standards) to bring Ruth and Terry to life simultaneously, often sharing screen time. (Editor Ernest Nims surely deserves a lot of credit too.) When an esteemed doctor is stabbed to death, witnesses place his girlfriend Terry Collins at the scene, but mightn’t it have been her twin sister Ruth instead? The district attorney (Charles Evans) can’t book either sister since they refuse to confirm which one had the iron-clad alibi and which did not. At a stalemate in his investigation, Lt. Stevenson (Thomas Mitchell) recruits Dr. Scott Elliot (Lew Ayres), an expert on twin studies, for assistance in cracking the case; Elliot agrees and begins relationships with each sister under the guise of research. He discovers that Ruth and Terry may appear interchangeable on the outside, but they couldn’t be more different psychologically, but what if the twins are still playing games? (The doc shares an interesting theory about why sisters often hate each other more than random women do.)  This is not a dark film, either visually or philosophically; in fact, several scenes after the twins reveal themselves are lighthearted by design. But the twisted story and de Havilland’s performance(s), in the hands of one of noir’s great auteurs, make it a must watch.