Bedelia

English director Lance Comfort was best known for crime films, and his most creative and atmospheric noirs were literary adaptations released in quick succession throughout the 1940’s, including Hatter’s Castle (1942), Temptation Harbor (1947), and Bedelia, the story of a beautiful, domestic serial killer based on a Vera Caspary novel. A massive star at the time, Margaret Lockwood commands every scene as the title character, a mysterious woman newly married to wealthy Charlie Carrington (Ian Hunter) and honeymooning in Monte Carlo when a vacationing painter named Ben Chaney (Barry K. Barnes) becomes fascinated by her beauty. Bedelia reluctantly agrees to sit for him when back in England but soon regrets the decision as Chaney becomes possessive and begins dropping hints that he knows more about her past than he should. Turns out Bedelia not only had a string of husbands before marrying Carrington but they all seem to have died under mysterious circumstances. Comfort lays on the atmosphere thick, especially in the third act when a snowstorm and howling winds trap Bedelia and Charlie at home, forcing intimacy just when a gulf of psychic distance has sprung up between them. Using a quiet style and steady pace, Comfort directs for subtleties, not shocks, the underlying tension growing from barely detectable in the early scenes to mournfully detonated by the end.