Footsteps in the Fog

Arthur Lubin’s Footsteps in the Fog is an intimate, complex cat and mouse game packed with twists, revelations, and reversals against a backdrop of perverse romantic attraction. Jean Simmons plays conniving housemaid Lily Watkins, who witnesses her employer hide a bottle of poison just moments after his wife dies of gastrointestinal complications; instead of reporting him to the authorities, however, Lily promises to keep quiet as long as he promotes her (over her wicked co-worker) to the position of housekeeper and allows her to wear his dead wife’s jewelry. For his part, Stephen Lowry (Stewart Granger) concludes that Lily represents too much risk, so he has no choice but to commit another murder. As complications mount, Lily and Lowry become genuinely impressed with each other’s guile even as their fates become increasingly entangled; the scene in which Lily surprises Lowry by coming home alive is a mini-masterpiece in tension. Shot in vivid Technicolor, chiaroscuro shadows give way to a blue-green fog that swallows up human forms.