The Locket

Famous primarily for its unique flashback-within-a-flashback-within-a-flashback narrative structure, John Brahm’s The Locket falls down the rabbit hole that is Nancy Fuller’s (Laraine Day) criminal past. Essentially narrated by the three men in Nancy’s life, who tend to end up either dead or committed to psychiatric hospitals, the film begins on her wedding day when ex-husband Dr. Henry Blair (Brian Aherne) shows up to warn her fiancé John Willis, Jr. (Gene Raymond) about her past, which seems to have involved thievery and murder. Robert Mitchum plays artist Norman Clyde, who had once coached Nancy to recollect a traumatic childhood incident from which sprang her immoral impulses. Brahm uses war-torn Europe as an unexpected setting in the final third of the film, an encounter in burned rubble one of the film’s highlights. Other memorable backdrops include a fancy art gallery opening, an artist studio with snow falling outside and a roaring fire in the fireplace, and a fantastically directed walk down the aisle toward a waiting bridegroom, Nancy’s memories flashing onto the carpet, imaginary voices taunting her until she collapses just before the altar.