The Upturned Glass

“I’ve always resented the fact that you can’t choose what patients to kill.” This single sociopathic declaration in the second half of Lawrence Huntington’s The Upturned Glass is confirmation that Dr. Michael Joyce (James Mason) is not the “perfectly sane, valuable member of society” he claims to be. The film is framed by Joyce’s telling a classroom of students about an interesting patient he once treated, but we quickly learn this patient was the doctor himself. Through flashbacks, he relays how he fell in love with Emma Wright (Rosamund John), the married mother of a blind girl on whom he had operated and how Emma’s sudden death set Joyce on both an investigation and a pursuit of revenge. Huntington and cinematographer Reginald Wyer create moments of almost surreal beauty when, for example, Joyce visits Emma’s bedroom and family chapel or when the detestable Kate is studied and dissected by Joyce (as if she’s on stage) through a montage of over-the-shoulder shots that focus on her self-satisfied expressions. The pacing may creep a little too slowly in parts, but the doctor’s final confrontation with Kate in the ghostly bedroom is exhilarating.