Nora Prentiss (1947)

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

best movie i've ever seen.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

The first must-see film of the year.

It's pretty dull for the first two thirds of the movie. Kent Smith is the dignified, reserved, highly respected, happily married, wealthy, and thoroughly bored doctor in San Francisco. Every day is the same.Then he runs into Nora Prentiss, Anne Sheridan, or rather somebody else runs into her and he takes her to his office to fix her slightly bruised knee. Kaboom! For months they go at each other like two warthogs in heat. On the screen, they are two people in love with each other. A cynic might opine that the elderly doctor has finally found a young lady who makes him horny, while the night club floozy has nabbed a lover who is a doctor and is raking in the shekels and who might even divorce his bland wife and marry her and allow her to live the life style to which she's always aspired.Sheridan decides it can't go on like this, so she takes off for New York. Inspired, Smith hustles the corpse of a homeless patient who has just died in his office, equips the corpse with his own identification, and pushes it off a cliff in a burning car. End of Doctor Talbot; birth of Mister Thompson, who withdraws a lot of money from the bank and chases Sheridan to New York.He grows terrified of being found out. He takes to drink. He holes up in a hotel while Sheridan gets a job as a night club singer. He begins to look like hell. He turns extremely, violently jealous of Sheridan.The ending, which medical discretion forbids me to reveal, certainly revives the interest of the patient who must be nearly comatose by now. A wild pursuit, a flaming car crash, the unveiling of the shattered face. But then the story completely implodes. Or -- well, let me ask you. Would you willingly sit in the electric chair in order to preserve the dignity of your dull family? You WOULD? Kent Smith is good at being reserved. He's always reserved. He's a reserved man. It's his stock in trade on the screen. He was not even unnerved when confronted by his wife after she'd turned into a black panther in "Curse of the Cat People." Ann Sheridan is okay although she doesn't really seem to be the seductress that the film wants her to be. She's more of a decent babe who is good natured and outdoorsy.

This B movie melodrama of love and the tragedy of mistaken identity is a quagmire of improbable twists and turns. Kent Smith, an actor with no screen charisma, plays a doctor and solid family man who falls for nightclub singer Ann Sheridan. There is no heat in their coupling; he courts his new love like a dispassionate doctor making a routine house call on a patient. After some initial snappish, flirtatious interchange with the doctor, Sheridan presents her character as refined and lady-like, not a nightclub flame that sets men afire with self-destructive desire. And self-destruction is what lies in wait for the doctor. Not an example of the noir genre, this is a tepid movie, grim and dour.

The rap on Kent Smith was that he was duller than dried cement. Probably that's why he was cast here as the emotionally repressed doctor. The doc is so colorless and unemotional in the early scenes, we see why wife Lucy (DeCamp) has withdrawn into her own bubble. Then too, his household appears to run on the proverbial dime, with only daughter Bunny (Hendrix) showing any real spark. Of course, all of this is necessary background to his eventual transformation once he meets sexpot Prentiss (Sheridan). From dutiful husband to reluctant philanderer to obsessed lover and finally to repentant criminal, Smith brings off the stages in low-key effective fashion, and I expect more than a few married spouses left the theater unsettled by what they had seen lurking under the doctor's calm exterior.All in all, it's a grim little film, depicting a civilized man's descent into emotional darkness. I'm not sure why it's titled after Prentiss since the doctor is for all intents and purposes the main character. But Sheridan does get to show a lot of leg and mature appeal, although her character seems not very plausible once the doc becomes a burden. Someone called the movie a "woman's noir", and with its soap-operish overtones, the description seems to fit. Then too, noirish elements surface in those dark entrapment scenes, especially in the hotel room, (but why do they have separate rooms after they've run away together?). And especially noirish is heart patient Walter's existential lament amidst the big city-- if he dies, he wonders, who would know or care. The scene passes quickly, but is chillingly revealing.The movie's underrated, probably because of Smith and the unrelentingly grim atmosphere. I just wish someone had scrubbed Alda's smarmy nightclub owner. He's totally unbelievable and compromises what could have been a memorably atmospheric very last shot. Nonetheless, it's an engrossing little morality tale, as long as you're not feeling too depressed.

I saw this as part of the Noir Festival held annually by the American Cinematheque. Somebody when it was over quipped "Now I know why I never heard of it before--it sure won't make me forget Mildred Pierce". The downfall of Dr. Talbot drags on and on in excessive detail until the film almost seems a parody. Nora Prentiss is presented as a victim of circumstance, even though she is the one who drives Talbot to leave his family, abandon his career and eventually basically fall to pieces. So you don't even have the guilty pleasure of her being a fallen woman or a scheming temptress. Great location shooting, excellent art direction and some adequate acting but not very memorable.