This should be great: it's got Robert Mitchum! It's got Claude Rains! It's got the cinematographer behind my favorite English Hitchcocks! It's a film noir, with a femme fatale and lots of inky blacks and stark lighting!
But... it's let down by a poor plot and in general not-great writing. The main reason people talk about this film is that it was produced when Howard Hughes was in charge of the studio, and Faith Domergue was his girlfriend that he'd promised to make famous. Despite that, I think she does a creditable job here and is not the reason the movie fails to ignite. She's rather strange-looking, too, although from some angles she's very striking, and actually given that [SPOILER ALERT] she's supposed to be a little bit c-r-a-z-y, her kind of starey eyes work well. Here's the basic plot: Mitchum opens the film as a do-gooder doctor, telling stories about Elmer the Elephant to a little girl on an iron lung while his intended, Julie the nurse (the alternative title for the film is "A White Rose for Julie") looks on dotingly. (This is part of the problem of the movie: Mitchum took the role because he was bored of constantly playing mournful hoodlums, but let's face it, if he's not playing mournful hoodlums (or even better, psychotic killers, a la Night of the Hunter or Cape Fear) he's wasted. We don't want or need him to expand his range. Especially when the doctor is called "Jeff.")
But just as he's trying to go home for the night after a long shift, he is pulled back into surgery for a suicide attempt, who turns out to be his undoing. It's "Margo" (Domergue), who is dropped off by a nervous-looking man who vanishes, and then she vanishes herself the next morning, although she sends him a wire telling him to meet her at an address. Having broken a date with Julie for the surgery, Jeff proceeds to break another one to visit the mysterious Margo. It turns out she lives in a mansion with a butler (and a cat that meows to be let in, but, the butler insists, belongs to next door and shouldn't be allowed in. Margo makes it plain that she will do herself harm unless he stays with her. Cut to a while later and Jeff can no longer even be bothered to tell Elmer stories to the iron lung girl, so ensnared is he by Margo's feminine wiles. But as they are just about to begin their meal at the over-the-top Hawaiian-themed restaurant, she informs him that her father, whose house and butler it really is, has suddenly returned and demanded that she accompany him to Nassau for her health, and that she has to go now. He is dumbstruck, but a couple of deceptively-strong coconut cocktails inside him, he decides to go over there and tell the old man to cut the umbilical cord (so to speak). The "old man" is of course Claude Rains, and he welcomes Jeff into his home and listens to his tirade with a slight sardonic smile (as only Claude Rains can), only interrupting him mildly, long after Jeff has professed his love for Margo and said that they'd been meeting for weeks, "I wish you'd stop calling me her father, I happen to be her husband." Da da DAAH! This is but the first of the reveals this film drops about Margo. Jeff (still very woozy) is disgusted at Margo and storms out, despite her insisting she doesn't love her husband and can't live without him, but is brought short on the front path by Margo's scream. He runs back in to find her clutching one earring, covered in blood, that she says the husband ripped out of her ear.
A scuffle ensues during which Rains hits Jeff pretty hard with a poker, and Jeff knocks him out with a punch. Jeff is now even woozier but tells Margo that he will go get some water to wake the husband up. However, as he's trying to clear his head under the tap in the ornate bathroom, Margo calls for help and he staggers back to find that the husband is dead. Margo says it's because he hit his head on the fireplace on the way down. Jeff has also worked out that he is concussed and will probably lapse into a coma in about 30 hours, but is convinced by Margo to use the tickets to Nassau to escape the scene, as the servants are all away for the weekend and the corpse won't be discovered until Monday. Jeff would probably object if he weren't knocked silly, but goes along. However, as they are waiting at the airport, a call goes out for Mr. Lannington (the husband) and Margo sees police waiting at the desk, and decides that they should drive to Mexico by car. It turns out that they just had a message to deliver to Claude Rains, and almost certainly wouldn't've known that Jeff wasn't him, and this is the first of a couple of false alarms that spook the runaway couple unnecessarily. The rest of the movie is a couple-on-the-lam movie, with the twist that Margo is hiding something from Jeff, and won't let him listen to the radio to hear the news about what's happening.
They encounter some shady individuals, like the used car dealer (who laughs like a crazy person) who uses their clear criminality to chisel her fancy car and coat out of them in exchange for a beaten up old truck and some cans of gas. They also stop in a small town that has an incredibly annoying "Beard festival" going on, so that if you don't have a beard you have to pay a fine (which they can't afford) or get married! Sadly for their (her) plans, that darn cat from next door managed to get in in all the dust up with Rains and meowed so much the neighbors discovered his corpse long before Monday. (See, Jami, there was a point to the butler's little speech!) It all builds to a fatal conclusion in a border town, as they are to be snuck across into Mexico by a traveling troupe, for a sky-high fee (that they get by hocking a diamond bracelet she owns). Again, there's nothing you can really put your finger on that's terrible about it, and the same material could've been worked into something special, but there's a lot of psychological mumbo-jumbo (all too common in films of this era, the nadir being Hitchcock's Marnie), and the fact that Mitchum spends most of the film semi-conscious (something for which which, admittedly, he is well-suited) also cuts into the enjoyment. (The alternative title comes from the fact that it is revealed at the start that Jeff likes to give flowers to his beloved and the white rose he has given Julie is in the operating theater when Margo first regains consciousness, and she thinks it's hers, but insists that she get a red rose (which he later provides in their ill-fated courtship.) I've just figured out who Domergue reminded me of - it was bugging me - and, bizarrely, it's somebody I went to college with whom I haven't seen in over 30 years. It's the sad eyes.
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