The Reckless Moment (1949)

The Reckless Moment (1949) is a murder and blackmail domestic noirodrama Christmas film noir woman's picture suspense love melodrama and tragedy film noir classic of suburban panic and paranoia with Joan Bennett and James Mason, and a classic film noir as well, supported by Geraldine Brooks, directed by Max Ophüls and suggestive of the Suburban Disturbin 1950s to come, with the additional actor talents of Henry O'Neill, Shepperd Strudwick, David Bair and Roy Roberts as Nagel, and of course, Frances E. Williams.

Caught (1949)

Caught (1949) is a film noir melodrama from Max Ophüls starring Barbara Bel Geddes, Robert Ryan and James Mason, laying bare the perils of middle class marriage and the bullying and controlling which waits any eager young bride, keen to live the fantasy life which the magazines of the time were selling.

Caught is a film which appears more vicious the closer we look at it. 

To kick off, we have some young women who are planning to live their lives through catalogues, an excellent introduction to the mating game as America enters the 1950s.

It is stressed over and over again, in fact. Young model Maude, who changes her name to a more charming 'Leonora', played by Barbara Bel Geddes is seen with her friend and flatmate Dorothy (played by Natalie Shafer) constructing the fantasy life she shall lead via the pages of the many magazines and lifestyle publications that occupy their evenings in their rather downbeat and crummy digs.

The Reckless Moment (1949)

Many of the elements most common to film noir are absent from The Reckless Moment and so much so that one must squint hard into the screen in order to find any film noir aspects at all.

What we primarily find in The Reckless Moment is a variation on the so-called woman's picture of the day, in which a mother in a suburban setting finds the respectability and polite autonomy of her family threatened — you'll think immediately of Mildred Pierce.

But there are plenty of films in which women are forcibly ejected from their marital, suburban comforts, and obliged to hit the streets in serach of dangerous truths.

Max Ophüls (here billed as Max Opuls) was known for making films which take a female point of view, or films that had a female protagonist.

The Reckless Moment is certainly one of these, and it looks at the idea of resepctability head-on, basically stating in Joan Bennet's character that the way to be respectable is not to associate with people of a lower class, who are unrespectable.

Joan Bennet's own reckless moment comes when she disposes of the body of her daughter's lover, when he is accidentally killed.  This is a desperate attempt to avoid scandal, and it is the point at which the paranoia begins to ramp up, the moment when the tension pumps, and when shame blooms into criminality.

As we can see in Pitfall, and other examples as simple as Phantom Lady, the paranoid woman in the bud of suburbia is a common film noir subject ...