Madeleine's sins. Madeleine Damien is a young, beautiful, successful businesswoman, editor of the glossy magazine Boulevard magazine, experiencing a deep life crisis. Difficult circumstances at work, a confused relationship with lover Felix Cartland, a millionaire jeweler, empty burning of life lead the girl to a mental breakdown, and she tries to commit suicide. Madeleine crashes into the house of a famous psychiatrist and becomes his client. At the sessions, the beauty recalls a happy childhood with her father-artist, until he committed suicide. The psychiatrist advises Madeleine to radically change her lifestyle. The former fashion editor moves into a small apartment in Greenwich Village, changes his name, draws pictures, meets the scientist David Cousins, who lives next door, and builds a new relationship with him. David proposes, Madeleine agrees. During David's departure for Chicago, Madeleine meets at a restaurant with his former lover Felix. The drunken beauty goes to the apartment to the jeweler, but in time she thinks about it and escapes through the emergency door. The next morning, the newspapers report the murder of the jeweler. Madeleine is arrested and David considers her a liar. How will this detective story end for Madeleine?
A screen adaptation of the successful 1930 theater play by Edward Sheldon and Margaret Ayer Barnes, written in turn, based on the high-profile case of Madeleine Smith, who was tried in 1857 for poisoning her lover with arsenic. Madeleine Smith was acquitted for not proving the crime.
Production of the painting was delayed from January 1945 until May 1946 due to problems with the Hayes Office moral guardians. From the original script removed the plot about the murder in Mexico, the story of Madeleine’s parents, hints of questionable family secrets, the “night of dirty passion”, the version that Madeleine is guilty of murder. Two finals were shot specifically for the Hayes Office. In the film, Hedy Lamarr starred for the first and last time with her third husband John Lauder as Felix. After the filming, the couple divorced. In the film, Lamarr was filmed pregnant with her third child.
High-quality detective with the participation of the famous beauty is somewhat melodramatic, but in general it is sustained within the genre and its time. That was the movie they made. Murders were operetical, relationships were innocent, and beauties were always fatal.
8 out of 10