So Evil My Love (1948)

Posted by Nick Beal

In the late Forties while Bogey and Alan Ladd were kicking down doors in the cinematic Dark Cities of the West Coast of the US of A another strain of Noir sprang into improbable life. This brief cycle of films, set in the late Victorian era in the darker cities of the Old World (most particularly London) celebrated with a perverse nostalgia the dark sexual undercurrents and murderous deeds that bubbled beneath that tranquil brook of middle-class respectability. These are not the drawing rooms that Raymond Chandler derided in his 'Simple Art Of Murder'. Sometimes called 'Gaslight Noir' this classy confederation of celluloid games of love and murder included such genre classics as Mark of Caine, Moss Rose, Hangover Square, The Lodger (The Laird Cregar version), Gaslight (Both versions), Blanche Fury, Spiral Staircase and the incandescently splendid So Evil My Love.

Alone on the deck of a storm-tossed sailing vessel, 'homeward bound from the W.Indies' missionary's widow Olivia Marwood (Glacial blonde Ann Todd-'The Seventh Veil','The Passionate Friends'et al) exults in the naked elements until reluctantly agreeing to go below deck to nurse malarial patients. This precipitates a fateful encounter with suave art-thief, forger and scam artist Mark Bellis (Ray Milland at his most Mephistophelean) who, quick to spot the main chance, follows Olivia and takes up residence in the lodging house she has inherited. Immersing himself in suburban anonymity whilst he plots another heist, Bellis takes time out to work a practised seduction on the naive Olivia ("We both share a special kind of loneliness") who falls hard for her lodger during the course an intimate portrait sesion. Meanwhile, Bellis still finds the time to enjoy the coarser charms of Moira Lister's ('The Limping Man', 'Wanted For Murder') Kitty Feathers.

Linking with former confederate Bellamy (Raymond Lovell), and following a standout sequence across the rooftops of Old London Town ('..Always rooftops, always rain.. such a bore..") Bellis's attempted theft of the Millbrook Collection of paintings comes to grief in a hail of bullets and returning to Olivia he announces that his prospects are now zero and that he must leave to seek his fortune in foreign parts. Desperate to prevent her lover's departure ("I've never really loved a man before, nor been loved in return... nothing shall take it from me. Nothing..") and seeking cash Olivia swallows her scruples and insinuates herself into the palatial home of old schoolfriend Susan Courtney (The sublime Geraldine Fitzgerald, here tightly wrapped as a fragile neurotic, and a million miles away from the seductive vision that illuminated 'Nobody Lives Forever'). Olivia is soon employed by Susan's husband, prospective peer-of-the-realm Henry Courtney (a pallid half-brother to the demonic patriarchs of the 'Gaslight' pictures and played in fine-style by a sneering Raymond Huntley) to be his wife's live-in companion and the staid Olivia slowly begins to embrace the deception with zest as she begins to feed Bellis with stocks and bonds and other valuables pilfered from her employers.

Bellis learns of an old cache of letters from Susan to Olivia containing details of youthful indiscretions that could compromise the Courtney's social standing and starts to sniff a big payday. Blackmail is initially a step too far down the Dark Road for Olivia ("..because I love you I have done things that are against my better nature..against everything I believe..") and she flees into the night. Having been unable to find a new missionary work without the humiliation of an arranged remarriage Olivia wearily seeks sanctuary in a gloomy church. Her prayers are answered only by Bellis silently oozing out of the shadows having mysteriously located her and she finally succumbs completely to his influence.

Meanwhile, Henry Courtney dissatisfied with his wife's inability to produce an heir is plotting to commit here to a remote sanatorium and has also employed Edwardian PI Jarvis (Leo G.Carroll) who has tracked the missing Bonds back to Olivia and has a dossier on Bellis that contains "enough to hang him".

While Olivia grifts at the Courtneys on his behalf Bellis still dallies with Kitty Feathers and in a moment of uncharacteristic self-revelation declares to her his true feelings for Olivia... "I'm capable of emotions I distrust..and I don't like it.." and to disspel any tender emotion he makes the fatal error of giving Kitty a locket that was a gift from Olivia.

Susan Courtney is locked in her room waiting for the men from sanatorium to come-a-calling as Olivia meets with Henry Courtney to collect the ransom for his wife's letters. He reveals to her the dossier he has on Bellis and a struggle ensues causing Courtney, who has a history of heart-disease to have a near-fatal attack. Olivia, who has eased Courtney's condition before using her knowledge of drugs derived from exotic plants ("Antimone isn't it..? ..We used it on the Islands to kill insects.. Tarantulas mostly..") tricks Susan into administering a medicine laced with poison to her stricken husband precipitating a harrowing final act with the framed Susan gallows-bound. ("It must have been me. I wanted him dead.")

Finally admitting to his 'romantic obsession' Bellis returns from hiding-out in France to take Olivia away to a new life in America. However, the conscience-stricken Olivia's encounter with Kitty Feathers wearing the locket she had given Bellis as a love-token is a prelude to a bloody denouement in a closed hansom cab outside Westminster Abbey...

As the contemporary publicity summed this opus of fatal attraction....

"In your arms...I know no right or wrong...you have made me what you are..so evil my love.."