Popular reviews

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  Review by noir1946 ★★★ 4

  “How can I be calm when I can feel the net close around me?”

  The Secret Fury is one of those films you have to keep watching until the end regardless of how you feel about its quality to find out what the heck is going on. When the central mystery is finally resolved, you shrug. That’s it? you say. And then you say—it’s one of those films that has you talking to yourself—wait a minute. But before those precious sixty seconds have elapsed, you shrug again and head for the fridge to see if there’s any cherry vanilla left.

  The second film directed by Mel Ferrer begins like a comedy with David McLean (Robert Ryan) being denied admission to…

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  Review by 🥀 e m m é ★★★

  help! i’m too attracted to whatever working class leading man thing robert ryan was doing. a lot of unbelievable details here (in what universe is it ethical for a defendant’s spurned lover to prosecute them for murder?) but also it’s a pretty snappy picture that doesn’t lag. i’m gonna be thinking for a while about the way robert ryan’s masculinity is questioned in court simply because he treats claudette as a full human with personal autonomy and doesn’t display possessive behavior. also the resolution to this happens in an attic à la gaslight, which would be an intriguing companion piece except that the secret fury would then look terrible by contrast. slightly interesting to note that this was directed by the first mr. audrey hepburn, i suppose? all i can tell you is the 50s were wild.

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  Review by 🇵🇱 Steve G 🇵🇸 ★★★ 1

  The Third Summer of Scam

  There's one of three ways The Secret Fury could go when Claudette Colbert's marriage to Robert Ryan is objected to.

  Either she's got a twin, she's lost her memory, or it's all a huge conspiracy. It goes for the last option, and I was fine with any of them to be honest, but I don't think it really does enough with it.

  The problem is that Mel Ferrer, who I never knew did any directing, has made an actor's film. There's lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth for Colbert to do and Ryan, of course, makes the most of every scene he gets. He plays a good guy, this time, but you always have…

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  Review by ZacharyBinx ★★★½

  Claudette Colbert is wonderful as the gaslit wife/widow/fiancée and I'll admit the plot of a woman finding out she's already married on her wedding day leads to a lot of confusion and fun guessing on the audience's part. The simplest answer is that she's an amnesiac or possibly a twin. Or is the most complicated possibility the truth?! The melodrama is set to broil, but staying to the end is worth it if only to see Robert Ryan play the sexy hero. Also, Vivian Vance!!

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  Review by ScottHBG ★★★

  Is that Claudette Colbert in a film noir? And she's with Robert Ryan?! Oh, he's going to terrify the heck out of her, I'm sure. Uhhhh...

  So is Claudette really losing her mind, is she being "Gaslighted," or is she suffering from amnesia? Yes, we are clearly in the world of film noir. This one is female noir, and a pretty solid one, at that.

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  Review by Johnny Pomatto ★★★½

  I never considered that the "repressed memory/hypnosis" plot practically became its own genre for a while. Hitchcock's "Spellbound" is the obvious standout when you think on the subject, but Eddie Muller listed off more than a dozen titles that riffed similarly on this type of story. Hollywood was fascinated by it for a while, apparently due to the rise of psychiatry in the nation in the 40's and 50's, and of course we like to find ways to make self analysis all the more dramatic by turning it into a thriller. No better way to do that than to create stories where therapy unlocks memories or past lives that you didn't know you experienced. That's kinda where things start with…

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  Review by kmeaston ★★½

  1a. Gaslight successful woman into believing she has forgotten her husband.
  1b. Frame woman for the murder of said forgotten husband.
  1c. Have woman committed to mental institution.
  2. ???
  3. Profit.

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  Review by jamawive ★★★½

  Good suspense yarn. Claudette gets a number of opportunities to scream and cry hysterically, which only adds to the ambiance.

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  Review by David Conner ★★★½

  A minor entry into one of my all-time favorite sub-genres: the postwar paranoid gothic woman’s film. Very competently directed by actor/director Mel Ferrer, it stars Claudette Colbert in the full flower of her post-Since You Went Away, Basic Housewife phase. Robert Ryan plays her fiancée whom you immediately suspect of having sinister motives mainly because it’s Robert Ryan. It starts off as an engaging twist on The Lady Vanishes plot and then turns into a less fun rehash of The Phantom Lady, with a few dashes of The Snake Pit thrown in for good measure. Perhaps a more accurate title might have been The Phantom Lady in a Cage Vanishes. It’s a B-movie mashup of domestic noir tropes, and it…

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  Review by Sonny Dyon Jr

  Pretty cool watching Robert Ryan waterboard a guy who tried to fuck with his wife

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  Review by Pippin ★★★

  I really loved Claudette Colbert and Robert Ryan in this—they're a somewhat unlikely pair that really works well. I love both of them individually so it makes sense I love them when they play a couple! 

  There are a lot of “there is no way this would happen” moments throughout but it’s still an entertainingly tense watch. Also, there is a really nice setup at the beginning that perfectly comes back up at the end.

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  Review by fulci420

  I'm not much of a fan of amnesia plotlines in film they are really overdone and usually mean a whole bunch of expository flashbacks. "The Secret Fury" starts off with Robert Ryan and Claudette Colbert walking down the aisle to be married. They are interrupted by a stranger claiming to be the best man at Coblert's prior wedding to another man. What proceeds afterwards includes murder, a court trial and Colbert being institutionalized. None of it is particularly tense and I don't like Colbert's performance or character.

  Ending was absurd. This movie has very high quality elements (Robert Ryan's performance, excellent cinematography) but ultimately is a very forgettable noir for me. Final twist is not one that is very obvious from the get go but that doesn't make it successful or believable in the least.

  
  Watched on TCM