A Precursor to the Precursor

Rating: 8/10 (3 July 2016)

A little drawn out and predictable but still riveting and highly charged with tension, the plot lines are neatly—if somewhat over-literally—tied up. The final scene in which Kidman (Alice Hartford) suggests behavior to resolve the sexual mistrust between her and her husband seems to me reductive and not to answer the exciting questions about the place of the libido in married life, i. e., the discussion that precipitated the action.
Everything implied or said in the movie is in a 5200 word short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Young Goodman Brown" (1835). The sex (more implied than explicit), the uncertainty, and the guilt are all there; Hawthorne's story is told with more tact, with a clearer philosophical framework and less self-consciousness than in Kubrik's film, which I still liked, though.