The Locket
Tags: psychological, murder, flashback

Plot synopsis:
The present day (1946)Guests assemble for the wedding of John Willis (Gene Raymond) and Nancy Patton (Laraine Day). A stranger, Dr. Harry Blair (Brian Aherne), calls and confides to the bridegroom some information about his bride's past. Flashback level 1. Harry's account opensHarry, a psychiatrist, meets and marries Nancy in 1938. One day a stranger, Norman Clyde (Robert Mitchum), comes to his office and asks him to persuade Nancy to go to the District Attorney and give evidence to reprieve an innocent man due to be executed within 24 hours. He explains why. Flashback level 2. Norman's account opensNorman, an artist, first meets Nancy 3 years earlier. He wins an award partly through the influence of Nancy, who is secretary to Andrew Bonner (Ricardo Cortez), a patron of the arts. A romance starts between Norman and Nancy, until he finds in her handbag a bracelet which had been stolen from Bonner's house while they were guests there. He faces Nancy with her crime. She confesses, and tearfully confesses why she stole the bracelet. Flashback level 3. Nancy's account Ten year old Nancy (Sharyn Moffett) lives with her mother, Mrs Monks (Helene Thimig), who works as housekeeper to Mrs Willis (Katherine Emery). Nancy and Mrs Willis' daughter Karen (Gloria Donovan) are close friends, but Nancy is excluded from Karen's birthday party by social snobbery. In compensation Karen gives Nancy a locket which her mother has just given her. When she finds out, Mrs Willis takes it away from Nancy, whose mother seeks to comfort her by telling her that if she wants things badly enough, some day she will have them. The locket then goes missing. Mrs Willis assumes that Nancy has stolen it back, even when the locket is found entangled in the dress Karen had been wearing. Mrs Willis bullies Nancy into a confession that she stole the locket. Nancy is distressed, and knocks down a musical cigarette box, which starts to play Au Clair de la Lune. Return to flashback level 2. Norman's account closesNancy concludes her story and tells Norman that she has never stolen anything in her life before. Norman applies some amateur psychology, tells her that she carries no blame for the locket incident, and accepts her assurance that she will never steal again. They become engaged. One evening during a party at the Bonners he goes upstairs, suspecting that Nancy might be up there with Bonner. He hears a shot, and sees Nancy leaving Bonner's bedroom, in which Bonner lies dead. Nancy says that Bonner was dead when she entered the room. She persuades Norman that it would be best for them both to tell the police that they were downstairs all evening. Norman agrees. A footman, Myron Dexter (David Thursby), goes on trial for Bonner's murder. Nancy knows that the prosecution's version of events is not true, as she did not see Dexter upstairs when he was alleged to be, but against Norman's wishes she refuses to testify to that effect. When the footman is convicted, Norman and Nancy part company. Return to flashback level 1. Harry's account closesNorman tells Harry in his office that Dexter's appeals have failed, and he is due to be executed the next day. Harry does not believe Norman's story, but invites Norman to call on him that evening and confront Nancy face to face. Harry goes home and tells Nancy what has transpired. She laughs it off, and says that Norman believed wrongly that she was having an affair with Bonner, and is now mad with jealousy. When Norman arrives she acts with innocent sympathy for his delusions. Harry believes her, and Norman leaves.The following day Norman calls on Harry again at his office, and says that Dexter has been executed, but his conscience is clear, and it is now on Harry's conscience. Norman then leaps through the skyscraper window to his death.Harry and Nancy travel to England. When the war starts they undertake medical work during the blitz. Nancy obtains an invitation for them to spend a weekend at a country home of Lord and Lady Wyndham (Henry Stephenson and Lilian Fontaine). As they are leaving they are informed that Lady Wyndham's diamond necklace cannot be found. Harry says nothing, but is torn by suspicion that it is hidden in Nancy's handbag. When they get home Nancy tips her handbag out to find the door keys. There is no necklace there. Harry is mortified, and confesses to Nancy that he had harboured suspicions of her. Nancy takes no offence, and acts with complete innocence.That night their lodgings are bombed. Searching through the rubble Harry finds a box of jewellery, including the stolen necklace. He confronts Nancy with it, and she denies all knowledge. As he looks into her eyes, he realises that she is schizophrenic. The discovery unhinges him, and Nancy has him committed to a mental institution.Return to the present day (1946)Harry tells John that Nancy divorced him and assumed the name Patton. After five years he has now been released. He saw Nancy's photograph in a newspaper announcement of the wedding, and came immediately to apprise John of her past. John does not believe him, and sends for Nancy. She is not at all put out at the sight of Harry, and says that she once worked with him. She laughingly denies ever having married him. Harry makes no further attempt to convince John, but says "I remember what Clyde said of me, He's going to make all the mistakes I did." After Harry has left, Nancy tells John that he cracked up as a result of the war. As Nancy prepares to walk down the aisle we see her future mother-in-law for the first time. It is the same Mrs Willis that her mother used to work for. Mrs Willis fastens a locket around Nancy's neck, the very locket that was the subject of the childhood incident. Mrs Willis tells Nancy that it is a family heirloom, worn by generations of Willis brides. Karen would have had it, but she has since died. "I'm sure Karen would want you to have it," Mrs Willis says. Nancy accidentally knocks down the same musical cigarette box that she had those many years ago, and it begins to play Au Clair de la Lune. As she starts to walk slowly down the aisle, memories of her past acts begin to surface, and she becomes more and more distressed as realisation dawns of what she has done. She collapses, and is taken away in an ambulance, having regressed into childhood, perhaps never to recover.

Review: This may reflect something of the obsession that Hollywood had with cod Freudianism just as much as noir convention, but there is no doubting that Mitchum's peculiar manner as an actor, his doe-eyed sleep-walking acting style, made his starring excursions into the dangers of the subconscious peculiarly effective.Brahm, one of Hollywoods most neglected directors at least for the work that he did at this time in his career, makes the somewhat over- stretched structure of the film work, pun intended, like a dream.
This almost hallucinatory sense, together with a feeling of 'drifting with fate', marks out some of the greatest noirs and B-mysteries made at this time and is what makes this film still very watchable today.A 'Locket' well worth looking into..
Saw this for the first time on Turner Classic last night and was thoroughly impressed with the successful use of flashbacks that were clearly understood and served the story well.There was no confusion for the viewer despite the complex storyline and varying points of view involved.The mystery held me throughout.
Even the sequences in the flashbacks were reflecting one person's point of view and not necessarily what really happened.I would highly recommend this movie to my friends who love good scripts and especially to any would-be screenwriters looking at the correct use of flashbacks in film.Characters, plot line, direction, photography, acting: all excellent..
He tells her the story of how he had just married Nancy when a man called Clyde turned up in his office and told him a story about how he had met Nancy and had got drawn into her world of deception.Shunning conventional structure is always a risk and in this film it is one that it takes as we have a story being told by Blair that is basically about him being told a story by Clyde.
For many viewers the story-telling approach will be a little slow and I times it did drag a bit but mostly it comes together and works as something different and interesting.The cast are roundly good although they take second fiddle to the script and the ideas of director Brahm (who produces some clever ideas in Nancy's bridal march).
The story format might be a little testing on the patience (hearing about something implies a lack of action in the time where we are  after all the audience spent the film in the Willis study) but the material is worth it and, once back in the present, everything comes together nicely.
Laraine Day supported by Robert Mitchum, Brian Aherne, and Gene Raymond.
Laraine Day, Brian Aherne, Robert Mithchum, and Gene Raymond give great performances in this thriller..
This film by underrated director John Brahm is one of the more interesting works of the 1940s (not one of the best, but different).Laraine Day plays Nancy, about to marry and hiding some dark secrets in her past.
Gene Raymond (not the most charismatic of actors but surprisingly good here) plays her intended, with Brian Aherne as the psychiatrist who knows about her previous life.In flashback we see Nancy and her husband (a young Robert Mitchum) and then into another flashback (daring to attempt this at the time when many films were still pursuing conventional structure).'The Locket' of the title obviously holds the key to the mystery, and we have an absorbing time pulling all the loose ends together.
(Oh, that AMC showed films of this caliber lately!) Laraine Day gives a beautifully understated performance, handling what would now perhaps be called a tragic case of posttraumatic stress disorder resulting in a life of  twists and turns with truth, no scenery chewing.
Brian Aherne strikes just the right clinical note as the sadder-but-wiser exhusband, and Robert Mitchum gives a memorable performance as the first (at least the first chronicled in this tale) man to fall victim to Nancy's fatal charms.
That was NOT the mother of Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine who played the cruel woman who gives Nancy (Laraine Day) the locket.
The Locket (1946)Well, when you have a post-war movie with Robert Mitchum at his young prime, you can't go wrong.The star (or starlet, as they used to say) is actress Laraine Day playing Nancy, and she pulls off a charming, attentive, smartperfect woman.
On the day of his wedding to Nancy Patton (Laraine Day), wealthy socialite John Willis (Gene Raymond) receives a visit from a psychiatrist, Dr. Blair (Brian Aherne).
He claims that she was at one time married to him and that she has, amongst other things, committed theft, murdered someone (a crime which resulted in the execution of an innocent man) and driven a previous boyfriend, portrait painter Norman Clyde (Robert Mitchum), to suicide.
One whom's she obviously murdered one who was executed for that murder one who committed suicide and another who went mad and ended up in a sanitarium losing his license as both a doctor and psychiatrist.The movie "the Locket" starts with what should be the happiest day in Nancy's life,as she's about to get married to John ,Gene Raymond, and ends with the secret of that "locket" and everything that it had to do with Nancy's past come crashing down on her.
Harry Blair, Brian Aherne, goes to see John to tell him the truth about his future wife only to be told to either get out or be thrown out of the wedding ceremony which Harry wasn't even invited to.It's then for some strange reason that Harry knew what Nancy's birthday was, November 3,got John's attention.
Knowing that he did everything possible that he could and with his consciences clear Norman, after having a casual talk with Dr. Blair, calmly walks out of his office and then jumps out of a window in the doctor's waiting room falling to his death on the streets below.Harry Blair continuing his story telling John that he later realized, during his stay with Nancy in WWII London, that everything that Norman told him about her was true which lead him to suffer a complete mental and physical breakdown.
In this film Loraine has a past experience as a child growing up with her mother who worked for a rich family and one day this little rich girl gave Nancy,(Loraine Day) a very pretty expensive locket and almost as soon as it was given, the locket was taken away from her.
These small incidents caused the ruin of three men, Brian Aherne, (Dr. Harry Blair); Robert Mitchum,(Norman Clyde) and Gene Raymond, (John Willes).
Day gives a brilliant performance and the king of cool Robert Mitchum plays one of the three men in her life (the other two are Brian Aherne and Gene Raymond).
John Willis (Gene Raymond) is just getting happily married to a beautiful woman named Nancy Patton (Laraine Day), when a strange man (Brian Aherne) shows up to the wedding reception.
Nancy's earlier escapades are then seen in multiple flashbacks within each other – her story includes an artist named Norman Clyde (Robert Mitchum), stolen jewellery, even murder...
Regardless of what one thinks about the believability of pointing out a clear cause for Nancy's character traits, it must be noted that Laraine Day succeeds in the role very nicely; it seems believable that her fragile, pretty face might well be a facade for a dangerous seductress.
Robert Mitchum is very charismatic too as the unfortunate artist Clyde, but some of the child actresses in the farthest-reaching flashback are not so convincing.Even though the three-fold flashback method feels quite heavy a manner to unwind the story, it makes sure the different timelines don't mix confusingly and keeps things neatly where they belong.
The ending comes across as a bit watered down considering the film's noir roots, but most of the time it is interesting to follow Nancy manipulate the hapless lovesick men around her.
Laraine Day probably got her career screen role in The Locket playing a completely amoral woman who steals on compulsion and leaves a slew of men in her wake paying for her crimes.
The title of the film comes from a locket that Day as a child was given and then taken back by the mother of the rich girl she played with.
The rich girl's mother is played with appropriate wicked relish by Katharine Emery.The film begins with an unknown ex-husband Brian Aherne crashing the pre-wedding reception that Gene Raymond is having.
Aherne proceeds to enlighten him and most of the film is in flashback.Two other men in her life are millionaire Ricardo Cortez who is an art patron and Robert Mitchum the Bohemian artist she convinces Cortez to patronize.
"the locket" belongs to the psychoanalytical genre ,which produced many movies in the forties;every famous director had his :Jack Tourneur ( cat people)Hitchcock (spellbound) Lang (Secret beyond the door) Stahl (leave her to Heaven) Siodmak (spiral staircase) ,the list is endless...Its most famous trick (the flashback within the flashback within the flashback within the flashback) had been actually already experimented in America (Merrily We Roll Along ,1934) and in France (Marie -Martine ,1943) ;these two works featured a "backwards" construction too.But in Brahm's movie ,it's particularly effective and succeeds in making the viewer lose a sense of time.The scenes of Laraine Day's childhood are credible and compares favorably with these of Marnie in Hitchcock's eponymous movie.The music box plays French old song "Au Clair De La Lune" ,one of the first tunes little French learn ..
And for me, this accidental irony was its only real "highlight", 'cause without it this movie was just a ludicrous mess of Hollywood gibberish from start to finish.Anyway - Another reason why I so generously gave The Locket its 5-star rating has to do with actor Robert Mitchum being in the cast.As Norman Clyde, the "soon-to-be-successful", NYC artist, Mitchum (28 at the time) was acceptably adequate in his part.
Laraine Day is the seriously femme fatale whose Julie Andrews-like sweetness hides a deeply psychotic personality and Robert Mitchum, Brian Aherne and Gene Raymond are among the men who are taken in by her.If the acting, by everyone other than Day, who is superb, is on the stilted side, the script by Sheridan Gibney and John Brahm's direction are first-rate.
A very strange if convoluted Freudian melodrama famous for using three separate flashbacks to recount the bizarre story of a kleptomaniac (Laraine Day) who became involved with three men (Robert Mitchum, Brian Aherne, Gene Raymond).
Actually, the film reminds me a lot of Angel Face (1953), which also featured Mitchum, along with Jean Simmons of the title.Locket is a complex movie with its flashbacks within flashbacks, along with major characters drifting in and out.
Nancy is getting married.On her wedding day a man, Dr. Harry Blair comes to her husband-to-be and shows another side of this woman.Also an artist called Norman Clyde has had a thing with her and knows she's a kleptomaniac and also a murderer.She was as a child falsely accused of a theft, and that is why she became a woman she is now.The Locket (1946) is directed by John Brahm.It's known as a movie of flashbacks within flashbacks.Laraine Day is very good as the leading lady Nancy Monks Blair Patton.Sharyn Moffett is fantastic as her younger version at age ten.Brian Aherne is great as Dr. Blair.Robert Mitchum is terrific as Norman Clyde.Gene Raymond gives a great portrayal as John Willis.Very good job of Ricardo Cortez as Drew Bonner.Lillian Fontaine (mother of Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland) is marvelous Lady Fyntham.This is a fairly good psychological film-noir.I especially liked when Nancy looked back on the incident as a child.Also the incident at the Willis household was fascinating.A movie worth checking out..
Instead, it's just a sloppy film with a still interesting plot.The tale is about a woman (Laraine Day) who seems quite normal and kind, though gradually you come to see through the tales of the men in her life that the lady just "ain't right".
It stars Laraine Day, Brian Aherne, Robert Mitchum and Gene Raymond.
Music is by Roy Webb and cinematography by Nicholas Musuraca.Story tells of how a bride to be, who as a child was traumatised by a false charge of stealing, grows up to badly affect the men who wander into her life."You don't know the truth from lies, you are just a love sick quack"A psychological melodrama with film noir flecks, The Locket turns out to be a most intriguing picture.
Maltin was right in his review.Now if you want to experience a great example of flashbacks, check out The Killers, which Muller never even mentions in his intro/outro before The Locket played on TCM's Noir Alley.
Involving an ever Expanding Cast of Characters to tell the Story of a Woman (Laraine Day stretching her sweet image, but not really), who may be Criminally Insane or just Insane, or not.A Fine Cast, with Robert Mitchum who cannot be ignored as a slightly Miscast Artist, a somewhat Cynical Lover, and as Things Develop even more so, delivering a Pre-Star Status turn.
Laraine isn't all who she appears to be, but in order to convince Gene of her real nature, Brian has to tell his story through three different flashbacks.
Much like Inception is a dream within a dream within a dream, The Locket is Laraine Day's flashback within Robert Mitchum's flashback within Brian Aherne's flashback.It's too bad Laraine always plays looney birds, because she's very pretty.
THE LOCKET is a middle-of-the-road melodrama/film noir that features a supporting role for Robert Mitchum.
Laraine Day gives it her all as the confused and brooding Nancy but the film as a whole just feels a bit trite and overheated..
Brian Aherne, a young Robert Mitchum, and Gene Raymond all play men duped by her as she goes from husband to husband.During and after World War II, the subject of psychiatry became a popular one in films as soldiers and their families sought to deal with the psychological implications of the war experience.
"Possessed," "Lady in the Dark," "A Dark Adapted Eye," "Snakepit," were some of those films, to name only a few.In "The Locket," Brian Aherne visits bridegroom-to-be Gene Raymond to warn him about his future wife, and in Aherne's story, Mitchum has come to visit him - so that soon we have a flashback within a flashback within a flashback, going back to Day's childhood and the trauma she suffered at the hands of her mother's employer, when she is accused of taking a locket that in reality, the employer's daughter had given her.
It's great to see young, handsome Mitchum in the role of an artist who becomes involved with Day.All in all, a fascinating story and well worth seeing..
This was a typical film noir psychological melodrama, the kind popular right after World War II (Spellbound, The Dark Mirror, etc.)and its only flaw is the heavy use of flashbacks.
Made in the stark "film noir" style that was popular for crime dramas in the forties and fifties, "The Locket" deals with a similar theme to Alfred Hitchcock's "Marnie", that of a beautiful but psychologically disturbed young woman whose disturbance manifests itself as kleptomania, an uncontrollable impulse to steal.
Brahm is able to get good performances out of his actors, particularly from Robert Mitchum as Clyde and Laraine Day, an actress with whom I was not previously familiar, as Nancy.
Following this incident, the Blairs decided to move to England where a series of events culminated in the couple divorcing and Dr Blair suffering a mental breakdown after recognising his wife's true nature.After having recovered and returned to the United States, Dr Blair discovered that Nancy was due to get married to a millionaire called John Willis (Gene Raymond) and on the day of the wedding, before the ceremony took place, he met Willis and told him everything he knew about the woman that Willis was due to marry.
This femme fatale doesn't mess around when it comes to potential husbands, and her victims  besotted lovers who are left helpless by a pretty face  are only too happy to be exploited.John Willis (Gene Raymond) is about to marry Nancy (Laraine Day), the most charming, intelligent and beautiful woman he's ever met.
Though 'The Locket' appears to treat its flashbacks with sincerity, Alfred Hitchcock exploited this practice just a few years later in 'Stage Fright (1950),' as did Bryan Singer long afterwards with 'The Usual Suspects (1995).'Laraine Day, certainly not an actress I'd associated with any sort of villainy, brilliantly utilises her innocent screen persona to paradoxically portray one of film noir's shiftiest femme fatales.
Brian Aherne, as the therapist who married Day and was taken in by her, is equally good.The film proves that lasting experiences, even in childhood, shall have an impact later in one's life.The flashback technique is used very powerfully here.
Here we have Brian Ahearne warning Gene Raymond not to go ahead with his marriage to Larraine Day and supporting this by narrating how HE, Ahearne, met Day (flashback #1) in turn he relates how Mitchum came to see HIM (Ahearne) with the news that Ahearne's wife, Day, was a murderess and was prepared to let an innocent man be executed in her place.
John Willis (Gene Raymond) is to be married to Nancy (Laraine Day) that day when Dr. Blair (Brian Aherne) visits and tells him a strange story.
Robert Mitchum, Brian Ahern, and Gene Raymond play a succession of Nancy's love interests.Everyone and everything fits together seamlessly in The Locket.
I frankly was not enjoying the film at all until the flashback sequence which takes the character played by Larraine Day back to her childhood.
Nancy (Laraine Day) is preparing to marry John Willis (Gene Raymond), member of a prominent family.
This is a great psychological noir, probably the best part Laraine Day ever had after a decade of playing the chipper girlfriend to virtuous characters, and the end of Robert Mitchum's days as a supporting player at RKO.
Ahern relates the story of Day's previous affair with a tense artist, Robert Mitchum, leading to a flashback.