Sleep, My Love (1948)

User Rating:

6.8/10   

Director:

Douglas Sirk

Writers:

St. Clair McKelway (screenplay)
Leo Rosten (novel)

Release Date:

18 February 1948 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Film-Noir | Mystery

Plot:

Claudette Colbert wakes up in the middle of the night on board a train, but she can't remember how she got there. Danger and suspense ensue.

Plot Keywords:

Based On Novel

Cast

Claudette Colbert	...	Alison Courtland
Robert Cummings	...	Bruce Elcott
Don Ameche	...	Richard W. Courtland
Rita Johnson	...	Barby
George Coulouris	...	Charles Vernay
Queenie Smith	...	Mrs. Grace Vernay
Ralph Morgan	...	Dr. Rhinehart
Keye Luke	...	Jimmie Lin
Fred Nurney	...	Haskins
Raymond Burr	...	Detective Sgt. Strake
Marya Marco	...	Jeannie Lin (as Maria San Marco)
Lillian Bronson	...	Helen, the Maid
Hazel Brooks	...	Daphne

Runtime:

97 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Certification:

USA:Approved (certificate #12726) | Australia:PG | Finland:K-16 | UK:PG

Company:

Triangle Production

Movie Connections:

Referenced in The Magical Eye (1989)

A crack at "Gaslight" by that wily Dane Douglas Sirk

Sleep, My Love is Douglas Sirk's crack at Gaslight. Dabbling in drugs and Mesmerism, Don Ameche rigs up psychotic "episodes" starring his wife, Claudette Colbert, so he can inherit her money. Befriended by Robert Cummings during one of these arranged "fugue" states, she unwittingly enlists an ally whose affections, and suspicions, grow. (The film takes on inadvertent Charlie Chan overtones when Cummings goes sleuthing with his blood-brother Keye Luke, who often played the Honolulu detective's eldest offspring.)

Unlike Cukor's claustrophobic Gaslight, with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer, Sleep, My Love is less psychologically nuanced and more plot-driven. It benefits from Hazel Brooks, delivering an icily stylized vamp turn as The Other Woman; she appeared in one other noir, Body and Soul, during her disappointing brief career. George Couloris (the guardian in Citizen Kane) adds color as a confederate of Ameche's, while Raymond Burr is wasted as a minion of the law.

That leaves the three principals as well as some problems. The amicable Ameche can't summon up the cold, controlling menace that Boyer spread through Gaslight; his adversary, the equally amicable Cummings, succumbs to terminal blandness. Colbert is more problematic. Unlike the languorous, instinctive Bergman, she made her name in part due to her quick wits; you can't buy her as a submissive wifey who hasn't cottoned on to her husband's philandering -- at the very least -- without having it spelled out to her by Cummings, whose acumen seems as low-wattage as his star power. (On the other hand, she was to find herself in a similar pickle the next year in The Secret Fury.) Sirk's direction here, as in Lured, lacks the distinctiveness he showed in his other noir, Shockproof, and was to develop lushly in the haut-fifties melodramas like Written on the Wind for which he is justly renowned.