Deception 1946

The first thing we see after the credits is a rain soaked (there is a lot of rain in this film) street with a close up of a pair of woman’s gams rushing towards an imposing building. The legs belong to Bette Davis, and the building is a Warner Bros. Back lot concert hall. Bette is rushing to catch a concert by a long lost love of hers who she thought long dead during the war in Europe and is shocked to find that Paul Henreid is alive and kicking and playing his heart out on his cello “I thought you were dead” Bette gushes and cries in that unique tone of hers to Henreid in his dressing room after the concert. Thus starts this early post war woman’s melodrama about love lost, found and then finally lost for good. I wish the rest of the film that was directed by Irving Rapper was as good as the opening scene, but it’s not, still there are pleasures to be found. The chief one of course is Claude Rains who is his usually brilliant self as the narcissistic  overbearing and controlling composer named Alexander Hollenius  who Bette (she’s also a musician, I know I know) had a long affair with and has been kept by him like a pet in a lavish loft in a big midtown building. Bette tries to keep this secret from Henreid who she marries in like 10 minutes after being reunited with him and of course this is what pushes the plot and gives us title of the film. The director and his three stars are reunited here from the much better  film “Now Voyager” that they did in 1942, but hey listen Deception is not all that bad with its mixture of classical musical, deceit, lavish expressionistic  sets , cinematography and murder. Davis who was winding down her long career at Warner Bros. still had a few great performances in her most notably of course “All About Eve” in 1950 but basically this film can be seen as her swan song as a glamorous leading lady. The beautiful inky black and white noirish cinematography (even the shadows have shadows) is by the great Ernest Haller, and the impressive expressionistic art direction is by the equally great Anton Grot. Not a great film but still fun for a gloomy rainy night.