... which I lay squarely on the shoulders of the production code. Treating audiences like children, the production code insists we all must understand that murder is always wrong, but I just couldn't keep myself from sympathizing with Professor Todhunter (Thomas Mitchell).
In the opening minutes of the film we discover that Dr. Todhunter has only a few months to live due to a heart condition, and any undue exertion will kill him. He is a professor of philosophy, but the school doesn't want him to drop dead in class, so they ban him from teaching. He doesn't have enough time left to write his book, so he takes to discussing philosophy with his students posing the question - what would you do if you had less than a year to live? One student says that he would find a person who was not a criminal who could be held accountable by the law, but had no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and kill that person - ridding society of that person's negative impact. At the same time, Todhunter runs across a woman who is completely selfish. She is breaking up the marriage of one of the professor's former students although she does not care for him at all. Her only reason for the affair is that the student is a great painter and she is manipulating him into making copies of masterpieces that she is selling as originals. The student is cracking under the strain of guilt. The student's wife is cracking up under the strain of her husband's affair. The evil woman will not let the student out of their arrangement on threat of going to the police and telling them that the student is the counterfeiter.
Todhunter can't believe that such a person has no redeeming virtues so he investigates her. Her mother has disowned her, she abandoned her husband when his luck ran out, and she likewise abandoned her only child in the county orphanage. So one night he enters the evil woman's home unseen, waits until everyone but the woman is gone, and shoots her dead. He figures he'll wait until morning to turn himself in, and he has a prewritten confession in hand. The only problem is this - while the professor slept the police arrested the student who was having the affair with the evil woman for her murder, and they are convinced of his guilt. How does this all work out? Watch and find out.
The professor doesn't strike me as a rash guy or a bad guy or a self-important guy, so a tacked on ending is contrived to teach us that "murder is bad". A man is arrested who claims to have become an adherent to the professor's philosophy even though the murder he committed is the stuff of any street criminal against an ordinary citizen - an old man in fact. The final scene - just too moralizing to believe so I'll let you see exactly what happens.
Up to the end this was an unusual film on a fascinating topic with interesting characters. It was great to see Thomas Mitchell in the lead playing a role that was out of the ordinary for his filmography, and he was terrific. The woman playing the doomed femme fatale was great too, but I don't remember seeing her in other films. Geraldine Fitzgerald is good in a small role as the student's wife who comes to the professor for help, but she was capable of so much more and Warner Brothers just didn't seem to know what to do with her. I'd highly recommend this film. I'd have given it one more star than I did if not for the obvious moralizing ending.
In the opening minutes of the film we discover that Dr. Todhunter has only a few months to live due to a heart condition, and any undue exertion will kill him. He is a professor of philosophy, but the school doesn't want him to drop dead in class, so they ban him from teaching. He doesn't have enough time left to write his book, so he takes to discussing philosophy with his students posing the question - what would you do if you had less than a year to live? One student says that he would find a person who was not a criminal who could be held accountable by the law, but had no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and kill that person - ridding society of that person's negative impact. At the same time, Todhunter runs across a woman who is completely selfish. She is breaking up the marriage of one of the professor's former students although she does not care for him at all. Her only reason for the affair is that the student is a great painter and she is manipulating him into making copies of masterpieces that she is selling as originals. The student is cracking under the strain of guilt. The student's wife is cracking up under the strain of her husband's affair. The evil woman will not let the student out of their arrangement on threat of going to the police and telling them that the student is the counterfeiter.
Todhunter can't believe that such a person has no redeeming virtues so he investigates her. Her mother has disowned her, she abandoned her husband when his luck ran out, and she likewise abandoned her only child in the county orphanage. So one night he enters the evil woman's home unseen, waits until everyone but the woman is gone, and shoots her dead. He figures he'll wait until morning to turn himself in, and he has a prewritten confession in hand. The only problem is this - while the professor slept the police arrested the student who was having the affair with the evil woman for her murder, and they are convinced of his guilt. How does this all work out? Watch and find out.
The professor doesn't strike me as a rash guy or a bad guy or a self-important guy, so a tacked on ending is contrived to teach us that "murder is bad". A man is arrested who claims to have become an adherent to the professor's philosophy even though the murder he committed is the stuff of any street criminal against an ordinary citizen - an old man in fact. The final scene - just too moralizing to believe so I'll let you see exactly what happens.
Up to the end this was an unusual film on a fascinating topic with interesting characters. It was great to see Thomas Mitchell in the lead playing a role that was out of the ordinary for his filmography, and he was terrific. The woman playing the doomed femme fatale was great too, but I don't remember seeing her in other films. Geraldine Fitzgerald is good in a small role as the student's wife who comes to the professor for help, but she was capable of so much more and Warner Brothers just didn't seem to know what to do with her. I'd highly recommend this film. I'd have given it one more star than I did if not for the obvious moralizing ending.