I had to laugh out loud when Bogie made this comment regarding meeting his second wife's former fiancé! The blatant paraphrasing from the last line of Bogie's classic, Casablanca, made 5 years earlier was quite hilarious.
This movie falls somewhere in between "Just OK" and "Pretty Good" .. in other words, 6/10. I'm not a huge Bogie fan, so perhaps my grading is a little unfair, although I must admit I like him when he's playing a bad guy or creep (like he does in this movie) rather than his usual good guy roles.
Barbara Stanwyck is terrific as always ... I've never seen her be anything other than flawless, regardless of the material.
The story of "The Two Mrs. Carrolls" is slightly convoluted or, as other posters have written here, could be due to bad editing -- chunks of the story are left out or just left to our imagination -- we must surmise how we got from point A to point E, while points B, C and D are left out entirely and not even alluded to.
Bogie plays an artist who gets inspiration from the woman he loves. When he finds another muse, he has no use for the former inspiration and he kills her. He poisons his first wife with glasses of milk (just like in Hitch's "Suspicion", but I'm not sure which movie came first) after he meets and falls in love with Barbara Stanwyck. During the first wife's period of poisoning/dying, Bogie paints an "Angel of Death" portrait of her.
Flash forward two years later ... Bogie and Stanwyck have been married for 18 months and Stanwyck has invited her ex-fiancé and two of his socialite friends (Cecily Latham, played by Alexis Smith, and her mother) to dinner. This is where Bogie utters his funny line about "beginning of a beautiful hatred" regarding meeting his wife's ex-fiancé, and gives us a glimpse into his irrational jealousy. (I think we've seen hints before this point of the flick.) At first, Bogie and Alexis Smith clash horribly, but (cliched as it is) it is only because they are so attracted to one another. Bogie agrees to paint Alexis's portrait and next scene we see the gang at the races with Bogie and Alexis holding hands. At this point we the audience know Stanwyck's days are numbered.
Soon thereafter Stanwyck is bed-ridden with a "nervous condition" and Bogie is working on a painting that he won't let anyone see till he's finished. While Bogie is out in town paying off the blackmailing chemist who sold him the drugs that killed the first Mrs. Carroll originally, Stanwyck and Bogie's daughter have a conversation where Stanwyck puts 2 and 2 together. The two sneak into Bogie's studio to look at his painting -- it is Stanwyck as the Angel of Death, with dark sunken eyes and the rib cage of a skeleton; truly a creepy painting.
The rest of the movie is better than what it has been up to this point, as some suspense and melodrama finally enter the picture. Bogie sends his daughter off to the train station with the house-maid, and comes back to kill Stanwyck. OK, enough spoiling; I'll leave something to those who haven't seen it yet.
Conclusion to my review: Decent enough, almost primarily due to Barbara Stanwyck. Worth watching if you can catch it on TCM and TiVo it and watch it at your leisure. Otherwise, not really worth going out of your way for, unless you're a huge Stanwyck or Bogie fan. (I'm the former!)
This movie falls somewhere in between "Just OK" and "Pretty Good" .. in other words, 6/10. I'm not a huge Bogie fan, so perhaps my grading is a little unfair, although I must admit I like him when he's playing a bad guy or creep (like he does in this movie) rather than his usual good guy roles.
Barbara Stanwyck is terrific as always ... I've never seen her be anything other than flawless, regardless of the material.
The story of "The Two Mrs. Carrolls" is slightly convoluted or, as other posters have written here, could be due to bad editing -- chunks of the story are left out or just left to our imagination -- we must surmise how we got from point A to point E, while points B, C and D are left out entirely and not even alluded to.
Bogie plays an artist who gets inspiration from the woman he loves. When he finds another muse, he has no use for the former inspiration and he kills her. He poisons his first wife with glasses of milk (just like in Hitch's "Suspicion", but I'm not sure which movie came first) after he meets and falls in love with Barbara Stanwyck. During the first wife's period of poisoning/dying, Bogie paints an "Angel of Death" portrait of her.
Flash forward two years later ... Bogie and Stanwyck have been married for 18 months and Stanwyck has invited her ex-fiancé and two of his socialite friends (Cecily Latham, played by Alexis Smith, and her mother) to dinner. This is where Bogie utters his funny line about "beginning of a beautiful hatred" regarding meeting his wife's ex-fiancé, and gives us a glimpse into his irrational jealousy. (I think we've seen hints before this point of the flick.) At first, Bogie and Alexis Smith clash horribly, but (cliched as it is) it is only because they are so attracted to one another. Bogie agrees to paint Alexis's portrait and next scene we see the gang at the races with Bogie and Alexis holding hands. At this point we the audience know Stanwyck's days are numbered.
Soon thereafter Stanwyck is bed-ridden with a "nervous condition" and Bogie is working on a painting that he won't let anyone see till he's finished. While Bogie is out in town paying off the blackmailing chemist who sold him the drugs that killed the first Mrs. Carroll originally, Stanwyck and Bogie's daughter have a conversation where Stanwyck puts 2 and 2 together. The two sneak into Bogie's studio to look at his painting -- it is Stanwyck as the Angel of Death, with dark sunken eyes and the rib cage of a skeleton; truly a creepy painting.
The rest of the movie is better than what it has been up to this point, as some suspense and melodrama finally enter the picture. Bogie sends his daughter off to the train station with the house-maid, and comes back to kill Stanwyck. OK, enough spoiling; I'll leave something to those who haven't seen it yet.
Conclusion to my review: Decent enough, almost primarily due to Barbara Stanwyck. Worth watching if you can catch it on TCM and TiVo it and watch it at your leisure. Otherwise, not really worth going out of your way for, unless you're a huge Stanwyck or Bogie fan. (I'm the former!)