User Reviews

"Conflict" has always been one of my favorite Bogey movies, even if it doesn't score highly with most viewers. Perhaps it's the chemistry between he and Sydney Greenstreet, who's character is a psychiatrist who specializes in the workings of the criminal mind. There's a great scene in which Professor Hamilton (Greenstreet) and Richard Mason (Bogart) exchange ideas on the "perfect crime", with all of the professor's insight focused on accurately describing Mason's uncertainty and attendant behavior following the murder of his wife. Hamilton describes Mason's conduct to a tee, leaving Mason speechless as he walks out the door.

There is really no mystery here, early on we know that Richard Mason faked the complications of an auto accident to set up a confrontation with Kathryn Mason (Rose Hobart) on a lonely mountain road. Astute viewers will catch the mistake that Mason makes to the police and Professor Hamilton, when describing his missing wife "the last time I saw her". If you don't catch it, you'll be aware of it during a repeat viewing and say to yourself, "how did I miss that?" The scene is deftly done, as Greenstreet's character doesn't give a hint of recognition at Mason's errant remark.

The remainder of the film relies on a considerable number of set ups intended to smoke out Mason. Granted, some of the circumstances require odds defying precision timing, and a highly unlikely alliance between the police and the professor. Maybe in simpler times, authorities might have been able to trap their victim as was done here, but I don't think it would work in a real life situation today. Nevertheless, as positioned in the film, each manufactured event is intended to make Mason believe that his wife may not be dead (even though he did kill her), or that he may slowly be losing his mind. Even random events conspire to trigger Mason's guilt - an engineering sketch by one of his partners, and a pile of logs rigged for a vacation lodge bonfire outwardly resemble the scene where Mason rigged his wife's unfortunate "accident".

Ultimately, many movies require some suspension of belief for their premise to work. "Conflict" is one of those movies where the characters, dialog and set ups meld together cohesively enough to offer an entertaining viewing if one can refrain from being too critical. On that basis, the film is well recommended.

This is a not much known film noir directed by Kurt (Curtis) Bernhardt. Starring Humphrey Bogart as the architect Richard Mason who kills his wife because he is in love with her sister the movie switches from a straight forward crime story to a mystery when Mason gets letters from his wife though he knows she is dead. This is an clever idea but it's very easy for an experienced crime novel reader to pre-construct the movie after thirty minutes if you listen closely. This is somehow a weakness of the whole movie, nevertheless the interest is still there because of the other qualities the movie offers. The screenplay and the editing is fast paced, the dialog is sharp without any paraphrases, the acting is to the point. The plot line offers another question: Is the sister of Richard Mason's wife also in love with him as he thinks she is? Since we see the movie from his point of view it is very unclear.

"Conflict" creates a dark atmosphere and we see Mason acting like an immoral person which we also can call existencialistic. He does not question his crime, it seems it is just something that had to be done.

Nice appearance by Sidney Greenstreet as the psychologist Hamilton.

Conflict was the last film teaming of Humphrey Bogart and Sidney Greenstreet and for this one the roles were reversed. For once Mr. Greenstreet was a good guy and he set about to trap his friend Bogart who he suspects of murdering his wife.

I guess it's the psychiatric training for Greenstreet for that's what he plays in Conflict. Bogart and wife Rose Hobart are a seemingly happy couple, but in fact they've grown quite apart and Bogart fancies himself in love with Hobart's sister, Alexis Smith.

One night he and his wife are to go up to a mountain hotel resort, but work keeps him home temporarily at the last minute. Hobart drives up alone and doesn't return.

Let's just say that an elaborate trap has been set for a man that there is no direct evidence on. Let's say that Greenstreet's professional training comes in mighty handy for the games that are played.

Conflict is not in the same league as Maltese Falcon or Casablanca. Still it has a modicum of suspense and should keep the viewer interested.

This is an excellent film noir, featuring a very pert and pretty Alexis Smith as the object of a nasty Humphrey Bogart's lustful obsessions. Good old Sydney Greenstreet is as jolly and quietly scheming as ever. Regarding Smith, who is his sister-in-law, Bogart has 'gotta have her' but has not bothered to ask her first how she feels about that. Not waiting for such trivial information as what anyone else thinks, he hastens to commit 'the almost-perfect murder' of his wife so that he can be free to pursue his fantasy relationship with her sister. Greenstreet notices the giveaway-clue but with his poker face says nothing. This is all good vintage Hollywood stuff. The film was directed by German refugee Curtis Bernhardt, who fled the Gestapo and became one of Hollywood's many Germans, along with Fritz Lang and all the others. The next year, he directed the famous Bette Davis film A STOLEN LIFE. Robert Siodmak, another well-known émigré German director of noirs, wrote the original story for this one. Good expressionist angst.

Unlike the classic film noir Double Indemnity where a scheming couple does in the woman's husband, here Humphrey Bogart plays engineer Richard Mason who decides to murder his wife after falling in love with his wife's sister without finding out first whether she is interested in him. Hardly a believable or credible scenario!

Richard indeed goes ahead and murders wife Kathryn (Rose Hobart) on a deserted mountain road only to be rejected by the sister Evelyn (Alexis Smith) soon afterward. Not a very smart guy nor likeable in the least. Maybe this is why initially Bogart rejected the script when it was offered to him (the studio forced him to take on the project threatening not to promote another picture of his being released around the same time).

So nothing happens between Richard and Evelyn, who eventually seems to end up with College Professor Norman Holsworth (Charles Drake), an irrelevant subplot.

Conflict becomes something of a mystery when items belonging to Kathryn suddenly turn up and Richard believes he saw his dead wife walking on the street. Are these occurrences simply hallucinations and reflective of a breakdown Richard is now experiencing?

The answer is negative. It's a complicated ruse concocted by Richard's psychoanalyst friend Dr. Mark Hamilton (Sydney Greenstreet) who realizes early on that Richard is guilty. So, working with the police, they pull off an elaborate scheme involving several people to draw Richard back to the crime scene where he will incriminate himself.

That's what happens-end of story. The ruse or scheme or whatever you want to call it is a payoff which is a little too hard to believe.

While the acting is decent enough, the main character is too unlikable and plot too far-fetched for anyone to take much interest in it.

Spoilers.

I've just seen this film again for the first time in about 20 years. I've held it as a personal favorite from an earlier viewing, all this time. It was with some trepidation, then, taking into account all the water that has washed under the gates in the last 20 years in cinematic terms, that I came to Conflict again. Would it still stand up as an authentic film experience?

For me, it has. --And what's more, there are resonances here, this time around, that flew over the head of a callow youngster. This go 'round, the film feels like nothing less than a meditation on regret, all those mistakes you wish you could undo, all those unfulfilled longings of middle age that arise out of a palpable sense of missed opportunities and fading last chances.

Bogart is perfect as Richard Mason, an engineer who is trusted to oversee the building of a bridge or skyscraper, but can't repair a 'simple little thing' like his damaged relationship with his wife. Mason regrets what has become of his marriage. He regrets feeling trapped in a 'situation.' He regrets that the time line of eternity has failed to synchronize the lifetime of his wife's much younger sister with his own. A cool and respected professional outwardly, he is, inside, a flailing, discontented man. What finally pushes him over the edge may be his wife's casual mockery in the films first scene, a preparation for their anniversary party. Amid some standard jibes and old-couple bickering, she throws out this taunt: that she hopes he never tells Evelyn, her sister, he has a thing for her, because she'd laugh at him. "I wish you hadn't said that" he thinks out loud. It's at that point that we begin to feel the wheels of escape turning in the engineer's head. With just a few thoughtless words, the relationship has turned a corner, from merely unrewarding to personally demeaning and thus intolerable. Therein hangs the tale.

By fade out, it is clear that Mason has one other towering regret: having killed his wife. The final scene, returned to the sepulcher he fashioned for his wife, Mason takes a long hard look with us alongside at existential despair. The empty tomb is a metaphor for Mason's life as he must feel it at that point: The emptiness of an empty life, the emptiness of death and eternity for one who has lived such a life. Whatever he was waiting for hasn't shown up this existence, and won't in the next. This is it for Richard Mason. Does it get any darker than this?

Conflict isn't included in most noir references because, I believe, some of the more psychologically aberrant elements of the characters and story are explained away rationally at the end, as part of a set up or a trick to trap a murderer. But I think the experts are mistaken in not having looked more closely at this film. The core of Conflict is, in fact, the purest noir: an existential view of life and death, struggles with doubts about ones own sanity, sexual longing as a spur to murder, and a cruel subversion of a cherished bourgeois institution (the 'perfect' marriage). If this isn't noir, then what is noir criticism but a transparent popularity contest-- like the earliest auteur criticism-- that speciously excludes films for having the "wrong" director, or for not having been endorsed by the "right" people?

Ten stars. Definitely worth your time.

Have you noticed the similarities between, not only «Conflict» and «Vertigo» (1958), but also with «The Two Mrs. Carroll» (1947)? Indeed, in these movies, there is at least one of the following occurrences : 1) A husband planning to get rid of his wife. 2) A woman who «mysteriously» disappears after entering a building while being followed by a man. 3) A clue that gives away the guilty person (a rose, a necklace). I'll stop here : if you're familiar with the three movies mentioned -- or just curious about the «mechanics» of good suspense/noir films plotting -- then I'll leave it to you to find more connections. You may argue that, since «Vertigo» came after the others, if any «imitation» is to be pointed out, then Hitchcock's film would be the one to «blame». Perhaps.... Yet, none of the other two come close to the first part of «V.», in the atmospheric and hypnotic suggestion of a «romantic ghost».

This is a neat little who-dun-it. Well, actually we know who done it. What we don't know who is doing it now. I won't explain that, but if you watch the film you'll understand.

Humphrey Bogart is excellent here. There's some dialog that doesn't ring true, but he didn't write the script or direct. And there was one spot when he is grilling Alexis Smith that he made me think of Captain Queeg!

Alexis Smith is also excellent here, although I was distracted by a not very logical blouse at the resort. It just seemed childish. Again, not her fault, in fact I enjoyed her performance.

And Sydney Greenstreet was excellent as the psychiatrist, although again, some of the dialog he was given seemed a bit off to me...but that's not his fault. I did find it odd that Greenstreet's character and Bogart's character are close friends who socialize together all the time...and Bogart still calls him doctor??? That seemed odd to me.

I was kept guessing till near the end as to who was...sleuthing (I'll be a bit obscure here).

Well worth a look. A solid 7.

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** I like to call some movies (such as "Mirage"), "A Hitchcock movie not made by Hitchcock." "Conflict" reminds me more of one of his hour-long TV shows, although more intricate and finely wrought. It is done with the same sardonic approach to the horrors that result from entanglement in murder.

Richard (Humphrey Bogart) and Katherine (Rose Hobart) have the perfect marriage. At least, that's what all their friends think, including skeptical Freudian psychologist Dr. Mark Hamilton (Sydney Greenstreet), who tells Katherine he is amazed -- that five years ago, when they married, he wouldn't have given it the slightest chance.

But the story opens with Katherine accusing Richard of having fallen in love with her younger sister, Evelyn (Alexis Smith). He denies it, but Katherine has sensed the truth. She says she will never give Richard a divorce, and that Evelyn would laugh at him if she knew how he felt.

At their fifth anniversary party that night, Richard moons over Evelyn like a lovesick puppy. On their way home, Evelyn's announcement of her incipient departure causes Richard such emotional turmoil that he runs the car into something (we never see what). He awakes in the hospital, and his first words are, "How is Evelyn?" Only later does he ask about Katherine, and doesn't seem too happy to hear that she has escaped without a scratch.

Richard tries to make it up with Katherine, but she withers him with, "It's funny how virtuous a man can be when he's helpless." He uses the fact that his is bound to a wheel chair as the mechanism to enact a plan that he has obviously made, although we don't see him making it. He pretends he can't walk, even though he has recovered. He puts on a convincing show for the doctor, who tells him that his problem is mental now rather than physical.

Richard sets up a vacation at their lonely mountain cabin, ostensibly to aid in his recovery. At the last minute, he fakes a business emergency and tells Katherine to go to the cabin without him; he'll meet her there the next day. He drives ahead, intercepts her on a lonely, fog-bound mountain track, and kills her.

Dr. Mark, who has been a sort of second father to Katherine and Evelyn, is suspicious from the first. Evelyn returns, and Richard is consumed by desire for her. She submits to his attentions, and agrees to spend some time with him at the mountain cabin.

But things are far from perfect in this hellish paradise Richard has created for himself. Katherine's possessions keep turning up, as do people who claim they have seen a woman dressed exactly like Katherine was on the day of her death. Richard becomes increasingly convinced that she is still alive somehow. The uncertainty gnaws at him, and eventually causes him to make a fatal blunder.

Humphrey Bogart presages his role as Captain Queeg in "The Caine Mutiny" here, portraying a madman not as a hair-tearing raver, but in a subtle, understated manner that is much more chilling. (If you like this kind of character, it was also played masterfully by Robert Mitchum in Charles Laughton's "Night of the Hunter.")

Alexis Smith is utterly fascinating, combining sirenish seductiveness with wholesome, girl-next-door qualities in a way that is rare, and difficult to pull off. It is easy to see why Bogart is so obsessed with her and dumps his shrewish wife for her.

Sydney Greenstreet is at his enigmatic best (although perhaps not quite as good as in "The Velvet Touch"), warm, jolly and seemingly innocuous on the outside, but coldly calculating, relentless and almost vicious on the inside.

Although the ending of the film is abrupt and a bit weak, the denouement is superbly brought off by Greenstreet. The acting is strong, and the lead-up to the climax is handled with suspense that will grab your interest and not let go.