THE UPTURNED GLASS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 460, 16 April 1948, Page 20

THE UPTURNED GLASS

| (Rank-Sydney Box) F I were a student of morbid psychology and. not just a filmgoer suffering from almost continuous exposure to it, I would feel happier about passing judgment on the credibility, of this tale of paranoia and on James Mason’s interpretation of a paranoiac. But whatever is the verdict on the plausibility of the story, The Upturned Glass will, I think, please most film-goers whether they are attracted simply by Mr. Mason’s brooding eyes, or by what goes on behind them. Like I Met a Murderer (Listener, 13/2/48), it is to a marked extent a family picture. Mason himself co-pro-duced with Sydney Box and plays the central character, while his wife (Pamela Kellino) wrote the screen-play in collaboration with John P. Monaghan and co-stars with her husband. And I do not doubt but that Mason had a good deal to say in the direction. Unlike I Met a Murderer, however, which was a straightforward narrative of crime, flight, and retribution, told without much finesse and characterised by an almost youthful candour, The Upturned Glass is a complex display of technical and artistic virtuosity. In a way it is worth seeing for these. superficialities alone even though, as so often happens with complex patterns, a stitch is dropped here and there. Putting aside for the moment certain questions of psychological probability, the basic design of the story is reasonably uncomplicated. A brilliant sur-geon-a brain specialist-successfully operates on a small girl threatened with cortical blindness, and subsequently finds himself becoming deeply attached to her mother. Out of consideration for the child, he breaks the association, then learns shortly afterwards that the woman has. committed suicide by jumping from her’ bedroom window. ~ This seems so out of character that he decides to investigate and finally comes to the conclusion (on what I thought was flimsy evidence) that the suicide was caused by the attempts of a cold-blooded and mercenary sister-in-law to alienate the child from her mother. He thereupon decides to push the sister-in-law out of the same window. The initial complication superimposed _ on this fairly straightforward story, however, is that it is told in a series of flashback sequences by Mason, who is introduced in the first place, not as the brain specialist, but as an. expert in medical juri dence leéturing a roomful of medical students. This more than hackneyed screen device, however, is given a new twist which amounts almost to a flash forward. The scene shifts back to the lecture-room as the murder of the sister-in-law is described and one realises that this murder has yet to be committed. At this pointat what I may not inappropriately call the psychological moment-the lecturePeriod ends and, hurriedly (and with a

fatal carelessness), Mason concludes by saying that the criminal was never discovered. "But, of course, like all paranolags, he had to tell someone about it?"-this question, shot at the lecturer by an overattentive student, not merely. takes the wind out of his sails, but almost demolishes the balance of the plot and picture. That one line is the high point of the story and despite the skill with which the succeeding scenes are played and photographed, none manages to achieve the same sudden electricflash of excitement. " The murder, however, is carried out as forecast, and Mason drives off into the night with a body in the back seat of his car, and no clear idea of what he is going to do with it. Then Fate, in the shape of a country doctor on his way to a brain case steps in. By a lefthanded appeal to his. » pride, the murderer is persuaded to operate, and the operation is successful, but even so the country doctor cannot bring himself to approve of the body he has found in the car. ‘Névertheless, in an excess of professional solidarity, he allows Mason to escape and walk over a cliff to his death. This is not a véty satisfactory (or original) ending, particularly after the earlier false climax, but expert and imaginative photography makes the most of it. . x As I said earlier, I don’t. know enough about morbid psychology to uphold or condemn Mason’s performance. I doubt if a paranoiac could make so plausible a counterfeit: of sanity or discuss his own case-history to the point of forecasting his future actions. But I have no doubts about the excellence of the acting and the intelligence of the direction. The film is full of incidental excellencies-the unemotional,’ clinical calm of the lecturer's. Pi is ing his own fru of reversed camera a recellected episode round full-ircler the playing of a simple melody in an empty house, and the occasional spells of tingling silence. A fair assessment. of The Upturned Glass would, I think, rate the tale as inferior to the telling.