Beautiful, moving film.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

This is a gloomy British film noir made just after the War, starring Eric Portman as a wronged husband intent upon revenge. He has been away in America for 8 months on business, but during that time he came to realize that his wife was being unfaithful and going around with another man back in London. He returns without notifying her and sets about his meticulously planned campaign of murdering her lover by means of what he calls 'the perfect murder'. The film is based upon a play of the same title by St. John Legh Clowes. It was filmed twice for television, firstly for the BBC in 1949, and secondly in 1957 for the Armchair Theatre series on the ITV network. The playwright turned it into a novel, and that was filmed in 1972 as a German TV movie entitled GELIEBTER MOERDER. It is rather a sinister tale, and I marvel at its popularity. In this first filming of the story, Portman's wife is played by Greta Gynt. She is excellent as a totally narcissistic and faithless femme fatale, of the most disgusting kind. When she is told that a man has committed suicide over her, the camera closes on her face as we see her thrilled and gloating at the news, and she says to herself excitedly: 'He killed himself for me!' Dennis Price, in his best arch and snobbish manner, plays the lover who is murdered by Portman. But Portman discovers that the murder was pointless, because his wife has already dropped Price and taken up with another man played by Maxwell Reed. There are many twists and turns, much duplicity, lying, and deception, and several false stories. Through all of this the study police inspector played by Jack Warner does not believe anybody and knows something is fishy with all their stories. It would all be very fascinating if the people were not all so horrible and the events so very repulsive. Arthur Crabtree did a very good job of directing, and he uses a great deal of darkness in his shots to underline the awful gloom.

The opening was one of the longest "prepare to die" speeches I have ever seen. Twenty minutes. Suave, cuckolded Eric Portman, visits then subdues his rival. Next, he tells how he learned of the man's bush brushing while he was overseas, and how he intends to kill him. Afterward, he spends another five minutes doing the deed and scattering the false trail. Then all the steam escapes, and the plot plods into police procedural. Turns out, hot, cheating wife (Greta Gynt) has a history of running around. She's already lined up her next man snack. Her husband needs roller skates to snuff everyone grazing her grass. Nice lighting, lot of Noir touches, though this is very much in the British mystery vein. Alright, at best. Dull and disappointing at worst.

It was going good but then it just gets stupid. Why would he tell his wife what he did?? Why would he keep trying to kill/frame her lovers instead of killing her!! And what a horrible ending!!! How could that ring possibly connect her to the murder? Couldn't the husband have found the ring somehow and dropped it before killing himself? Finding a ring like that would be a good reason to. But I have no clue how that at all incriminates her. Just rubbish, smh.I would also like to point out that I watch a ton of old movies and they almost always have a pretty girl playing the main role. But this lady who plays the wife is anything but attractive. Of course that could be b/c she plays the part of a monster so they didn't want a good looking lady but she didn't have to be that ugly. Now the young girl who plays the sister on the other hand is very pretty. :) In conclusion, this movie is an epic waste of time and "could" have been good had they stopped it at the 32 minute mark.

The 'perfect crime' novel, play, film became so ubiquitous that audiences tended to judge them on how credible the 'flaw' that proved the murderer's undoing and in this case it would struggle to rate three out of ten. Director Arthur Crabtree began behind the camera where he had credits on the like of Waterloo Road; he never really made it as a director but this effort begins well enough, boldly even for the time, because we are not told where Eric Portman has been prior to his entering his (we assume) flat, discovering several business cards signed Love Always and decides to confront and kill the sender. Only then does Portman reveal to Dennis Price that he has been in America for six months thus leaving Price clear to bed Portman's wife, Greta Gynt. He cons Price into writing a letter to Gynt that we - seasoned viewers of 'perfect crime' movies - spot as a suicide note, then coolly offs Price but before he can leave Gynt (who has a key, comes in with new lover, Maxwell Reed. This gives Portman a chance to frame Price for the crime and the 'flaw' comes when Gynt tells Portman she has loved him all along and begs him to clear Price without, of course, incriminating himself. HE AGREES. Yeah, you heard; a man who has found incriminating evidence of one lover (Price) and has had it confirmed by Price himself, then sees and hears with his own eyes and ears how Gynt behaves with a second lover, BELIEVES he pathetic story. There is absolutely no chemistry between Gynt and any of the three men (though to be fair we never see her with Price), Reed is as wooden as always and Jack Warner walks through the detective role, possibly mistaking it for the one he played in It Always Rains On Sunday that same year. On a Saturday night in 1947 at the local Odean this would have been perfectly acceptable. Sixty years on it leaves something to be desired.