the audience applauded

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

After a promising beginning, this movie seemed to become tedious. The main reason is that Bette Davis' character behaved in such an idiotic manner. She treated Henreid's character as if he was made of eggshells. All anyone wanted in this movie was the truth. People became separated during the war, and their lives went on - so what! The music was lovely and Claude Rains performance was outstanding as always. I thought Bette Davis' character was so over the top with what might happen, that she began to get on my nerves in a major way. The ending wasn't very satisfactory. In my own mind, I predict that she will start to get on Henreid's nerves, too. Most normal people don't want to be over-protected the way she did to him. Plus he had such gratitude to Rains for what he did for him. Since spoilers can be subjective, I mark them as I don't want to be black listed. I watch pretty much any movie with these three actors in them, but this was a one shot deal for me.

I wonder how the conversation at Warner Brothers went the day they dreamed up this movie. Was it something like: "Hey, Casablanca was a big hit. I wonder if we could cash in on that? Let's try retelling the same story, and just change a few superficial things, so it isn't too obvious. You know, keep the story about the woman who has an affair with another guy during the war because she thought the man she was in love with had been killed. And then he comes back, and meets the interim guy, and there's jealousy and all that. Maybe have her pull a gun on the interim guy again, the way Bergman did on Bogart. That was a good scene! And then she finally goes off with her first love again. Something like that, you know, but we just change a few details. And say, we've still got Paul Heinried under contract. We can get him to play the guy who gets cheated on again. He was good at that. And maybe use Claude Raines again. We'll just change a few of the details." And so they did, and so Deception was born.This time, we see more of it through the woman's eyes, this time played by Bette Davis. And this time, the man and the woman weren't actually married before, so if she had an affair with another guy when she thought the first one was dead, there wasn't actually anything wrong with that. But the first guy still gets jealous.Did Heinreid get tired of playing the noble cuckold? I wonder.Did Davis object to having to play a watered down, less attractive version of a role Ingrid Bergman had already immortalized? This isn't a bad movie, though it is often VERY melodramatic. Unlike Casablanca, I don't know how many men could have sat through it.It shows the difference you get with even very fine actors when the script just isn't that interesting.

Almost impossibly dull, plodding story about a petty lover's quarrel between three music world denizens. In a decent noir (male audience), the movie would have shown the dramatic backstory that this tosses away with two lines of dialog in the first 15 minutes. It's tossed away as a favor to female viewers who want the entire running time devoted to class fantasy, women's fashions and the melodramatics of being the bauble whom two men are feuding over. Though calling Rains a 'man' here is pushing it. Rains plays the jealous teacher/lover as a pompous, effeminate poseur, along the lines of Clifton Webb. He's quite annoying. One sock in the jaw is all it would take to end that conflict! As a bonus it would shut him up.There are about 12 micro-drama/flare-ups that are all equally uninvolving. The conflict eventually lead to the belabored ordering of a pretentious meal in some restaurant, which is supposed to be grueling for Paul Henreid. It was grueling for me. You have to sit through scads of excruciating, inscrutable chatter to get to a murder. A tense moment is undermined by an inane radio commercial for a scrubbing product ("Remember, 'Drawrof' spelled backwards is 'Forward'") that draws guffaws instead of anxiety. And remember girls, when choosing between two men, the right guy is the one who tries to strangle you when he's upset. (!)The only trace of excitement here is the title. A pile of ham. A tremendous snoozer. Te De um!

"Deception" released in 1946, is a mildly entertaining film that has some top-notch stars. Bette Davis stars again with Claude Rains and Paul Henried. The three principle actors had previously starred together four years earlier in "Now Voyager" a superior film to this one. This was the fourth film Davis and Rains did together, and their last. In this film, Davis plays a pianist who finds an old love, played by Henried, a cellist. Rains plays an arrogant symphony conductor. The film centers around the world of music, of the classical variety. Davis and Henried marry in the film, much to the dismay of Rains, who was Davis' mentor and lover. It all gets somewhat complicated, with the arrogant Rains playing games with the two other stars, or is he? One is never sure whether he is out to destroy the career of the up and coming Henried out of jealousy or is he just playing his usual obnoxious games. Davis has never told her new husband about the true nature her relationship with Rains, although he seems to always suspect it. Davis and Rains have it out at the end, and the film ends rather strangely as well. "Deception" starts out rather flat and dull, does manage to pick up steam, but certainly does not live up to the standard of prior films of Bette Davis. It is a pity the film also lost money upon its release, for it gives Claude Rains one of the finest performances of his career. Paul Henried is also in fine form. Ms. Davis seems to take a bit of a backseat here to let the others actors shine, whether intentional or not. This was the beginning of the end for Davis at Warner Brothers, as her next few films would be flops and she would leave the studio by 1950. But what a run she had there!