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During an argument Bea Harper {Geraldine Brooks} strikes out at her unsavoury lover, Ted Darby {Shepperd Strudwick}, felling him with a blow that sends him tumbling to an accidental death. When her mother Lucia {Joan Bennett} finds the body she quickly hides the body out at sea to hopefully make things look better. But soon the menacing Martin Donnelly {James Mason} turns up with love letters that Bea had sent Ted and sets about blackmailing Lucia. But all is not going to be straight forward as Martin & Lucia are strangely drawn to each other.

The Reckless Moment is directed by Max Ophüls, it's adapted from a shorty story titled "The Blank Wall" and cinematography comes from Burnett Guffey. A tight enough picture technically, it is however something of let down considering the plot involves blackmail, murder, deception and sacrifice. Highly regarded by some notable critics, the film's strength, outside of the two excellent lead performances, comes by way of its flip-flop of the sexes plot. Reversing the roles of an innocent involved with a shady good for nothing gives the film a unique feel, but it also makes the film play as a melodrama as opposed to being a darkly noirish potboiler. Add in to the mix that Ophüls is content to go for emotion over criminal drama and it's an uneasy sit all told.

Where Ophüls does very well is with the distinction between Lucia's two differing worlds. She's from comfortable suburbia in Balboa, the epitome of contented respectability. But as she arrives in L.A. and does her "reckless moment," the landscape and tone changes. She herself significantly wears sunglasses at key moments and Messrs Ophüls & Guffey bring on the shadows and swirling cameras to portray the feeling of entrapment for our protagonists as they get deeper into it. The key scenes revolve around the Harper boathouse and the guys get maximum impact from this darkly lit venue. There's also some suggestion of manipulation that offers an intriguing train of thought, while the final shot begs to be given far more dissection than just seen as being a standard film closer.

Visually smart and acted accordingly, but not to my mind the nerve frayer that others have painted it as. 6/10

An unusual film, this slow-burner starring Joan Bennett and James Mason seems like a straight-forward murder and blackmail case, but that's only part of the story. Joan Bennett is the mother living apart from her husband (he's working away), and coping with her growing son and daughter, and their maid. James Mason is an Irish low-life, who hopes to make money from Bennett's family misfortunes.

From the start, where we see the 'murder' and find out what really happened, to the startling ending, this film, directed by Max Ophüls, grips. Aside from the two leads, Geraldine Brooks is good as the teenage daughter struggling with a lost love affair and the hormonal rage of puberty; and Kathryn Card is suitably condescending as she refuses to loan money to the increasingly desperate Bennett.

'The Reckless Moment' has a frisson of noir, and a strong script. It is a minor film, certainly, but a rewarding one.

Taut drama with the always underrated Joan Bennett great as the panicked mother and James Mason just right as the conflicted anti-hero. They interact so well it's a pity they only made this one film together.

Wonderfully directed by Ophuls and atmospherically shot this was updated as The Deep End with Tilda Swinton also a fine film but this has a distinct allure of its own.

Most of the supporting cast isn't given much to do which helps focus the film but an interesting character is the faithful maid Sybil played well by Frances Williams. Always in the background but seemingly all seeing she emerges with a nice showing of grit and understanding at a climatic moment.

For fans of noir and melodrama this is a pleasure from start to finish.

The sultry temptress of Fritz Lang's Scarlet Street and The Woman in the Window, Joan Bennett dons spectacles and a harried mien as a respectable mother in a California coastal town. Family life is proving nettlesome, what with a husband traveling the globe on business, a teenage son drawn to inappropriate states of attire, and two live-ins, a father-in-law and a cook/housekeeper. The nettle-in-chief, however, is her handful of a daughter (Geraldine Brooks). Like her predecessor Veda Pierce, she fancies herself a worldly woman and has taken up with a penniless but pretentious lecher, who winds up dead. Bennett's battle to cover up the death becomes the story's meat. Into the mix ambles James Mason, wanting $5-grand for incriminating love letters.... Mason, with an Irish lilt, is the film's most intricately shaded character (and he gets top billing) but Bennett delivers a controlled, expert performance, possibly her finest. The star of The Reckless Moment, however, is the great Max Ophuls (though the directorial credit has it "Opuls"). Displaying evocative chiaroscuro -- Burnett Guffey was cinematographer -- and voluptuous slow takes, Ophuls creates a rich texture ranging from shabby seaside respectability to the grungy sidewalks of nearby Los Angeles. This splendidly nuanced work has emerged as one of the standouts of the noir cycle, its ironies so understated that their oppressive weight isn't felt until long after the film has unspooled.

In the charming community of Balboa 50 miles from Los Angeles, the middle-class housewife Lucia Harper (Joan Bennett) travels to Los Angeles to meet the scoundrel Ted Darby (Shepperd Strudwick). Her seventeen year-old daughter Beatrice (Geraldine Brooks) is in love with Ted that is a worthless man. He asks for money to leave Bea, but Lucia refuses to give. Bea does not believe on her mother and during the night she sneaks out to the boat garage to meet Ted that admits that Lucia told the truth. Bea pushes him and Ted falls on an anchor immediately dying. On the next morning, Lucia finds the body and assumes that Bea has killed her lover. She decides to get rid of the corpse and puts it in her boat and dumps far from home. When the police find Ted, the stranger Martin Donnelly (James Mason) visits Lucia to blackmail her on behalf of his partner Nagel (Roy Roberts) that has several letters that Bea had written to Ted, asking US$ 5,000 for the letters. The desperate Lucia tries to raise the amount since her husband is working in Berlin. However, Martin falls in love with her and tries to help her. But the dangerous Nagel wants to receive the amount at any price.

"The Reckless Moment" is a suspenseful melodrama of Max Ophüls. The despair of Lucia is impressive trying to protect her family and specially her teenage daughter from the scandal. The plot point is when the criminal falls in love with her and as he says, he had never done a decent deed in his life but he decides to help his beloved victim. Joan Bennett is fantastic in the role of Lucia and James Mason is a nice villain in the end. David Bair plays the annoying son of Lucia that is irritating. In 2001, Tilda Swinton played the lead role in "The Deep End", a good remake of "The Reckless Moment". My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Na Teia do Destino" ("In the Web of the Destiny")

Near perfect, this is a marvellous and magical non stop emotional thriller with the camera moving with such fluidity we can only stare in wonder. As the camera swirls, so does the middle class family of Joan Bennett. She is constantly keeping the plates in the air, cheering them along chiding them at dinner or suggesting changes of clothes. When trouble strikes it is she who has to confront the big bad world and visit the boat shed, the less salubrious parts of town and confront people and issues she never has before. All seems to depend upon her and James mason's character appears forcing financial worries on top of all else. Until he falls for her and begins to relent and finally even more. Not a wasted frame.

Ignore the awful title, which put me in mind of some portentous period drama and you'll find a tough little mid 40's thriller. The BBC showed it this Christmas in a series dedicated to film noir, although I didn't detect too many noir-ish attributes in either the plotting, characterisation or cinematography.

That's not to gainsay its charms, however, as this taut tale of accidental death and blackmail takes you from start to finish in the seeming blink of an eye, underplaying, thankfully, any tendency to melodrama in place of character development and pace of narrative.

Joan Bennett is very good as the protective mother hen, who'll stop at almost nothing to protect her wilful teenage daughter from a disastrous affair with a nefarious older man to the extent of covering up said daughter's accidental killing of her now-revealed blackguard of a lover. James Mason comes onto the scene as the "human" half of a blackmailing duo, intent on extorting $5000 from Bennett (her husband conveniently abroad at the time), whose outlook towards both her and himself changes as his admiration for her grows.

To be fair, I'm not sure enough time was devoted towards Mason's near-Damascene type conversion to Bennett's side, making it seem a trifle improbable and unexpected, certainly Bennett rarely has a polite word to say to him as she strives valiantly to raise the necessary funds to buy back her daughter's offending letters. No, for me the strength of the film is in the depiction of Bennett as a typical 1940's American matriarch, not too proud to take the whole problem on her shoulders, dirty her hands or even pawn her best jewellery to protect her precious family. The conclusion, involving a self-defence murder and car crash which sees Mason conveniently clear Bennett with his dying breath, does run counter to a lot of the realism that has gone before but I suppose some concessions had to be made to the audience of the day in delivering thrills and absolution for the heroine.

The best acting is unquestionably by Bennett. Mason's "Oirish" accent comes and goes a bit with the tide and he also struggles at times to convince you of the sincerity of what is, admittedly a trickily written part, but his marvellous speaking voice will convince me of most things, even as a cheap conscience-stricken blackmailer as here.

The direction by Max Opuls is crisp, occasionally making good use of exterior locations and is all about moving the story along within its brief screen-time.

In the end, the movie comes across as what it probably was, a superior B-picture, not strong enough as a main event, but one you'd enjoy on a double-feature.

This movie is result of an unusual combination, of a foreign movie director working within limitations of Hollywood in the 40's. This is really one most impressive thrillers and of my favorite movies. Ophuls does a great job working within pretty simple story line and illustrating how strong of a grip a family can have on a person life and how quickly it can come apart when fate intervenes. Ophuls camera creates nagging, dark atmosphere out of this middle class community, sort of like on a Twin Peaks episode. The story deals with a housewife, played by Joan Bennett, having to manage her family while her husband is abroad. Her daughter's relationship eventually escalates into blackmail and Joan has to deal secretly by herself with this problem, while trying to manage her family and keep everything under control. Bennett is excellent at portraying a person whose world is slowly caving in under pressure. Ophuls cleverly uses just about every scene to illustrate the tensions and inner conflicts of Bennett's character. James Mason is great as a refined crook who suddenly finds himself feeling empathy for others. Can't think of too many actors who could pull this off, or other places in time where this character would work. In addition to strong acting performances, there are lot of interesting allegory in the things which Ophuls shows and a very strong ending make this movie a masterpiece.. A + most strongly recommended.

Joan Bennett effectively handles the central role of a harried housewife who finds out she has to deal with a blackmailer (James Mason) in an effort to shield her daughter (Geraldine Brooks) from murder charges.

Interesting that this noir-like drama is played out mostly in sunlight with only a few night scenes to give it the full atmospheric effect of a thriller. However, the final boat house scene is given the sort of shadowy photography one expects for a physical confrontation between the blackmailer and his corrupt partner.

Despite a taut script, the production has the look of a low-budget melodrama boosted by the admirable work of a good cast. Joan Bennett has one of her best roles as the tough-minded wife who is challenged to keep one step ahead of the authorities while dealing with a blackmailer who falls in love with her while her husband is overseas.

Good supporting performances from Shepperd Strudwick, Henry O'Neill and David Blair are a help...but the weak resolution for the ending undercuts the film's effectiveness as a satisfying thriller and keeps it in the minor league among Max Ophul's films. He does keep the story down to a brisk running time.

Trivia note: The outstanding B&W photography is fluid and on the move in endless tracking shots, one of the film's best virtues.

Question #1: Your 17 year old daughter is in love with an older man. When she goes to meet him at your boathouse, there's an accident and the next morning, you find him dead on the beach. Do you protect your little girl by roping the stiff to the back of your motorboat, giving him an anchor necktie, heading for open water and tossing him overboard? Question #2: When a surly Irishman turns up with a sheaf of your daughter's love letters to the late Lothario and offers to sell them to you -- or send them to the newspapers -- do you hock everything you own in a desperate attempt to raise the blackmail? Question #3: As a Columbia Pictures exec, when you're told this claptrap would make a great starring vehicle for Joan Bennett and James Mason, do you politely decline or line up the stars and film the hokum? Question #4: And this is the most puzzling of them all -- how come so many IMDb contributors consider "The Reckless Moment" a minor masterpiece? Okay, Mason turns in a stunning performance, as always. But you'd probably say the same thing if he simply read the phone book. And that might actually make more sense than this story.

Upperclass mother (Bennett) is blackmailed because of her indiscreet daughter.

Director Ophuls' leisurely camera work tends to soothe rather than jar, resulting in a style not particularly well suited for the jagged world of classic noir. Still, it is well suited for bringing out character traits as they emerge on a specific background.

Here, a rather ordinary, if upperclass, housewife gets to show her toughness by protecting her family (while Dad's away) from the ignominy of apparent murder and blackmail. So, move over Ozzie&Harriet and Leave It to Beaver, because by implication those well-coiffed housewives of 50's sitcoms are a lot tougher than they look.

Ophuls' dollying camera effectively contrasts the seedy world of the blackmailers with mother Lucia's amiable home life. The problem is that the criminal virus has established a beachhead in her boathouse, and now she must keep it from crossing the yard and invading the family home. Ironically, in order to do that, this law-abiding woman must herself break the law (the reckless moment), resulting in a noirish downward spiral.

Halfway between the worlds of crime and respectability is reluctant blackmailer Donnelly (Mason). In a sense, Lucia meets him there, halfway, but the pull of their respective worlds is too strong to open up a third possibility. I guess my big reservation is with the highly contrived climax that wraps these things up too neatly in typical Production Code fashion. Nor, for that matter, is Donnelly's sudden life-altering devotion that plausible.

Nonetheless, it's a good atmospheric production (check out the moody use of the beach-front breeze), with a fine central performance from Bennett who refuses to go over the top. To me, however, the most unexpectedly jarring part is that very last phone scene—see if you agree.

'The Reckless Moment' is a striking feature film in a semi-Noir style where unhappiness awaits even the most secure families as a result of the most common and mundane of accidental threads: a teenage daughters ill chosen romance and a clumsy emotional argument leading to physical calamity.

The direction elevates every single scene and propels a film that would otherwise fail to engender either a suspension of disbelief or a sense of excitement and intrigue.

Overall I found the teenage daughter played by Geraldine Brooks and a brief dynamic, much anticipated, performance from Roy Roberts to be the best depictions of archetypal characters. The male and female lead performances were often balanced and nuanced with an interesting communication of emotion within given scenes but otherwise they were hobbled by listless writing.

Max Ophuls in the directors chair elevates 'The Reckless Moment' not just in his judgement of emotionally balanced scenes but even more greatly by the use of his camera which genuinely carries impressive and memorable sweep and majesty.

Over I rate a 5 for the film but the director is worth a lot more and my personal rating is therefore a 7/10 and a recommendation to all fans of American cinema from this period, especially of the work of European emigres within studio system Hollywood.

Joan Bennett and James Mason star in "The Reckless Moment," a 1949 film directed by Max Ophuls and featuring Geraldine Brooks and Shepperd Strudwick.

I actually saw the remake of this movie, The Deep End, with Tilda Swinton and Goran Visjnic of "ER" fame. Both films are excellent, though the emphasis in each is slightly different.

Bennett plays Lucia Harper, mother of two, a teenage daughter and a younger son. Her husband works out of town currently - he appears to be an engineer - so Lucia has to hold it all together for her family, which includes her father. They have a house on the beach and lead a comfortable life, but her family needs and depends on her in every way.

Lucia doesn't like Darby,(Strudwick) the man her daughter Bea (Brooks) is seeing -- he's older than she is and seems on the sleazy side. She goes to see him in Los Angeles and asks him to stay away. Darby is happy to, for a price. When Lucia relates this to Bea, Bea doesn't believe her and that night, sneaks off to meet him in the family boathouse. When she learns that he did indeed want money, she hits him and runs away. He chases her, becomes woozy from being hit, and falls through an insecure railing to his death. I believe he impales himself on an anchor, as he did in the remake, but truthfully I couldn't see that shot clearly enough.

Lucia finds the body and, not knowing it was an accident, gets Darby into the family boat and dumps it in a lagoon; Bea doesn't know Darby is dead until the following day, when his body is found and the police and press descend. Bea becomes hysterical and Lucia has to calm her.

That should be the end of it but a man named Donnelly (James Mason) appears demanding $5000, on behalf of a man named Nagel, for letters that Bea wrote Darby. Lucia is frantic - how can she get her hands on that kind of money without raising her family's suspicion? Seeing the stress she's under and her protectiveness, Donnelly is moved by her plight.

This particular version of the story focuses on thin veneer of normalcy that Lucia operates under, and he emphasizes this by having her son ask innocuous questions constantly, her daughter's hysteria throughout the film, and all the while, her father takes to the blackmailing Donnelly and invites him for drinks and dinner. It also focuses on the veneer of the class system that was quickly fading after World War II. For Lucia, going to a bar, a pawn shop, a loan company, for her to even admit she needs money, is difficult. And ultimately she confides in her black maid and needs her help. Joan Bennett, with her educated accent and sophistication, does a marvelous job of portraying this as well as the stress of Lucia's life.

One couldn't ask for a better actor than James Mason as Donnelly. His presence, his voice, his attractiveness give him a veneer of respectability, but he's quick to point out he's not of Lucia's class. "She's lucky to have a mother like you," he tells Lucia about Bea. "Everybody has a mother like me," Lucia snaps. "You probably had one yourself." They become partners to satisfy the cruel Nagel.

Max Ophuls keeps the atmosphere dark and the suspense tight throughout the film, juxtaposing the bright home with the inquisitive, bothersome teenage boy and the relaxed father with the dark and foreboding beach front and lonely roads. Very powerful.

In the "Deep End," the story has been modernized - the son is gay, and the focus is on the character of the mother more than what she has to cope with, in my opinion -- it's a fascinating character study. And her connection to Visjnic is explored more.

I highly recommend both versions of this film, each on its own merits.

A couple of minutes into "Reckless Moment" it became apparent to me that this is the original on which 2001's "The Deep End" was based. From that moment onwards, I found myself playing an involuntary ping pong match between the two versions. While both are worthy films in their own right, a comparison weighs heavily in favor of "Deep End'.

"Reckless Moment" is made with great style in fitting with the noir melodrama. The photography is superb, and director Ophuls is served excellently by both James Mason and Joan Bennett. However the very linchpin of the story is the ambivalent and complex relationship between the blackmailer and his victim and it's in this area that the movie falters badly. It's handling of the relationship is straightforward, shallow and basically unbelievable. "The Deep End" handled this particularly well; it's the very source of the film's power. It also shrewdly updated the protection of a daughter by her mother, from having the love letters she wrote exposed, to a mothers protection of her gay son's videotaped sexual escapades.

Still "Reckless Moment" remains a worthwhile experience, but misses making the grade of a "classic" thanks to an unimaginative, simplistic and shallow screenplay.

When we think of film noir, we generally think of the dark and gloomy city streets and back alleys. But good film noir can also be done in bright sunlight on the shores of a fashionable beach house (Sunset Boulevard). This is a good example of upper class fim noir. A daughter makes the mistake of dating a heel, and her mother insists on her breaking it up. Then a series of events occur where the mother makes a critical error of judgement, when she should have just let well enough alone. Later in the film the mother almost makes the same mistake for a second time, but I will not spoil the fun of finding out what it is. James Mason steals the film from Bennett, the female star. His scenes are riveting, and we can see he will make many great films in the future. Catch this one.

I was disappointed in The Reckless Moment when I first saw it. This was the first movie with Joan Bennett I had seen after her back to back smoldering noir performances in The Woman in the Window and The Scarlet Street. Seeing it a second time I was very impressed with Bennett's performance. As the harassed housewife carrying a terrible secret she is excellent. Conveying the frayed edges of a woman barely keeping together the appearance of normalcy . The supporting cast are very good as well. Except alas, for Mason who never totally convinces as the blackmailer's (assistant)? Also how did he get those love letters anyway?

Elisabeth Sanxay Holding's ladies magazine story "The Blank Wall" becomes competent melodrama starring Joan Bennett as a remarkably cool-headed Balboa housewife mixed up in an accidental death. Bennett (with Myrna Loy's hairdo) finds the dead body of her 17-year-old daughter's sleazy ex-boyfriend on the beach; seems the girl bopped him on the head during an argument and fled, not knowing that he stumbled and fell through a weak wooden railing (it looked to me as if the wood impaled him after the fall, but later there's talk of a spiky motorboat anchor being involved). Bennett decides to toss the body into the drink, which is quickly recovered by the police, in turn bringing about a gentlemanly blackmailer with a stack of hysterical teenage letters written to the victim by Bennett's daughter. Remade in 2001 as "The Deep End", this version isn't as hyperbolic (or, consequently, as suspenseful), but it does have busy Bennett and she's enjoyable to watch. Whether chatting innocuously with her family, placating her worried maid, or pawning her best jewelry for $800, the star is the whole show here. James Mason (who is supposed to be Irish but doesn't sound like an Irishman until his final scene) could be the most patient, understanding blackmailer in '40s cinema. Mason keeps popping 'round whenever the plot requires a break in the action, but his part never comes to much. Screenwriters Henry Garson and Robert Soderberg, adapting an original treatment by Mel Dinelli and Robert E. Kent, try tying little knots into their scenario--a missing shopping list, a phone call to Bennett's aunt, a failed attempt at a loan, a purchased pack of cigarette filters--but all these details are finally just asides (I felt there were enough witnesses sprinkled around to cast more suspicion on Joan's loving mommy than the writers allowed). Worth-watching for Bennett, but the film is more than a little annoying, particularly with a teenage boy hopping around (and talking with the disembodied voice of a ventriloquist's dummy), a live-in housekeeper who keeps announcing "There's a man here to see you!", and kindly old Gramps, who just loves everybody and hopes they'll stay for dinner. ** from ****