Sleep, My Love (1948)

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Wow! Why is this wonderful thriller not better known? It's like a smarter, wittier version of GASLIGHT with the dashing, would-be boyfriend of the preyed-upon heroine promoted to the leading role. Robert Cummings plays the lovestruck, independently-wealthy amateur sleuth who figures out oily Don Ameche is trying to drive wealthy wife Claudette Colbert nuts in order to seize her fortune. Now all he has to do is prove it. Cummings' character is quick-thinking and resourceful, and also very funny. This noirish shocker boasts great acting; a fine screenplay; and one cool, inventive scene after another. Don't miss it.

How to get rid of a wealth y wife in five easy lessons. When I first saw this film some thirty years ago, I didn't quite get it. I assume from having grown up and gotten a bug for film noir in the intervening years that I wasn't nature enough to grasp the intrigue of that genre. Now, having seen it once again since then (maybe about 15 years ago) that it is a smart thriller with all the stops pulled out in creating a diabolical drama of masterminded evil that grabs you and doesn't release you until the final seconds.Claudette Colbert plays a Sutton Place socialite who finds herself on the train to Boston, unaware of how she got there. Her husband indicates shock over her disappearance to investigator Raymond Burr but is he sincere? The presence of a pesky but friendly old lady Queenie Smith adds to the intrigue as she is obviously a part of a scheme, while Ameche is soon revealed to be involved in an clandestine affair with the sinister Hazel Brooks, one of the most evil predatory women ever to grace the screen.Robert Cummings is added into the plot, playing his usual happy go lucky good guy, befriending Colbert and escorting her around while Ameche plots with Brooks. Colbert, taking a break from the light-hearted comedies she was best known for (or long suffering mother roles), is sensational. Ameche is quite different than any role he had played up to this point. Produced by retired silent movie star Mary Pickford, this is dark and sinister, and above all, gripping and powerful.

The best scenes in "Sleep, My Love" come right away -- awaking on a train, our heroine (Claudette Colbert) can't remember how or why she got there, although an old woman on the train swears she saw her get on in Baltimore. Later, it turns out the woman is a plant, part of a scheme dreamed up by the woman's husband (Don Ameche) and an unscrupulous passport photographer (Ralph Morgan).Sadly, many of the film's moments that seem to be designed to be creepy or disturbing are unintentionally humorous. Ameche has a book about how to hypnotize people, and he uses it to try to lure Colbert into suicide. It's impossible not to laugh as he whispers next to her head while she sleeps, "go to the window, jump! jump!" Robert Cummings is equally ridiculous for most of the film's running time, although he does allow some interesting moments to creep in after he's discovered Ameche's plot and tries to trap him into revealing himself (he reveals a more forceful side than we usually see from Cummings). I've never been a huge fan of Colbert in anything other than comedy, as she just doesn't seem to me to have the face or the style for drama. She's a fine actress, but I just didn't see what Cummings was so crazy about. She seems much too much of a square. Rita Johnson is more interesting to me, sorry..... wish we had seen more of her in films, but she definitely had some talent and was camera friendly.

We're into familiar territory again with this would-be sleeper about a woman being drugged by her husband (DON AMECHE) for her inheritance and trying all manner of tricks to get her to think she's going insane.It all has a familiar ring--although this time, under Douglas Sirk's direction, it's all much too contrived and not too convincing in its execution.CLAUDETTE COLBERT is the poor victimized wife (but she's no Ingrid Bergman) and the cast-against-type DON AMECHE is much too affable to be chilling as the husband, unlike CHARLES BOYER in "Gaslight". Interestingly, ROBERT CUMMINGS is playing the same sort of role he essayed years later in "Dial M For Murder" whereby he helped Grace Kelly who was caught up in a sinister plot by her husband. Whatever, he's still pretty bland.In fact, that's the trouble with the whole film. It's bland despite the makings of a plot that should be mystifying and terrifying. Maybe a director other than Sirk could have done things with the bare bones of the story that would have turned it into the kind of chiller it's striving to be.Summing up: Not really worth your time.