Word: thrillers
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Sleep, My Love (Triangle; United Artists) is a rather fishy thriller about a sleek fiend (Don Ameche) who enlists the help of a fake psychiatrist (George Coulouris) to drive his wife (Claudette Colbert) to insanity and/or suicide. Claudette is rich and Ameche is crazy for a gold digger (Hazel Brooks). An eligible Bostonian (Robert Cummings) traps the villains after some narrow squeaks...
...there is a little good writing which penetrates the West Coast hierarchy of editorial stupidity. Where "Panic" is exciting is in the mixture of completely repulsive characters with clever situation. You cannot like any of the people of "Panic"; yet the whole production is not only a first-rate thriller but a carefully balanced and superbly executed piece...
Power Without Glory (by Michael Clayton Hutton; produced by John C. Wilson & the Messrs. Shubert) is a far better thriller after two acts than after three. Though it comes to a thoroughly bad end, it adds up to a fairly good evening. British Playwright Hutton, who has hit on a rather fresh and valid idea for a thriller, may be a bungler of plots, but he is a master of tension. Best of all, a well-knit British cast keeps on acting deftly even after there's little left...
Unfortunately, the play suddenly goes to pot as a thriller by trying to be something more than that. The characters start acting noble, the conversation turns rich and strange, the situation slowly drains away. The sad thing is not that the ending lacks punch, but that it altogether lacks point...
Honegger's Jeanne d'Arc au Bûcher (Joan of Arc at the Stake) was highly effective as theater, if not always exciting as music (sometimes the score sounded like background for a Norman Corwin radio thriller...