clanciai Review of The Man I Married

The Man I Married (1940)

Joan Bennett at the mercy of the reality of Nazi Germany - by her own husband

[10/10 · 18 December 2019]

This is one of those early prophetic films seeing through Nazism completely long before their actual madness was commonly known or even suspected. Joan Bennett is married to a German in New York who wants to return to Germany to see about his father's business (Otto Kruger in one of his best roles), where he turns into a definite Nazi, to the great shock of Joan Bennett. It's a very unpleasant film, you feel the creeping horrors of Nazism invading your being and life as you like Joan Bennett follow the revelations of the tale, but dramatically it's an ingenious film, carefully building up an almost unendurable suspense, to reach a climax in the wonderful final scene at home. It is very intelligently written, and you follow the arguments and developments with constantly increasing anxiety and thrill, and what's worse - films like this are pertinent still today, since the same sneaking danger of dictatorships is something that history always has seen the return of.