The Two Mrs. Carrolls

This much-underrated Bogart vehicle casts him in the rather unlikely--and unlikable--role of a psychotic painter with a penchant for killing off his wives. After painting a portrait of his wife as the "Angel of Death," Bogart meets Stanwyck and falls in love with her. To rid himself of the matrimonial bond that keeps him from Stanwyck, Bogart slowly poisons his wife. When she becomes ill and bed-ridden, he acts the loving husband and brings her a nightly glass of warm milk laced with increasingly large doses of poison. Bogart sends his daughter, Ann Carter, away to school, during which time his wife dies and he marries Stanwyck. A couple of years later, after painting Stanwyck as the "Angel of Death," Bogart falls in love with his new neighbor, Smith. He tries the same trick again, slowly poisoning Stanwyck with warm milk. His plan hits a snag, however, when the druggist who supplies the poison, Barry Bernard, hits Bogart with a blackmail demand. Smith also grows anxious and pressures Bogart to run away with her. The demented artist again sends his daughter off to school, but Carter, still emotionally scarred from her mothers death, reveals to Stanwyck that the last time she went off to school she returned to find her mother dead. Stanwyck becomes suspicious, and when she finds the two "Angel of Death" portraits, she turns to former suitor Patrick OMoore for help. Receiving a gun from him, Stanwyck begins her fight to stay alive. The next time she is offered a glass of warm milk she pretends to drink it, but actually empties it out the window. Bogart discovers this, however, and realizes that she has caught on. When he is unable to get into her locked room, he attempts entry through her bedroom window. Climbing up a tree in a blazing storm, the maniacal Bogart breaks in, dripping with water and seething with hatred. Stanwyck draws her gun, but Bogart wrestles it away from her. At the last second, OMoore and the police burst into the room and save Stanwyck from becoming the second former Mrs. Carroll. Completed in June, 1945, on the heels of GASLIGHT, THE TWO MRS. CARROLLS bore too much similarity to that film to please Warner Bros. executives. As a result they sat on the film for nearly two years, finally releasing it in March, 1947. While unable to boast anything but average showings from its leads (Bogarts often-criticized performance is a laudible attempt to act against type) and saddled with some severely melodramatic excesses, THE TWO MRS. CARROLLS still proves an effective, and sometimes chilling, entertainment. (texte officiel du distributeur)