The Kiss Before the Mirror

A lawyer in Vienna defends a friend who shot his wife and her lover. Preparing the case, he notices that his own wife leaves the house at the same hour every evening. The defence he delivers in court turns, at a certain point, into a confession of his own jealousy. The film is not interested in the murder trial. It is interested in the same thought recurring in two men: defending his client, the lawyer is also describing the murder he might commit, and the film draws that parallel openly. The form is unexpectedly lyrical: a moving camera in the opening, shadowed interiors, the repeated use of the mirror. It runs under seventy minutes and wastes none of them. James Whale directed. In the same years he was making Frankenstein and The Invisible Man; this is not horror, but the visual language and the curiosity about death are the same. Nancy Carroll, Frank Morgan and Paul Lukas star. Who it is for: viewers curious about the pre-Code period and Whale outside horror. Who it is not for: anyone who needs the women to have their own voice. The film builds the whole matter out of male suspicion.