Take My Life (1947)

Directed by Ronald Neame; produced by Anthony Havelock-Allan

After the successful premier of the opera in which his wife starred, a man (Hugh Williams) is approached by a former girlfriend. Asking for his help, she gives him her address, written on a piece of paper. Though he doesn’t visit her, Williams is implicated in and later arrested for her murder. With the police investigation concluded and the trial begun, it’s up to the accused’s wife (Greta Gynt) to find out the truth.

A fairly straightforward crime drama, Take My Life doesn’t pretend to be a mystery. The murderer (Marius Goring) is known to the audience - if not to any character in the film - almost from the start. His identity and motive remain obscure for a while, but we watch him follow Williams’s trial and take precautions against his own discovery. Take My Life relies for success not on mystery but on the suspense of Gynt’s hunt for the killer. In this, the film works.

Take My Life doesn’t have the heart-beating thrills of a Hitchcock film, but the question of what will happen at the end remains open throughout. As well, there is the frustration Gynt experiences in that every lead she finds seems already to have been anticipated by the police, and leads to nothing more positive for her than it did for them.

The acting is good, especially from Gynt and Goring. Gynt is determined and, alternately, anxious and hopeful, while Goring is likely the creepiest member of his character’s profession you will see in a while. His single-mindedness is more than a little disturbing. (On a side-note, I saw for the first time, Goring’s resemblance to the late King Edward VIII (the Duke of Windsor), a decidedly un-creepy man.) Williams also does a competent job, playing a gentleman who won’t give in to despair, no matter what the circumstances say about it.

All in all, Take My Life is an uncomplicated, entertaining melodrama, with a bit of twist to the ending which, though not necessary to the plot, fits it, and which I really should have seen coming.