This is surely the basis for a Trivia question: In what film did Robert Mitchum commit suicide? Sad to say that's about as plausible as it gets. Mitchum, one of the least likely candidates for suicide in his generation of actors, here gives no indication that his psyche is so fragile that he will take such a drastic and final step. Almost the last thing he said was 'my conscience is clear' and he left Brian Ahearne's office as strong and well-adjusted as ever only to jump out of a window. Hilarious. Much has been made on this board of the flashback-within-flashback-within-flashback but not one of the posters I read (about 12) found anything but praise for this ludicrous situation in which someone 'remembers' an incident for which he/she was not present. For a flashback to have verisimilitude it must confine itself to what the narrator actually SAW and/or EXPERIENCED. For example if the narrator says something like ...'I met X for the first time in the automat. It was March ...' and we then DISSOLVE and witness the meeting via a flashback it is imperative that we remain WITH the narrator at all times. If, after meeting X in the automat they go their separate ways and WE follow X and NOT the narrator we are immediately cheating because neither WE nor the NARRATOR can KNOW for sure what X DID after leaving the automat. And that's only one of the problems with a SINGLE flashback. Here we have Brian Ahearne warning Gene Raymond not to go ahead with his marriage to Larraine Day and supporting this by narrating how HE, Ahearne, met Day (flashback #1) in turn he relates how Mitchum came to see HIM (Ahearne) with the news that Ahearne's wife, Day, was a murderess and was prepared to let an innocent man be executed in her place. This triggers flashback #2 so now he have Mitchum flashing back WITHIN Ahearne's own flashback and thus telling Ahearne things that Ahearne could not possibly recall in his OWN Master flashback to Raymond which is still, of course, in progress. In turn Mitchum is privy to Day's story of her childhood with is flashback #3 in which Day relates incidents which Mitchum could not know about much less Ahearne. Even within their own flashbacks the subjects are prone to leave the scene and allow us to follow third parties. The result is we have to suspend an awful lot of disbelief. As an experiment it is interesting but that's about all.
Review of The Locket
