Dangerous Crossing blends two hoary plot lines: the one where somebody suddenly disappears and whose very existence comes into question; and the one where a young woman marries a stranger about whom, to later chagrin, she knows absolutely nothing.
Newlyweds Jeanne Crain and Carl Betz board an ocean liner for a honeymoon cruise to Europe. He then promptly vanishes. Crain, reacting with swooning spells and hysterical outbursts, comes under the doting care of ship's doctor Michael Rennie, who's forever "prescribing" her things like shuffleboard or Champagne. (His cheekbones, meanwhile, threaten to pop right through his skin.)
Just about everybody writes Crain off as delusional, maybe even suicidal. But we know the groom's still on board; he phones her up late at night. The reason they can't find him despite searching every nook and cranny is....
Dangerous Crossing has its nice touches: Joseph LaShelle's fog-shrouded cinematography gets the accompaniment of a fog horn booming out its doom-laden basso ostinato figure. But too much of the movie hangs on Crain. For a few years in the late 40s she hovered on the brink of major stardom but never quite got there; the fact that she can't quite bring off this (admittedly one-dimensional) role perhaps explains why.
But the film's crucial failing lies in not filling out the "back" story: Who are the newlyweds, how did they meet, what are their individual agendas? The few hints and asides thrown our way don't sufficiently set up the perfunctory ending -- it comes as kind of a cheat. There's nothing left when the movie wraps up but the old adage "Marry in haste, repent in leisure."
Newlyweds Jeanne Crain and Carl Betz board an ocean liner for a honeymoon cruise to Europe. He then promptly vanishes. Crain, reacting with swooning spells and hysterical outbursts, comes under the doting care of ship's doctor Michael Rennie, who's forever "prescribing" her things like shuffleboard or Champagne. (His cheekbones, meanwhile, threaten to pop right through his skin.)
Just about everybody writes Crain off as delusional, maybe even suicidal. But we know the groom's still on board; he phones her up late at night. The reason they can't find him despite searching every nook and cranny is....
Dangerous Crossing has its nice touches: Joseph LaShelle's fog-shrouded cinematography gets the accompaniment of a fog horn booming out its doom-laden basso ostinato figure. But too much of the movie hangs on Crain. For a few years in the late 40s she hovered on the brink of major stardom but never quite got there; the fact that she can't quite bring off this (admittedly one-dimensional) role perhaps explains why.
But the film's crucial failing lies in not filling out the "back" story: Who are the newlyweds, how did they meet, what are their individual agendas? The few hints and asides thrown our way don't sufficiently set up the perfunctory ending -- it comes as kind of a cheat. There's nothing left when the movie wraps up but the old adage "Marry in haste, repent in leisure."