So Evil My Love *** (1948, Ray Milland, Ann Todd, Geraldine Fitzgerald) – Classic Movie Review 11,399

“I’ve Never Known Real Love Before! Now Nothing Will Take You From Me… NOTHING!”‘: So Evil My Love (1948).

Director Lewis Allen’s 1948 British and American black and white Gothic noir psychological thriller So Evil My Love is based on a novel by Marjorie Bowen (aka Joseph Shearing), and stars Ray Milland, Ann Todd and Geraldine Fitzgerald, all British-born actors who had become Hollywood stars.

Milland plays the suave, handsome artist and bounder Mark Bellis, who beguiles the besotted Anglican missionary’s widow Olivia Harwood (Todd) into theft, swindle and murder, involving the betrayal of her wealthy boozy best one-time schoolfriend Susan Courtney (Fitzgerald) and her older husband Henry (Raymond Huntley).

So Evil My Love is a barnstorming Victorian melodrama, engrossingly written and expertly done, with a pungently rotting atmosphere.

There are three fine lead performances and there is also great backing from much-loved British stalwarts Leo G Carroll, Raymond Huntley, Martita Hunt and Moira Lister.

It is made by Hal Wallis Productions and Paramount Pictures in Britain, and released by Paramount.

Also in the cast are Raymond Lovell, Muriel Aked, Finlay Currie, Hugh Griffith, Maureen Delany, Ivor Bernard, Ernest Jay, Zena Marshall, Eliot Makeham, Guy Le Feuvre, Vincent Holman, Chris Halward, John Wilder, Leonie Lamartine, and Clarence Rigge.

The screenplay by Leonard Spigelgass and Ronald Miller is based on the popular 1947 novel For Her to See by Marjorie Bowen (published under the pseudonym Joseph Shearing), with plot elements from the mysterious death of barrister Charles Bravo in 1876.

It began principal photography at Denham Studios and on location in London on 6 May 1947 and wrapped on 12 August 1947.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,399

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