The Reckless Moment

Max Ophuls - 1949
Some big deep-focus photography here. Shadows everwhere, of course, rather difficult looking stairs and wood everywhere. The tracking shots aren't here so 'frontless' as before, James Mason actually goes looking for things. These tracks are though never fatalistic in the same way that others are, in that they are searching, quite direct. I don't see Ophuls here flourshing more than necessary, more of, in a Hawskian manner, following the logic of his formal wishes to make the kind of long tracks that are really quite singular.
This film has fascinating undertones; the constrained nature of the family. The heroine basically hates her family; it is about how they hold you back. The metamorphoses of James Mason is interesting too. Within a hokum plot Ophuls is always true to feelings, what happens is more than plausible but realistic.