“”The Reckless Moment” is a domestic melodrama which features blackmail, the violent deaths of three of its characters and a number of unexpected plot developments.
Most of all however, it’s the story of a mother who is prepared to go to extreme lengths to protect her family and the lifestyle that she values so highly.
Lucia Harper (Joan Bennett), a middle class housewife whose husband is away on business, could not have imagined the events that would follow when she decided to confront her daughter’s boyfriend about their relationship.
Ted Darby (Sheppard Strudwick) is a man of dubious character who is significantly older than Lucia’s daughter Bea (Geraldine Brooks) and he soon makes it clear that he’d be perfectly willing to stop seeing Bea for an agreed sum of money. Lucia doesn’t pay up because she’s confident that Bea wouldn’t want to continue seeing a man whose feelings for her are so shallow. Lucia’s judgement turns out to be wrong as Bea makes it clear that she doesn’t believe what her mother says about Ted and also has no intension of ending their relationship.
When Ted and Bea meet next in the Harpers’ boathouse, their discussion of what transpired in Ted’s meeting with Lucia triggers an argument which culminates in Bea striking him with a torch and him accidentally falling to his death.
When Lucia discovers what’s happened, she disposes of his body in the nearby harbour and returns to her normal domestic routine.
Unexpectedly, after Ted’s body is found the police don’t establish any connection between him and Bea but a threat to the tranquillity of the family’s life comes from a blackmailer called Martin Donnelly (James Mason) who surprisingly turns out to be a charming, generous and completely unthreatening person who gradually falls in love with Lucia.
Lucia finds it impossible to raise the full amount of money that she needs to pay the ransom without the signature of her husband and this leads to the intervention of Martin’s violent partner called Nagel (Roy Roberts) and an unpredictable series of incidents follow which gradually lead to a resolution of Lucia’s problems.
Events show Lucia to be someone who had a fierce compulsion to protect the social standing, lifestyle and perceived respectability of her family at all costs and this made her prepared, without hesitation, to dispense with all moral or legal concerns about what she needed to do to achieve her aim.
When it also becomes apparent that she suffers from feelings of being suffocated by the demands and constraints of her family life, the presence of this ambivalence serves to illustrate just how strong her protective instincts really are.
Joan Bennett and James Mason’s excellent performances, the elegant and effective direction by Max Ophuls and some wonderfully stylized photography by Burnett Guffey all contribute strongly to the success of this subtle and intriguing movie.”
