Warren Quimby manages a drugstore while trying to keep his volatile wife, Claire, happy. However, when Claire leaves him for a liquor store salesman, Warren can no longer bear it. He decides to assume a new identity in order to murder his wife's lover without leaving a trace. Along the way, his plans are complicated by an attractive neighbor, as well as a shocking discovery that opens up a new world of doubts and accusations.
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I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much
In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.
This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.
The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
There's nothing too special here, but it's an entertaining enough noir. Audrey Totter plays a materialistic woman cheating on her pharmacist husband (Richard Basehart), a nice guy who is crushed when she leaves him for another man. He assumes an alter ego based on a brand new technology (contact lenses!), and plots revenge. Along the way he meets a nice girl (Cyd Charisse), who puts a delightful wrinkle in his plans. Totter has a wonderfully strong edge in this film, scheming and openly defiant of her husband. The scene where she appears with eyes flashing in the mirror is probably the film's strongest. Unfortunately the rest of the cast don't keep up with her. Barry Sullivan is reasonably strong as the detective, as is William Conrad as his sidekick, but he lacks a little in the 'tough guy' department. I liked seeing Charisse who has such a fresh face and is so likeable, but I'm not sure how deep her character or performance was. Other than Totter, there's just something missing, some grit or hardness, which prevents this from being a very good or great film. Also, quite a bit of the rest of the plot is telegraphed, and without a lot of subtlety. As for direction, it's decent, and the shots in the pharmacy and the street outside of it are good, as there is so much detail in the entire frame during these scenes. There was also something that was interesting about seeing a more obscure, 'B' film noir, which never committed any major errors, even if it didn't hit any homeruns.
Tension is directed by John Berry and adapted to screenplay by Allen Rivkin from a story by John D. Klorer. It stars Richard Baseheart, Audrey Totter, Cyd Charisse, Barry Sullivan, Lloyd Gough and William Conrad. Music is by Andre Previn and cinematography by Harry Stradling.Tight and compact noir pot boiler that finds Baseheart as a drugstore manager married to bitch babe Totter. Planning to do away with her lover, Baseheart is stumped when someone beats him to it. But he of course is still the main suspect, so creating a new identity for himself he sets about enacting the crime only to find there's a mystery to unravel before hard coppers Sullivan and Conrad jump on him from a great height.Totter files in for classic femme fatale duties as Tension thrives on the post-war period of change as many Americans yearned for a better life away from the disillusionment of their current existence. Baseheart is the classic sap, dreaming of some picket fence nirvana with his vixen wife, only to have his illusions shattered by her callous clambering for the finer things in life, including a more alpha male suitor in the imposing form of Lloyd Gough. But wait! Baseheart has some brains, he has ideas above his station to commit the perfect crime, but inventing a new identity, which is basically just using contact lenses instead of glasses, it opens up a new avenue for him in the shapely form of Cyd Charisse.Rivkin's screenplay gives Totter licence to bitch up big time, with abuse of her sultry charms and a viper tongue delivering barbs, Totter's Claire Quimby is very much a quintessential femme fatale and subsequently Totter walks away with the movie. Elsewhere isn't bad though, it's a roll call of stoic noir performers, from Sullivan's hard- nosed detective and Conrad's doughnut twirling menace, to Gough's looming presence and Charisse's vulnerable beauty, it's a very well cast picture. Sealing the deal is Berry's unfussy direction, Stradling's atmospheric photography and Previn's musical score that puts the tense in Tension.Some of it's daft, such as the Clark Kent line of character invention, and you don't have to be a genius to know who committed the foul deed, but this is a good un' for sure. 7/10
Pharmacist Richard Basehart (Mr Quimby) loves his wife Audrey Totter (Mrs Quimby). However, these feelings aren't reciprocated and Totter spends most evenings with other men behind Basehart's back. He discovers what she is up to one evening but it is all too late and Totter moves into salesman Lloyd Gough's (Barney) Malibu beach house. Basehart suffers a further humiliation when he shows up to confront the couple and this leads him to plan his revenge of murder. He adopts a new identity and prepares to kill Gough. We do indeed get a murder.Basehart, Totter and Gough are all excellent in this film. Detective Barry Sullivan (Bonnabel) looks like Franchot Tone and narrates in parts. The story is effectively told and it is easy to follow. I'm not sure that there is much tension in this offering other than the moment one night when Basehart breaks into Gough's apartment and finds him asleep on a sofa. Will he kill him or won't he? What happens next provides the first surprise of the film before Sullivan's detective appears on the scene and starts playing characters against each other in order to discover what has been going on.It is made pretty clear that Sullivan is in control of what he is doing and there seem to be no surprises for him. What is more interesting is following the double life that Basehart has been leading and egging him on to get away with things. No-one falls for his trick of replacing his glasses and wearing contact lenses in order to disguise his appearance. How dumb to even suggest that he looks like a different person without at least sticking on a false moustache as well. The tension comes from Sullivan cranking up the deceptions in order to trip up the killer but it seems like he knows everything already. No tension. The guilty party is going to get caught. This is an easy-to-watch film with great dialogue delivery from Totter. She is quality in every scene that she is in, and Basehart is a likable chap to root for. As a teenager I had a friend whose house I visited a handful of times. Every time I went round to see him, his schizophrenic mother used to chat to me in the kitchen about how THEY replace the radiators in the house every time she goes out. After watching this film, I now believe her and I think I know who did it. As my wife is not in at the moment, I think I'll just go and replace all the furniture in the flat. Ha ha.
Tension (1949)This is such a unique surprise, it makes me think there are scores of other obscure films that are waiting to be watched. The plot, the lead actors, and the steady, crisp filming and editing prove once again that Hollywood was capable of making even ordinary seeming films excellent.The biggest surprise surely is the confidence, subtle acting by lead man (or lead men, as you'll see), Richard Basehart. His principle role is a little like Harold Lloyd from the silent days, and he is at such ease with his everyday boyish man with glasses persona you forget he's acting. But then he takes on a second role, and is dapper and super likable and the kind of guy women fall for. Basehart might actually lack a little edge, or quirkiness, to make him memorable. And he might even be good looking in too ordinary a way for a leading male.Actresses face a different audience in this way, and the second leading female, Cyd Charisse, is one of those completely ordinarily good looking leading ladies who survived just on those plain good looks, maybe like Donna Reed seemed to. (Charisse, of course, is more famous for her dancing.) The other leading female, more typecast but searingly cool and calculating, a pure femme fatale, is played by Audrey Totter, in a mold along the lines of Gloria Grahame. Totter has to play both sides of a fence, too, and does so brilliantly.Another surprise is surely Barry Sullivan, not so much for his acting, which is spot on as a detective, but for the methods this detective uses to catch his prey. We all fall for it, at least partly, and then it comes to a high pitch and dramatic end. There are surprisingly few clichés at work here. Even the setting, a fabulous pharmacy, is a fresh, and complex, and useful backdrop for the several twists as they go on. There is a beach house, and a homicide office, and noirish night scenery, but these are secondary. As much as it remains a romantic crime melodrama, it can't avoid certain useful tropes, but it's so original in other ways, I could watch it again today.