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Sleep, My Love (1948)

By Farran Smith Nehme on March 2, 2016

In the 1940s, Hollywood became interested in psychology and mental illness, and with that interest came an odd little flurry of films where “he’s driving me crazy” was not a joke, but a plotline. It goes like this: someone is either trying to drive a young woman crazy ( Rebecca , Gaslight , My Name Is Julia Ross ), or implicate her in a crime that makes her feel crazy ( Whirlpool , late entries Cause for Alarm! and Dial M for Murder ). The plotter is often a trusted man, a husband or lover. And love is hypnotism in a sense, so hypnotism can play a part, as can drugs. The fight is always for the woman’s reality to be recognized, by the world or by herself.

The 1948 thriller Sleep, My Love , directed by Douglas Sirk, fits the pattern. Rich, childless Alison Courtland (Claudette Colbert) has an enviable life: a lavish Sutton Place mansion, a debonair husband (Don Ameche). Except… strange things are happening to Alison. She wakes up in a sleeping car of a train without knowing how she got there, and the daffy little old lady (Queenie Smith) who barges in to help finds a tiny gun in Alison’s purse. Back home, Dick (for such is hubby’s name) is telling a cop (Raymond Burr) that he doesn’t understand his wife’s behavior. As Dick begs the cop to find his wife before she comes to any harm, he winces gently from an arm injury that he oh-so-reluctantly admits Alison had something to do with.

Swiftly we’re shown that the old lady was a plant, Alison was drugged, and Dick is trying to get rid of his wife by doping and hypnotizing her into doing a wide variety of insane things, in hopes of driving her to suicide. Helping the nefarious Dick in his engagingly implausible scheme is the old lady’s husband, Charles Vernay (George Coulouris), and providing one heck of a motive is Daphne (Hazel Brooks), the photographer’s model who wants to become the new Mrs. Courtland, but quick. Attempting to help Alison is dashing Bruce Elcott (Bob Cummings), who meets her through a chatterbox, man-hungry friend (Rita Johnson). Bruce deems Alison not only sane, but pretty cute.

The great Universal melodramas of the 1950s are usually considered Sirk’s high point. But earlier he had an excellent run, starting with the splendid Chekhov adaptation Summer Storm in 1944, then A Scandal in Paris (46), Lured (47), then Sleep, My Love . With Joseph Valentine as cinematographer, this one looks fantastic from the first glimpse of that hurtling train.

Sirk brings many themes in the script (written by St. Clair McKelway and Leo Rosten, from Rosten’s novel) right up to the visual surface. Lights, glass, veils: Sleep, My Love presents a succession of things that both conceal, and urge Alison to see what’s going on. Alison first awakens to a sleeping-car light in her face, then looks out the window and screams in terror at the headlight of a passing train. Later, when Dick has hypnotized Alison and is luring her to a bedroom balcony in hopes she’ll hurl herself off, it’s the beam of Bruce’s flashlight from the garden below that wakes her up.

That Sutton Place house has a conservatory off the drawing room, and Sirk and Valentine use it to create a jungle-like motif, Alison frequently found emerging from or retreating to the riot of plants. She’s a literal babe in the woods. During a mid-movie encounter between Bruce and Dick, there is an impeccable shot of them both looking at Alison, Bob Cummings’s stalwart face positioned behind Ameche’s phony one. There are even some tart visual jokes. When Alison runs screaming out of her train compartment, she’s accosted by the conductor in front of a poster showing a husband-like man who’s shaving, under a tagline that says, “Me?”

Sirk brings in his beloved mirrors, and windows, notably the frosted glass ones in a magnificent set of pocket doors in Alison’s house. Those doors are always opening to reveal something sinister, usually George Coulouris as Vernay, a shifty studio photographer. Vernay, for his part, has a pair of thick glasses that also play a big part in the proceedings. Even more prevalent are veils of sheer fabric: curtains that Alison clutches in terror, Alison’s semi-transparent nightgowns, and Daphne’s completely transparent, hubba-hubba peignoir in her first scene.

Hazel Brooks was one of those stunning-looking minor actresses that the 1940s seemed to specialize in. The postwar bad-dream machine needed sultry brunettes, and it’s a shame that Brooks wasn’t cast more often. From her lingerie-clad entrance to her greeting Coulouris with “Calm down, four-eyes,” she jolts the Gothic plot into full-blown noir. Daphne knows all the caresses and sexy poses, but she never seems turned on. She looks at Ameche like he’s an oil well that hasn’t started producing yet. I like an early, anomalous moment when Brooks interacts with Queenie Smith as Mrs. Charles Vernay, the one genuinely loopy character in this parade of fake insanity. As the old lady chatters, a look of pity rapidly crosses Brooks’s face, only to turn into impatience.

Ameche slithers around in heavy silk dressing gowns, smoking cigarettes and saying soothing things in a low-pitched, doctorly voice. If it weren’t for Brooks’s opiate presence, you could argue that he’s the one with the femme fatale role. Given the way Dick kisses Daphne, it’s easy to believe that she satisfies unhealthy needs that he couldn’t even bring up with wholesome Alison.

Robert Cummings, on the other hand, is the essence of good clean American masculinity, and indeed that was his specialty. This doesn’t tend to endear him to audiences (at my old blog, he was known to commenters as The Dread Bob Cummings) but Sirk, like Hitchcock, finds a vein of charm in the actor. His occasional smugness is nowhere in evidence, whether he’s having a conversation with a maid (Lillian Bronson) who has strong opinions on The New York Times , or taking Alison to his best friend Jimmie’s wedding. Jimmie, played by the excellent Keye Luke, is Chinese and so is the bride. The scene includes Chinese decor and music and a tasty alcoholic beverage that Alison partakes of a little too much; none of it is played for “exotic” laughs. For the year this movie was made, it’s a refreshing change.

And Cummings is often extremely funny; the looks that he throws at Ameche, as Dick spins his stories, range from a mild “Hm, sounds fishy” to full-out “Mister, how dumb do you think I am?” It would be wonderful to see Alison flash any expression on that spectrum at her husband, but she doesn’t.

And there, alas, is a problem with Sleep, My Love : the script asks Claudette Colbert to play against her core persona. There was something canny and commonsensical about Colbert. On screen she had a glinting intelligence that makes it hard to believe that she wouldn’t have spotted all these machinations at some point, and an early point at that. Then, too, there’s no chemistry between Colbert and Ameche, unlike in, say, Gaslight , where the sexual hold that Charles Boyer has on Ingrid Bergman is obvious. It is hard to figure out why Alison married Dick (though his reason is clear enough—the money is Alison’s, not his).

Still, this film is, as James Harvey once said in FILM COMMENT, “quite marvelous,” even with Colbert’s miscasting. And running throughout is that 1940s theme, which Sirk amplified, of a woman finding her true self under the lies she’s been accepting for years. “That doesn’t sound like my girl,” Ameche coos to Brooks as they set their final plot in motion. “Your girl is a lot of girls,” Brooks snaps. The bad dames are always wised up; it’s the good ones who have to come out from hypnosis.

Farran Smith Nehme writes about classic film on her blog, Self-Styled Siren , and recently published her first novel, Missing Reels . She is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle.

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Sleep, My Love Reviews

The implausibility of the story is successfully screened by the dialogue which is refreshingly natural, and there are many delightful touches which the producer, Mr. Buddy Rogers, exploits to advantage.

Full Review | Jun 19, 2018

A blueprint of infidelity and manipulation shot by Douglas Sirk with tons of baleful wit

Full Review | Jan 30, 2015

Well made wife-in-distress thriller, creatively directed.

Full Review | Jan 30, 2012

The plot becomes increasingly too absurd to be believed.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Feb 16, 2005

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Sleep, my love.

Directed by Douglas Sirk

...the most terrifying words a man ever whispered to a woman!

A woman wakes up in the middle of the night on board a train, but she can't remember how she got there. Danger and suspense ensue.

Claudette Colbert Robert Cummings Don Ameche Rita Johnson George Coulouris Queenie Smith Ralph Morgan Keye Luke Fred Nurney Raymond Burr Marya Marco Lillian Bronson Hazel Brooks Bess Flowers Lillian Randolph James Flavin Jimmie Dodd Robert Dudley Murray Alper Syd Saylor

Director Director

Douglas Sirk

Producers Producers

Charles "Buddy" Rogers Ralph Cohn Robert M. Beche Mary Pickford Harold Greene

Writers Writers

Leo Rosten St. Clair McKelway

Original Writer Original Writer

Editor editor.

Lynn Harrison

Cinematography Cinematography

Joseph A. Valentine

Assistant Director Asst. Director

Clarence Eurist

Art Direction Art Direction

William Ferrari

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Howard Bristol

Composer Composer

Rudy Schrager

Triangle Productions Triangelfilm

Alternative Titles

Schlingen der Angst, Donne e veleni, Pacto tenebroso, L'Homme aux lunettes d'écaille, 海棠春睡, Κοιμήσου, Αγάπη μου, Sonha, Meu Amor, Pisara myrkkyä

Mystery Drama Thriller

Thrillers and murder mysteries Noir and dark crime dramas Suspenseful crime thrillers Twisted dark psychological thriller Terrifying, haunted, and supernatural horror Intriguing and suspenseful murder mysteries Show All…

Releases by Date

18 feb 1948, releases by country.

• Theatrical NR

97 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by theriverjordan ★★★½ 22

With noir’s reputation as a hardboiled, German expressionism-derived genre of shadowy streets and gravel-voiced gumshoes, one might be pardoned in forgetting the mother of the movement; melodrama. 

Douglas Sirk, though, arrives midway through its heyday with “Sleep, My Love,” which illuminates the reminder that noir is a genre born in “Gaslight,” as much as it was in dim alley street lamps. 

“Sleep” is an anomaly more in Sirk’s own filmography than in the noir genre; lacking the refined emotional interchange and lush visual composition of the director’s best work, such as “All That Heaven Allows.” Instead, “Sleep” harkens back to a moment several years before its own release, when weepies, and erotic romances by Joseph Von Sternberg, laid ground for…

Review by sakana1 ★★★½ 11

Sleep, My Love tells an effective, Gaslight -adjacent story about a helpless woman named Alison (played by Claudette Colbert, who can do almost anything, but who struggles to not appear knowing and formidable), Dick (Don Ameche), her unfaithful cad of a husband, and Bruce, the sweet, good good boy who loves and believes her (Robert Cummings, naturally). The suspense is terrific and, though there's little that's ultimately surprising, it's nevertheless a fun watch, and Cummings is blandly great, if you're into that sort of thing (I'm into that sort of thing).

By far the most interesting thing about the movie, though, is Bruce's best friend and adoptive brother, a Chinese man named Jimmy Lin (Keye Luke). There is never a joke…

Review by Lara Pop ★★★★

A movie rather unlike your usual Douglas Sirk picture, but the poster caught my attention from the very first and the film didn't disappoint either. Boasting realistic and committed performances from the whole cast - a terror-stricken Claudette Colbert, a low-key menacing Don Ameche and a lively kind-hearted Robert Cummings as his counterpart-, the recurring theme of husband and lover plotting to kill the wife is brought back to Hollywood after the huge hit The Postman Always Rings Twice made two years earlier. I'm willing to bet this topic will never die out as the foundation of countless mystery/thriller/noir movies made all over the world. It's the jolly joker.

Review by Zoë 🐝 ★★★★ 4

It's not particularly surprising to me that the king of melodramas, Douglas Sirk, would have directed a film that was part of the Bluebeard inspired/Gaslight knock offs that came out in the mid to late 1940s and early 1950s. Vincente Minnelli, another one of my favorite melodrama directors, made one as well. Frankly, the entire genre just makes me concerned for married women at the time for such a disturbing concept as a husband plotting to kill his wife or drive her to insanity being such a prominent and common story told in women's pictures; it says a lot about the anxiety women who date and marry men have around relationships, anxiety that hasn't gone away even now. Depressingly, many…

Review by Connor ★★½

we have Gaslight at home

Review by 🥀 e m m é 🇵🇸 ★★★ 3

A modern-day, American Gaslight , but difficult for me to enjoy because Robert Cummings’ attempted affability was so forced. He tried too hard to act like a human, which made me certain he was a robot! I don’t know if I was just in a dreadful mood, because I even found Claudette a little grating and normally we get on just fine?

Review by Thomas ★★★½

It´s good to know that Douglas Sirk not only made melodramas but also explored other genres. “Sleep, My Love” is a psychological noir thriller reminiscent of George Cukor´s “Gaslight”. It´s about a woman whose scumbag husband tries to make her question her sanity and drive her to suicide, so that he can inherit her family´s fortune. It´s a well-written and directed movie, and Sirk really flexes his skills in several suspenseful and visually striking scenes. Ultimately, it doesn´t reach the class of “Gaslight” but it´s well-made and gripping and comes recommended. It also reminded me to check out more of Claudette Colbert´s filmography. She is a gem.

Review by seb ★★★★

Don't get me wrong, this is a clear Gaslight rip-off (in large portions, at least). The roles are clearly defined and organized, Don Ameche is sinister and sleazy, though, admittedly, less intrusive than Gaslight's Charles Boyer, Claudette Colbert is ingenuous and occasionally obtuse and Robert Cummings is little more than the stereotypical good guy- Performances beyond the characterizations are all good, especially Ameche and Hazel Brooks (in limited screen time) impress, but none of this is extraordinary.

With that being said, Douglas Sirk is an extraordinarily talented director, who manages to (almost) squeeze the most out of this thriller. Whilst it does lack the warmth of his masterpiece "There's Always Tomorrow", he instead offers a great deal in terms of…

Review by Alex Kittle ★★★½

My favorite thing about this movie is when Don Ameche, who’s been drugging his wife Claudette Colbert every night with hot chocolate before she goes to bed, drinks the hot chocolate himself in an effort to prove that he’s not drugging her and making her feel like a jerk for suspecting him, after which we see him stalwartly hold himself together for a couple minutes before dramatically passing out in his own bedroom because he has full on drugged himself. That’s commitment to the bit! (The bit is driving his wife insane until she accidentally does a murder under hypnosis.)

Review by Grant McLanaghan ★★★

”You’re plan’s a mess.”

A bizarre melange of gaslighting thriller, melodrama and quirky comedy that could have been something remarkable in the right hands. Unfortunately, Sirk isn’t the kind of director to make the ingredients gel as well as they might. That’s not to say Sleep, My Love is a bust. If nothing else, it’s quite entertaining. But there are moments – notably, George Coulouris’ horn-rimmed-glasses-wearing bogeyman’s sudden appearances – that Sirk tends to throw away. (I’m imagining these sequences staged by Hitchcock: a sudden dolly and zoom into Coulouris’ face, accompanied by a jolting musical sting.

And in the lead role, Claudette Colbert makes rather a spectacle of herself, particularly when her character, Alison, gets tipsy at a Chinese-American…

Review by Owen ★★★½ 1

Claudette Colbert's society wife finds herself on a train with a gun in her handbag and no memory of how she got there. According to her husband she has threatened him with the gun and is suffering from homicidal sleep walking episodes.

A decade on from Midnight and in a vastly different world Colbert and Don Ameche reunite as a married couple whose perfect high society life seems totally fake and out of place in post-war psychoanalysed america. Like a lot of these Noir's it works well as a statement on a woman's lack of agency when terrorised by a man and by extension society. There is little mystery or ambiguity here, Ameche's aims and methods are spelt out from…

Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★

This Douglas Sirk directed thriller is one of the better woman in peeril gothics from this era. There's a strong Hitchcockian influence altough the film is far more low key. Sirk has a good eye from Colbert entrapment - the last act nightmarish scenario plays very strong with this even if Cummings reassuring presence. The tension is more character oriented, the symbolic qualities writing into a series of more and more aggressive nasty behavior. Some good humor on the sideline as well.

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Sleep, My Love

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• United Artists, Triangle Productions

Cast + Crew

Combining key plot elements of Gaslight (1944) and Whirlpool (1949), Douglas Sirk’s Sleep, My Love is a finely-crafted and entertaining addition to the “woman in peril” category even if its premise has been executed more successfully elsewhere in the noir cycle. Waking up on a train to Boston with no memory of how she got there, wealthy Alison Courtland (Claudette Colbert) is soon informed by psychiatrist Dr. Ralph Reinhart (Frank Morgan) and her husband Richard (Don Ameche), whom she recently shot while sleepwalking, that they are concerned about her mental health. As her troubling episodes of memory loss continue, she makes the acquaintance of handsome Bruce Elcott (Robert Cummings), who becomes suspicious of Richard and protective of Alison, leading him to investigate the malevolent forces at work. (The modern, “platonic” friendship that develops between Bruce and Alison is beautifully and realistically rendered.) Gorgeous Hazel Brooks plays femme fatale Daphne, a wholly rude, selfish moneygrubber who struts around in black like a sultry witch. Sirk makes excellent use of the Sutton Place mansion set and its four floors of treacherous staircases, perhaps the film’s most memorable image Alison’s ghost-like, nightgown-donned presence on the balcony railing awaiting gravity’s pull.

By Michael Bayer

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Alison Courtland, who is from a wealthy family and married to architect Richard Courtland, wakes up hysterical on board a train from New York to Boston with no idea of how she got there. At the airport on her way back to New York, she meets an old friend, Barby, there to see off explorer Bruce Elcott, who joins Alison's flight. Richard, meanwhile, has informed police sergeant Strake about Alison's unexplained absence and because she has disappeared before, he is arranging for her to see an eminent psychiatrist, Dr. Rhinehart. After Richard tells Alison that she shot a gun at him the night before, she overcomes her reluctance to be examined. However, when a photographer, Charles Vernay, comes to Alison's house claiming to be Dr. Rhinehart and acts threateningly then suddenly disappears, Alison faints and is found by Bruce and Barby. When Richard arrives with the real Dr. Rhinehart, they all wonder if Alison imagined the earlier visitor. Later, Richard is unable to escort Alison to a party due to a business meeting, so she asks Bruce to take her. Bruce says that he would rather take her to his brother's wedding, and she is startled when his "brother" Jimmie turns out to be Chinese. Bruce explains that he spent a long time in China and Jimmie's family made him an honorary brother. While Alison enjoys the wedding reception, Richard enjoys a secret tryst with his girl friend Daphne, to whom he gives an emerald bracelet. Richard and Daphne, with Vernay's help, are planning to get Alison out of the way so that they can be married and divide up her wealth. When Alison returns home from the wedding, she sees the phony Dr. Rhinehart lurking about again, but Bruce and Richard can find no one. Later, Richard drugs Alison's bedtime drink, and while she is asleep, makes hypnotic suggestions to her and prompts her to jump off a high balcony. Bruce, who is not convinced that Alison has been having hallucinations, returns to the house in time to prevent her from jumping. The next day, when Bruce asks Alison not to take any more bedtime drinks, she is shocked by his insinuation, but agrees after he tells her what almost happened the night before. Bruce goes to Richard's office that night and, while nosing around, finds a bill for the emerald bracelet. Soon after, at a party, Bruce tells the Courtlands that he is leaving the next day on a year-long trip. However, he does not leave and follows Richard to Vernay's studio, where he meets Daphne and notices that she is wearing an emerald bracelet. When Bruce realizes that Vernay may have been the man impersonating Dr. Rhinehart, he takes Vernay's distinctive eyeglasses and a book on hypnosis and asks Jimmie to take them to Sgt. Strake. However, before Bruce can confront Richard, Vernay knocks him out. Claiming he wants to celebrate the completion of a business deal, Richard offers Alison a large glass of drugged wine, which she drinks. Vernay arrrives and, unknown to him, is used as part of a set-up to have Alison charged with murder. While she is drugged, Richard persuades her by hypnosis that she must go downstairs and shoot "Dr. Rhinehart." Richard helps her pull the trigger, and they shoot Vernay. Alison wakes up as Richard is phoning the police, but Vernay is still alive and draws a gun on Richard, explaining to Alison about Richard's plan to replace her with Daphne. Vernay shoots Richard, intending to frame Alison for it then make her death look like a suicide. However, Bruce arrives in time to save Alison and chases Vernay upstairs. While trying to escape through a skylight, Vernay falls to his death. Later, Bruce comforts Alison.

Queenie Smith

Ralph Morgan

Fred Nurney

Raymond Burr

Maria san marco.

Lillian Bronson

Hazel brooks, lillian randolph, murray alper, anne triola, robert m. beche, howard bristol, david chudnow, edward colman, carol deane, clarence eurist, william ferrari, dr. marcel frym, milton gold, harold greene, burris grimwood, lynn harrison, margaret jennings, marjorie lund, st. clair mckelway, mary pickford, william randall, chas. buddy rogers, rudy schrager, joseph valentine, mary gibsone whitlock.

The novel Sleep My Love first appeared in serial form in Collier's magazine (27 July-24 August 1946) and was credited to Leonard Q. Ross, a pseudonym for Leo Rosten. The Variety review noted that this film was "the first to carry the Mary Pickford name in about 12 years." A October 15, 1947 Hollywood Reporter news item reported that the partnership between Pickford, husband Charles "Buddy" Rogers and Ralph Cohn would be dissolved after the completion of only one production, Sleep, My Love . According to a February 1948 New Yorker article, United Artists arranged a private screening of Sleep, My Love for a group of hypnotists, psychiatrists and medical students, who were to discuss whether hypnotists could make criminals out of honest men. A demonstration of hypnotism by Dr. Franz Polgar of Budapest turned into a flurry of name-calling and intense arguing among members of the audience.

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Sleep, My Love

Sleep, My Love manages a fair share of suspense and adds up to okay melodrama. Plot gets off to a strong start and windup is high melodrama that brings off the finale on a fast note.

By Variety Staff

Variety Staff

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Basic story is the familiar one of the man who wants to kill off his wealthy wife so he can marry the sex trollop. Development, however, brings in some new angles.

Claudette Colbert is the healthy, wealthy wife who is being stealthily drugged by husband Don Ameche. Under drugged hypnosis, she is made to do strange things that indicate a mental crackup. Opener has her awakening on a train to Boston, unable to explain how it happened. Next she sees a strange, sinister character who gives her a phony psychoanalysis.

Douglas Sirk paces his direction neatly in handling the not always smooth script by St Clair McKelway and Leo Rosten [based on the novel by Leo Rosten].

• Production: United Artists. Director Douglas Sirk; Producer Charles (Buddy) Rogers, Ralph Cohn; Screenplay St Clair McKelway, Leo Rosten; Camera Joseph Valentine; Editor Lynn Harrison; Music Rudy Schrager; Art Director William Ferrari
• Crew: (B&W) Extract of a review from 1948. Running time: 94 MIN.
• With: Claudette Colbert Robert Cummings Don Ameche Hazel Brooks George Coulouris Raymond Burr

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Sleep, My Love (1948)

Directed by douglas sirk.

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SLEEP, MY LOVE

• Post author: eenableadmin
• Post published: August 5, 2019
• Post category: Uncategorized

SLEEP, MY LOVE (director: Douglas Sirk; screenwriters: from the book by Leo Rosten/Leo Rosten Decla Dunning/Cy Endfield/St. Clair McKelway; cinematographer: Joseph Valentine; editor: Lynn Harrison; music: Rudy Schrager; cast: Claudette Colbert (Alison Courtland), Robert Cummings (Bruce Elcott), Don Ameche (Richard Courtland), Rita Johnson (Barby), Hazel Brooks (Daphne), George Coulouris (Charles Vernay), Raymond Burr (Sgt. Strake), Queenie Smith (Mrs. Grace Vernay/Mrs. Tomlinson), Keye Luke (Jimmie Lin), Maria San Marco (Jeannie Lin), Ralph Morgan (Dr. Rhinehart); Runtime: 97; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Ralph Cohn/Charles R. Rogers/Mary Pickford; United Artists; 1948) “The plot becomes increasingly too absurd to be believed.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Douglas Sirk’s minor film noir thriller, produced by Mary Pickford and her husband Buddy Rogers, is much like Gaslight in plot (hubby tries to convince his wife she’s going nuts), but ultimately the narrative sinks because the plot becomes increasingly too absurd to be believed. It’s adapted from the novel by Leo Rosten. Cy Endfield contributed the Chinatown wedding scene, which was wonderful but added nothing to the story except a chance to introduce Keye Luke into the plot–his presence alone makes the film look much like a Charlie Chan episode.

The film’s most startling scene is the opening one when wealthy Sutton Place housewife Alison Courtland (Claudette Colbert) wakes up screaming on a train that left New York’s Grand Central Station for Boston. The doctor who treats her on the train says it could just be a nightmare. Alison has no idea how she got on the train, and why she had a gun in her purse. She’s assisted by an elderly woman, who gives her name as Mrs. Tomlinson (later we learn she’s the dopey innocent wife of Charles Vernay). When Alison reaches Boston and calls her architect hubby Richard (Don Ameche), he tells her he had notified the police that she was missing. Sergeant Strake (Raymond Burr), who is present when Alison calls, contacts the Boston police, and she’s accompanied to the airport by a policeman to make sure she boards the plane. Alison’s friend from boarding school, Barby, is there to accompany her charming friend Bruce Elcott (Robert Cummings) to the airport, where he’s to go on alone to New York to attend the wedding of his Chinese blood-brother Jimmie Lin (Keye Luke). The brash friend of the friend is on the same flight as Alison and tries to get romantic with her. She’s charmed by Bruce, and easily treats him as a trusted friend–inviting him to visit her Sutton Place digs.

At home, Alison’s apparently loving hubby tells her she threatened him with a gun last night, even giving him a superficial wound. Richard then convinces her to see the psychiatrist Dr. Rhinehart. But the shrink, who frightens Alison during his home visit by his creepy stares, is a phony who is part of hubby’s evil scheme to drive his wife crazy so she will either commit suicide or be committed to an insane asylum and he’ll inherit her fortune and live happily ever after with his floozy icy-hearted model mistress Daphne (Hazel Brooks). The bogus shrink is a struggling photographer named Charles Vernay (George Coulouris), whom Richard dug up off the gutter so he can help induce Alison through hypnosis to follow hubby’s orders. Part of the plan is for hubby to every evening spike Alison’s hot chocolate with a drug, then the half-drugged victim becomes vulnerable to hubby’s control as he gives her strange orders.

When Bruce spots Alison one night ready to jump off her balcony, he shines a light in her eyes getting her quickly out of the trance. After rescuing her, he investigates Richard and suspects her hubby is behind these incidents when he discovers several things about him don’t check out. Jimmie takes time out from his honeymoon to do some serious sleuthing with the concerned Bruce, who is worried that Alison is in grave danger.

Even Douglas Sirk (“Tarnished Angels”/”Written on the Wind”/”Shockproof”) dismissed the film as a failure. It’s certainly not up to his better works, but it’s not that bad–it even does a good job evoking a nightmarish scenario of insanity (thanks in a large part to the expressionist photography of Joseph Valentine). The creepy Coulouris lurking around the spacious darkened house with the winding staircase provides the chills to go along with the spooky atmosphere.

REVIEWED ON 2/15/2005 GRADE: B-

Dennis Schwartz: “Ozus’ World Movie Reviews”

© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ

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Sleep, My Love (1948, USA) Directed by Douglas Sirk, Featuring Claudette Colbert, Robert Cummings, Don Ameche, Raymond Burr

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Sleep, My Love is a 1948 American film noir directed by Douglas Sirk and starring Claudette Colbert, Robert Cummings, Raymond Burr and Don Ameche.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep,_My_Love

Suggested Film Noirs: http://bit.ly/2tLevkl

The Internet Archive is an excellent choice for entire full length Netflix & YouTube style uploads of drama, mystery, thriller & crime noir movies from the UK & USA for free. Download complete online British & American classic black & white films from the 1940s & 1950s.

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Sleep, My Love Reviews

• 1 hr 37 mins
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A wife is driven close to insanity by her husband, who loves another woman.

After 12 years away from films, Mary Pickford was the backstage executive producer of this murder-mystery with her husband Buddy Rogers. Wealthy Colbert, a socialite married to Ameche, is found aboard a train chugging toward Boston. She has no idea what she's doing on the train or how she got there. Smith, a nice old lady, helps her get in touch with Ameche, at their residence with police, whom he's called after Colbert's disappearance. The phone conversation is heard by officer Burr, as Ameche reminds Colbert that she had earlier threatened his life with a revolver, a fact Colbert does not recall. Colbert hops the commuter flight back to New York and runs into charming Cummings, who shares an acquaintance with Colbert. Cummings is taken by Colbert and is rapidly moon-eyed. Back in Manhattan, Ameche suggests that Colbert see psychiatrist Coulouris. In their session, Coulouris browbeats Colbert, who can't stand up to his aggressive attitude. Coulouris exits, leaving Colbert and Ameche together. Ameche leaves their residence, where the session was taking place, telling his wife that he has an important business engagement. His business is with Brooks, his voluptuous mistress. Now we discover that Ameche and Brooks have brought in Coulouris, a photographer, to masquerade as the psychiatrist and attempt to cause Colbert to take her own life, thus leaving Ameche her huge riches. Cummings arrives at the Colbert-Ameche residence and finds Colbert sleepwalking on a high balcony, just inches from going over the side. Cummings smells a rat, does a bit of sleuthing, goes to Coulouris' photo studio, and tells the man he needs a small passport picture. Colbert's description of her "psychiatrist" matches Coulouris' features, and Cummings is now hip to what's happening. At their apartment, Ameche attempts to drug Colbert but she is wise and only pretends to be under the influence. Ameche, knowing that Coulouris can use his information to blackmail the illicit couple, plans to have Colbert kill Coulouris. When Coulouris arrives to have a session with his "patient," he realizes what the plan is and tries to escape but is shot by Ameche, who then turns his gun on Colbert and is about to shoot her when Cummings arrives and saves the day. The explanation is easy, once we learn that the nice old lady on the train was, in fact, the wife of Coulouris and the whole ploy was planned from the start. Some good suspense, a few shocking moments, but nowhere near many of the other noir classics for style, wit, and cinematography. The lack of sharp lines is odd because one of the screenwriters was a very funny writer, Rosten, who also used the named "Leonard Q. Ross."

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Sleep, My Love

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• Duration: 97 mins

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• Director: Douglas Sirk
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• Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews Dennis Schwartz The plot becomes increasingly too absurd to be believed.
• CinePassion Fernando F. Croce A blueprint of infidelity and manipulation shot by Douglas Sirk with tons of baleful wit
• Classic Film and Television Michael E. Grost Well made wife-in-distress thriller, creatively directed.

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