(1946) Based on Ben Ames Williams's novel, the story is introduced by Glen Robie (Ray Collins) who says, as Dick Harland returns to his cabin, called Back of the Moon, on Deer Lake, Maine, after two years in prison, that jealousy is the deadliest of the seven sins.

Ellen Berent (Gene Tierney) meets Richard Harland (Cornel Wilde) on a train as they both travel from the East to New Mexico. When he uses a line from the novel she's reading, Time Without End, she at first thinks he's being far too clever until she realizes that he's the book's author. Coincidentally they are on their way to the same destination, Rancho Jacinto, to stay with the Robies; Dick also reminds her of her deceased father. Ellen is there to meet with her mother Margaret and her adopted younger sister Ruth (Jeanne Crain) and to scatter her father's ashes in the mountains. She tells Dick: "People you love don't really die."

Unexpectedly her former fiancé, Russell Quinton (Vincent Price), shows up, wanting to know why Ellen has suddenly dumped him to marry Richard, a decision about which the groom-to-be has no knowledge. Within a few days Ellen and Dick are married. Ellen is accustomed to getting her way.

Instead of a honeymoon at Taos, Ellen insists they go to Warm Springs, Georgia, where Dick's invalid younger brother Danny is staying. While she spends a great amount of time with Danny, getting him to walk on crutches, she is disappointed when Danny gets permission from his doctor to go with Dick and Ellen to Back of the Moon. While she hides her possessiveness, Ellen desires Dick all to herself.

She becomes aloof, shrewlike, and insulting when her mother and Ruth come up from Bar Harbor on a surprise visit Dick has arranged. With Thorne the handyman and everyone else filling the cabin, she refers to Back of the Moon as Goldfish Manor. Ellen tries to have Danny go back to Bar Harbor with her mother and Ruth; but when he refuses, she lets Danny drown while he's trying to swim across the lake.

In his grief Dick gives up working on his new novel; he and Ellen move to Bar Harbor with Margaret and Ruth where Ruth's suggestion to Ellen, "If he only had a child of his own," results in Ellen's pregnancy. But when her father's lab becomes transformed into the anticipated child's playroom, Ellen has a fit. Ellen resented her mother's adopting Ruth, and Margaret says, "She loved her father too much."

Jealous of Ruth - Ellen imagines that Dick and Ruth are romancing while she's confined - she says in exasperation to Ruth: "I hate the little beast. I wish it would die." Intentionally she trips at the top of the stairs, falling down and losing the baby. In the meantime Dick had completed his new book, The Deep Well, dedicated to "The gal with the hoe," an expression for Ruth, who had helped him with the manuscript. When Ellen reads the dedication, she and Dick argue fiercely. "So you let him drown, didn't you?" Dick accuses her. "I didn't want anyone but you…. I'd have you all to myself," she replies. "I'm leaving you, Ellen."

Ellen writes a letter to Russell Quinton, recently elected district attorney. After a picnic with her mother and Ruth, Ellen becomes fatally ill. She asks Richard before dying to promise her to scatter her ashes in the mountains where she had cast her father's ashes: "I'll never let you go, Richard."

DA Quinton prosecutes a case of murder against Ruth; Glen Robie defends her. When he gets Dick on the stand, who enumerates Ellen's previous acts of drowning Danny and killing their unborn son, Quinton asks in disbelief if Ellen really could be such a monster: "Yes, she was that sort of monster."

Prior to the trial, where the events finally captured my attention with its drama (though would someone as emotionally involved with the deceased be allowed to prosecute the case?), my interest mainly was attracted to the lovely landscapes, the glamour of Gene Tierney, and the beauty of Jeanne Crain.

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Copyright © 2007 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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