So Evil My Love – 1948 | 112 mins | Crime, Drama | B&W

Plot Synopsis

Hollywood director Lewis Allen returned to his native England to make this intricately detailed and bleak portrait of evil for Paramount British. Based on a true story of the unresolved poisoning of Charles Bravo and adapted from the novel by Joseph Shearing (pseudonym of Gabrielle Campbell Long), this Victorian noir boasts plenty of wonderfully gothic atmosphere as a scheming charmer manipulates a missionary’s staid widow towards the path of blackmail and murder. Ann Todd gives a perfectly-judged performance but Ray Milland’s caddish characterisation is somewhat bland.

Olivia Harwood (Ann Todd), a missionary’s widow returning to her home in England from Jamaica, meets charming Mark Bellis (Ray Milland) when he contracts malaria while onboard ship and Olivia nurses him back to health. When back to 1890s London, Olivia opens a lodging house in Kensington and reluctantly allows the roguish artist Mark to first become her lodger, then her lover. Wanted by the police, Mark sees the reputable lodgings in Minton Street as the perfect place to lie low whilst planning future crimes.

Olivia renews her friendship with the nervy Susan Courtney (Geraldine Fitzgerald), wife of the sickly barrister and prospective peer Henry Courtney (Raymond Huntley). Due to his wife’s heavy drinking, Henry employs Olivia to be Susan’s companion. After a spell apart, during which Mark has been in the arms of his lover Kitty (Moira Lister), the couple are reunited and Mark’s amoral spell leads to the naive Olivia becoming a willing tool in his ambitious scheme of theft and blackmail.