Boris Karloff in "The Black Room"; Bette Davis in "A Stolen Life"/"Dead Ringer"; Olivia de Havilland in "The Dark Mirror"; Jeremy Irons in "Dead Ringer". Playing twins for talented actors is always a challenge because there are so many dimensions to each character you can create. For Herbert Lom, one of the unsung gems of the British cinema, his career was much more than Chief Inspector Dreyfeuss in "The Pink Panther" films; He was also "The Phantom of the Opera", and was the British lead of the original cast of "The King and I". Here, he gives probably his most complex performance as two brothers, part of a circus act, so similar in many ways that it is difficult to tell them apart, and their closeness is only challenged by a woman (Phyllis Dixey) who will bring their lives to a crash, and ultimately destruct them in a way the audience will be shocked to fathom.
This is the type of melodrama where you know that it will end with some sort of twist that has one of them dead, both of them dead or by some miracle none of them dead, but always guessing which one it will be who ends up destroying themselves or who will end up in triumph. The story is told through an intriguing flashback, and even as it ended, I wasn't sure which one I was watching. That is no matter because the story unfolds in a way that is totally intriguing and filled with darkness. Lom delivers a performance so vivid that even with the somewhat confusing angle of knowing which brother you are seeing, you are kept gripped to the screen knowing that at any minute the intelligent script will take the plot into directions you couldn't imagine it choosing to go to. I have to mark Lom's performance as one of the greatest acting jobs of the 1940's, and coming out of it, once again I was reminded how I have come to consider him the Anthony Hopkins of the golden age of cinema, always giving you a surprise with whatever twist or shock came your way.
This is the type of melodrama where you know that it will end with some sort of twist that has one of them dead, both of them dead or by some miracle none of them dead, but always guessing which one it will be who ends up destroying themselves or who will end up in triumph. The story is told through an intriguing flashback, and even as it ended, I wasn't sure which one I was watching. That is no matter because the story unfolds in a way that is totally intriguing and filled with darkness. Lom delivers a performance so vivid that even with the somewhat confusing angle of knowing which brother you are seeing, you are kept gripped to the screen knowing that at any minute the intelligent script will take the plot into directions you couldn't imagine it choosing to go to. I have to mark Lom's performance as one of the greatest acting jobs of the 1940's, and coming out of it, once again I was reminded how I have come to consider him the Anthony Hopkins of the golden age of cinema, always giving you a surprise with whatever twist or shock came your way.