Sleep, My Love | |
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![]() Theatrical release poster | |
Directed by | Douglas Sirk |
Screenplay by | |
Based on | the novel by Leo Rosten |
Produced by |
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Starring | |
Cinematography | Joseph A. Valentine |
Edited by | Lynn Harrison |
Music by | Rudy Schrager |
Color process | Black and white |
Production company | Triangle Productions |
Distributed by | United Artists [1] |
Release date |
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Running time | 97 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Sleep, My Love is a 1948 American noir film directed by Douglas Sirk. It features Claudette Colbert, Robert Cummings and Don Ameche. [2]
Alison Courtland, a wealthy New Yorker, hasn't a clue how she ended up on a train bound for Boston. When she phones her husband, Richard, the police listen in and overhear that she had threatened him with a gun. On a flight home, fellow passenger Bruce Elcott is attracted to Alison. Elcott, it turns out, knows one of her good friends.
Back home, Richard makes Alison agree to start seeing a psychiatrist, Dr. Rhinehart. However, the 'doctor' who shows up at the house for their first appointment is not Rhinehart, but Charles Vernay, a photographer hired by Richard, who is having an affair with another woman, Daphne, and hopes to get rid of Alison for good.
Richard's scheme is to drive Alison to suicide and thus inherit her wealth. Elcott, who has come to suspect there is some kind of purposeful plan afoot to confuse and distress Alison, arrives just in time to find her, apparently under hypnosis, about to leap from a balcony to her death. Elcott discovers Vernay's role in the situation. Richard, meanwhile, attempts to drug Alison and make her kill the doctor herself.
Vernay realizes he has been betrayed and shoots Richard; Vernay is later killed by falling through a skylight while being chased by Elcott, after which Elcott and Alison are able to be together in peace.
Screen rights for the story, which was written by Leo Rosten and had been serialized in magazines, were purchased by Triangle Productions in November 1946. Rosten wrote the first screenplay but The New Yorker writer St. Clair McKelway was recruited to contribute to the final version.
The film was produced by Mary Pickford, her husband Buddy Rogers and Ralph Cohn. [3] [4] It was Pickford's first film activity in 12 years since The Gay Desperado (1936), although Cohn and Rogers had produced films for Comet Productions. Pickford was involved in approving the cast and script. [5]
In December 1946, the production company approached Richard Ney to head the cast. [6] In April 1947, Don Ameche was signed as the star and Douglas Sirk agreed to direct [7] before Claudette Colbert and Robert Cummings were added to the cast. [8]
Filming began on May 27, 1947 at the Hal Roach Studios in Los Angeles. [9]
The world premiere of the film was held in Ottawa, Canada on January 12, 1948 as a benefit to help children in Europe. Mary Pickford was in attendance and delivered a speech about the plight of the children. [10]
In a contemporary review for The New York Times , critic A. H. Weiler wrote:
As the latest arrival on an extremely long line of psychological melodramas, "Sleep, My Love" is a sleek entry which manages to run its course without coming a cropper. An intelligent script, facilely handled, for the most part, helps matters along but a general lack of suspense, familiar plot and somewhat uneven direction keep "Sleep, My Love" ... a fairly obvious chapter in cinema psychology. Whether the hypnotic procedures used by the producers will gratify the Adler, Jung and Freud schools or give those professional gentlemen an aggravated anxiety neurosis, is hard to say. ... "Sleep, My Love" can be marked down as a generally competent job. which has its absorbing moments but which hasn't strayed much from the norm. [11]
Variety 's review concluded: "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." [12]
Olive Films released it on Blu-ray on April 15, 2014. [13]
Gladys Marie Smith, known professionally as Mary Pickford, was a Canadian actress resident in the U.S., and also producer, screenwriter and film studio founder, who was a pioneer in the US film industry with a Hollywood career that spanned five decades.
Émilie Chauchoin, professionally known as Claudette Colbert, was an American actress. Colbert began her career in Broadway productions during the late 1920s and progressed to films with the advent of talking pictures. Initially contracted to Paramount Pictures, Colbert became one of the few major actresses of the period who worked freelance, independent of the studio system.
Douglas Sirk was a German film director best known for his work in Hollywood melodramas of the 1950s. However, he also directed comedies, westerns, and war films. Sirk started his career in Germany as a stage and screen director, but he left for Hollywood in 1937 after his Jewish wife was persecuted by the Nazis.
Leo Calvin Rosten was an American writer and humorist in the fields of scriptwriting, storywriting, journalism, and Yiddish lexicography.
Dwayne Bernard Hickman was an American actor and television executive, producer and director, who worked as an executive at CBS and had also briefly recorded as a vocalist. Hickman portrayed Chuck MacDonald, Bob Collins' girl-crazy teenaged nephew, in the 1950s The Bob Cummings Show and the title character in the 1960s sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. He was the younger brother of actor Darryl Hickman, with whom he appeared on screen. After retirement, he devoted his time to painting personalized paintings.
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