The Reckless Moment 1949 ★★★1⁄2 CC: Film-noir/Drama James Mason, Joan Bennett [1:22:04]

1949 · Max Ophüls · Columbia Pictures

The Reckless Moment is a 1949 American film noir melodrama directed by Max Ophüls, produced by Walter Wanger, It starred James Mason and Joan Bennett. In the charming community of Balboa 50 miles from Los Angeles, middle-class housewife Lucia Harper travels to Los Angeles to meet scoundrel, Ted Darby. To ask him to stop seeing her seventeen year-old daughter. He asks for money to leave Bea, but Lucia refuses to give any. Bea does not believe her mother when told and during the night she sneaks out to the boat garage to meet Ted who admits that Lucia told the truth. While fighting with Bea, Ted Darby takes a spill that leads to his death. The next morning, Lucia finds the body and assumes that Bea has killed her lover. Desperate to keep her daughter out of jail, She disposes of the body. Meanwhile, Lucia's suspicions that Ted had sleazy friends are confirmed when gangster Martin Donnelly (James Mason) materializes with the intention of extorting cash from the Darby's on behalf of his partner, Nagel who has several letters Bea had written to Ted. Yet when Martin and Lucia grow increasingly close, the scheme starts to splinter.