Popular reviews

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  Review by D Rock ★★★½

  Ronald Colman as Anthony John gives a demonstration of the dangers of extreme method acting in this Cukor noir. Especially if the actor is clearly suffering from some kind of mental illness that causes them to confuse reality and fantasy.

  Poor Shelley Winters, how many of these poor suckers did the woman play in her career, I've kind of lost count. Some people are just born to get the short end of the stick. Here she's a young gum-chewing waitress who corrals the wrong older man one night in the café where she works (the Venezia, natch). Decades-older Ronald Colman does have charm and charisma and looks rich, so her going for him is plausible. Less excusable is ex-wife Signe…

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  Review by Taylor Leverage ★★★

  Does this mean that Ronald Colman got an Oscar for doing blackface? Othello is a complex and intelligent character so it's clearly not derogatory, but looking at the facts I guess he kind of did.

  There's a classic thread running through A Double Life - the inability to distinguish fantasy from reality, and more specifically the artist becoming consumed by their art. Ronald Colman finds success on the stage as Othello, but his intense performance hides a dark secret as he finds the feverish passion of the play drifting over into his personal life. However, the film doesn't take advantage of its premise by exploring what it means to 'inhabit' a character, or even to take a particularly insightful look…

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  Review by Avirup

  The dangers of method acting..

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  Review by PUNQ ★★★½

  Ronald Colman was superb! He won the Oscar for his performance which can be described as Othello within Othello. A dark wander into dementia for a stage actor slowly losing control over his mind and starts living the character he portrays in the play. Such a heavy-handed atmospheric execution that still manages to keep some of Colman's natural gentlemanly charm. Only thing holding A Double Life (1947) back was the rather weak investigation. Felt like it was just patched on without much though. And what it did was take one out of the torment and make the movie feel ordinary. Such a shame after such a deep and passionate focus on the rest of the production.

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  Review by TajLV ★★★★

  Part of my 5 Directors x 5 Unseen Films (6) challenge.

  Borrowing elements from William Shakespeare's tragedy "Othello," writers Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin put together this Academy Award level script, and in the hands of Oscar-nominated director George Cukor it became one of the most "unusually intelligent, literate noir" films of its era. Ronald Coleman plays the lead as Broadway stage actor Anthony John, a troubled talent who is beginning to confuse himself for the parts he plays.

  Ex-wife and fellow thespian Brita (Signe Hasso) divorced Tony over his moodiness. Their relationship might be fine when they are acting in a comedy, but whenever they were cast in a drama, he would become introverted, distant and unavailable to her.…

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  Review by Nathan ★★★★

  Wherein we learn that while it's entirely possible to be friends with one's ex, perhaps it isn't the best idea to star in a blockbuster production of Othello alongside them. Ronald Colman plays an actor who gets a little too method in this backstage comedy that slips into noir and then into several other areas. The themes of performance and the double existence of the actor and the role they portray resonate throughout - from the police to the newspapers to the wait staff, everyone's playing a part. The script is terrific - everyone down to the bit players gets great lines. Shelley Winters steals the show in the couple of scenes she's in - it's a shame she wasn't…

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  Review by Luke Thorne ★★★★

  George Cukor’s Oscar-winning powerful drama in which a theatre actor becomes increasingly unable to differentiate between his stage roles and real life. Starring Ronald Colman and Shelley Winters.

  Trustworthy theatre actor Anthony John (Ronald Colman) has a troubled anger, which leads his actress wife, Brita (Signe Hasso), to consent him.

  When the two perform together in a production of "Othello," the strain of playing Othello makes John go completely mad, and as a result ends up murdering his mistress, Pat Kroll (Shelley Winters).

  John hardly remembers anything about the incident that took place, but is let with no option but to face his movements when organiser Bill Friend (Edmond O'Brien) uses the killing to announce the play.

  Ronald Colman gives…

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  Review by Pippin ★★★ 2

  While watching A Double Life, I couldn't help but wonder if this was written to mock Paul Muni or was inspired by him in some way? Obviously Muni never became as bad as Colman's character Tony, but there seemed to be so many similarities? Tony is a stage actor who becomes his characters and the people around him have to deal with whatever character he's currently playing. Muni notoriously did this, to the point where it was even written about in articles at the time. At one point the film mentions that Tony was in a play about coal miners. Whilst it was a movie not a play, Muni was in Black Fury about coal miners. Even some of Colman's…

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  Review by Emily ★★★½

  Ronnie Colman was terrifying in this so, yes he did deserve an Oscar for his performance!

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  Review by Lance — A Gentleman Doofus ★★★½

  This must be what it’s like to be friends with Daniel Day-Lewis

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  Review by Christof ★★★

  On paper, I should love this film, but something is lacking for me. The performance by Ronald Colman is a bit lackluster to me (at times he is too hammy, and at other times not hammy enough), especially considering how meaty the character is, and how much any actor could tear into it, and George Cukor was more effective at getting under a main character's skin in Gaslight.

  There are things I appreciate about it, but overall, I wish someone would have a second go at it and try a remake, to get to the film's full potential.

  Georg Cukor films ranked

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  Review by loureviews ★★½ 7

  #35 in the George Cukor filmography.

  "You wanna put out the light?"

  I haven't seen this for a long time, but it was sitting on my Sky+, and I have been watching a lot of Shakespeare related material lately, so I thought it was time to revisit.

  This was the role for which Ronald Colman won a leading man Oscar as the actor who is such a method player he lets the role of Othello drive him to murder.

  It's a noirish concept which is directed well by George Cukor, but it is such a nonsense in its construction that despite a fine scene half way through, as Tony (Colman) wanders through shadowed streets with Iago's voice in his head…