Rent The Dark Mirror (1946)

Enjoyable thriller. - The Dark Mirror review by BC

Enjoyable thriller with many twists and turns. A fine performance from Olivia de Havilland playing a set of identical twins, one of whom is a murderer.

Good twin/bad twin noir. - The Dark Mirror review by Steve

One of many film noirs after WWII that dealt with psychotherapy, and a smaller subgenre that used the good twin/bad twin motif as the subject for melodrama. The rather schematic plot begins with a murder of a doctor. Ruth Collins (both siblings are played by Olivia de Havilland) is suspected, but when her identical sister Terry also becomes known to the cops and neither will confess which one doesn't have an alibi, the police are checkmated. So twin expert Dr. Elliott (Lew Ayres) takes an interest. He falls in love with one sister, and diagnoses the other as a dangerous... schizophrenic!

 It's a screwy story, but fabulous entertainment, expertly assembled by Siodmak, and his cinematographer Milton R. Krasner, who photographs the twins together in the same frame magnificently and keeps the outré concept as realistic as possible.

Krasner was an auspicious noir photographer over many films. The shots of the disturbed twin in the (dark) mirror are very effective and the film is a technical tour de force. There aren't many shadows, I guess because they would have been difficult to match if the frame was subject to multiple exposure. It's still an atmospheric film though, with music by celebrated composer Dimitri Tiomkin.

De Havilland came out of the war transformed as an actor, studied the Method, and she's very subtle as the divided twins, and the divided killer. This was the first of a trio of films for her playing a psychologically disturbed character, followed byThe Snake Pit (1948), and The Heiress (1949). Scriptwriter Nunnally Johnson would later return to the field with The Three Faces of Eve (1957). All are fine films.

Compelling - The Dark Mirror review by sb

FILM & REVIEW Aka The Dark Mirror. Siodmak’s excellent psychological Noir - a respected doctor is found with a knife in his back and a young woman is seen leaving the apartment. She is identified as Terry Collins and two witnesses swear that they saw her that night - but she maintains she was in a park and has several other witnesses to confirm this . How could she be in two places at once ? The answer is revealed when the bedroom door opens and her identical twin sister Ruth comes out - both played by De Haviland. They stick to the alibi but although the detective Stevenson (Mitchell) is convinced one is the killer he can’t prove which one…..so the case collapses. He engages psychologist Scott [Ayers) to run Rorchard tests and begins to suspect that Terry is far more unstable than she first appears and deliberately falls in love with Ruth to see how Terry will react……. DeHaviland is superb in the dual lead - in public they appear identical but in private Terry is the dominant one and way she plays mind games on her weaker sister is quite chilling - so much so that you begin to be able to tell who is who just by a small gesture. Siodmak made several noir’s in the period and this is one of his best….4/5