Rent Deception (1946)

Deception, a lesser known Bette Davis fillm - Deception review by BM

This film has wonderful performances by the main characters and worth seeing if only to see Claude Rains fussing over ordering an elaborate meal to the exasperation of Davis and Paul Henreid. One of my top ten film scenes.

A Suite for Cello, Piano - and a Triangle - Deception review by CH

What is it about classical music that brings out the enjoyably preposterous in Hollywood? One might think of John Garfield's beachside violin playing in Humoresque, but even that is restraint beside Deception (1946). Directed by Irving Rapper who, dying in 1999 at almost 102, lived long enough to find – one likes to think - his name the butt of many a musical joke far from the concert halls of this movie. It opens with Paul Henreid playing Haydn's cello concerto to acclaim in post-war America. Among the smartly-dressed audience is pianist Bette Davis, who thought that he, her lover, had died in the war. They are re-united with such passion that they decide to marry the next day. This brings a new turn to the notion that the cello is the musical equivalent of the human heartbeat.

All of which would be wonderful but for the fact that her lavish apartment, view and all, has been funded by the conductor and genius composer Hollenious (Claude Rains). Cat-stroking Rains, his hair distinctly bouffant, is outraged by this turn to events, his performance – jealousy incarnate – so much the higher camp that it is well nigh the last staging-post before the summit of Everest.

Especially when he finds that Henreid is the necessary cellist for his latest masterpiece (a work created by Korngold, who himself had fled Germany). Rapper, who had worked with all three of them on Now, Voyager, plays the situation – from a play by Louis Verneuil – for all it's (its?) worth, never shying from dramatic montage which plys close to noir inside and out as the torrid comes to the fore.

Hokum, of course, but brilliantly done, so much so that one might call it the thinking man's Amadeus.