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.

Double the de Havilland, Half the Mystery - The Dark Mirror review by griggs

Two Olivia de Havillands, one murderer, and a psychiatrist armed with a stack of inkblots. Sounds foolproof.

The setup is great fun. A doctor turns up stabbed, witnesses place one of two identical sisters at his flat, and the police can’t tell Ruth from Terry. The twins wear necklaces with their names on, which only helps if they never swap them.

Thankfully, de Havilland earns both pay cheques. Ruth is soft and fretful, Terry has a smile that could curdle milk, and I kept changing my mind about which one did it.

Then Lew Ayres arrives with his inkblot cards and treats every splodge like a signed confession. Thomas Mitchell’s weary detective mostly stands around asking him to explain things, which he does at length. The psychology is gloriously daft, and once the plot relies on it, the mystery starts to wobble.

By the time it got round to naming the killer, I’d stopped minding much.

De Havilland deserved a better mystery. Both of her.

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