Alan Ladd returns home to a nightmare in The Man in the Net (1959), an obscure, compelling psychological thriller just out on DVD. Ladd plays a frustrated painter who moved to a gossipy, disapproving small town to get his sexy but troubled wife (Carolyn Jones) away from the trigger points of New York City. She's a bottle-hiding alcoholic, but that may be among the least of her problems. High strung, deceptive, manipulative and probably unfaithful, she's afraid of seeing a psychiatrist in an era when involuntary commitment was a present danger. Ladd plays an oddly passive man for the most part, almost imploding under his burden of doing the right thing as he sees it.
And then he comes home to find all of his paintings slashed, her clothing gone and an odd farewell letter in the typewriter. She is a missing person and the sheriff, who might have been sleeping with her, accuses Ladd of complicity. On the main street the townsfolk are murmuring about murder. Will Ladd be able to clear his name?
The Man in the Net was one of the final films by Michael Curtiz, who began making movies in his native Hungary in 1912 and directed in Austria and Germany after World War I where he caught the eye of American studios. He came to Hollywood in 1926 and worked in most every genre but is chiefly remembered for a pair of classics, Casablanca and Mildred Pierce. The suspenseful Man in the Net is an adult psycho-drama of thwarted desire and soured hopes, well acted and efficiently shot. It's worth a look.
