A DOUBLE LIFE no stars

Ronald Colman certainly didn't deserve the Oscar he won for "A Double Life", George Cukor's psychological thriller in a theatrical setting. He's the famous actor, past his prime, (a bit like Colman himself), playing Othello a little too realistically if not too well, so you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out where it's going. Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin wrote it so its milieu is reasonably authentic but neither Colman nor Signe Hasso, his Desdemona, are up to it; indeed as Shakespearean actors they are both terrible hams. There's good work, though, from Edmond O'Brien as a press agent and Shelley Winters as a slatternly waitress and it's nicely photographed in noirish black and white by Milton Krasner. Otherwise, a minor work for all concerned.