Соғыс және махаббат трагедиясы

1951 film by Tay Garnett
the 1951 film

During World War II, Ellen works as a nurse in a naval hospital. While dating Lieutenant Ranney Grahame, a military doctor with a busy schedule that leaves him with little time for her, Ellen meets Ranney's friend George Jones, a pilot. Ellen falls deeply in love with George and marries him after leaving Ranney on amicable terms. When the war ends, Ellen and George move into a suburban Los Angeles neighborhood. Years later, not all is well with the young couple. George has proven to be selfish, petty, and domineering, and Ellen feels unfulfilled because they have yet to have any children. Despite this, Ellen still loves her husband, and when he begins suffering heart problems, she tirelessly cares for him with the help of Ranney, who periodically visits in his capacity as George's personal physician. During a heat wave, George's illness is exacerbated and he is bedridden. He also becomes increasingly delusional, to the point that Ranney concludes he needs psychological help. George begins suspecting that Ellen and Ranney are having an affair, and that Ellen is trying to kill him by giving him overdoses of his heart medication. He writes a letter to the district attorney accusing Ellen and Ranney of conspiring to murder him, then gives the letter to Ellen to send in the mail. Ellen dutifully hands the letter to the postman, thinking it is correspondence with their insurance company. When Ellen returns to George's room, she finds him out of bed and manic. He informs his wife of the letter's contents and then brandishes a gun at her, declaring that he has arranged the situation so that he can shoot her and justify it as self defense. Before George can pull the trigger, however, he collapses on the bed and dies. Realizing that George's letter could still frame her as his murderer, Ellen rushes out of the house to retrieve it, but obstacle after obstacle gets in her way. She catches up to the postman only for the postman to insist that George must request the letter be returned himself, otherwise Ellen must take the issue up with the supervisor of the local post office before the letter is sent out for delivery. Meanwhile, George's snobbish aunt Clara arrives at the Jones residence to visit George. Ellen manages to return in time to prevent Clara from entering George's bedroom and finding his body, and persuades her to leave by truthfully stating that George did not want to see his aunt, as she had upset him on a previous visit. After tidying up her disheveled appearance in preparation for visiting the post office, Ellen then notices the gun still in George's hand and decides to remove and hide it. It fires a bullet into the floor while the room's window is open, but only the neighbor boy Billy hears and he mistakes it for a toy. Then a notary arrives for an appointment with George, and Ellen sends him away by insisting her husband is too ill to see visitors. As Ellen departs by car, in her haste she narrowly avoids running over Billy. Finally at the post office, the supervisor is at first sympathetic and gives Ellen a form that, in order to reclaim the letter, must be signed by George; by this point Ellen is so frantic and desperate that her behavior irks the supervisor, and he decides to send the letter out regardless. Ellen returns home, defeated. When Ranney arrives to check on George's condition, he calms Ellen and enters the bedroom where he takes stock of his dead friend, the bullet hole in the floor, and the gun in the dresser. After repositioning George's body in the bed, he allows Ellen to explain what happened. When she is finished with her tale, the doorbell rings. Ellen despairs, believing the police have come to arrest her but, at Ranney's urging, opens the door. She finds the postman has come to return George's letter due to it having insufficient postage. Ellen is overcome with relief, and Ranney tears up the letter and burns the pieces.

Director Tay Garnett thoroughly prepared both cast and crew and the film was shot in 14 days, a rather tight schedule for the era (Young reportedly used the same pre production technique for her TV series a few years later). Irving Bacon (a character actor who appeared in over 400 films during his career) was already widely known as the weary postman in the popular Blondie series of 28 films a decade earlier when he was cast as the postman chased by Ellen. Bradley Mora was a noted child actor on Broadway and had appeared in the 1950 filmed version of Annie Get Your Gun. Margalo Gillmore's successful acting career on Broadway stretched back to the late teens and Georgia Backus (the kindly neighbor gardening next door) had a small role in Orson Welles' Citizen Kane ten years before. Richard Anderson went on to a long and successful career as a supporting actor on US television. Former child star Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer (of Hal Roach's Our Gang comedy shorts) has a cameo appearance as a man repairing a hot rod car.

Some of the production involved location shooting on residential side streets near Melrose Avenue in Hollywood, California. As seen in the film, the actual address of the main filming location was 116 North Oakhurst Dr., one block south of Beverly Drive, until the house was demolished in the mid 1950s and has since been replaced. Neighboring houses also seen in the film which surrounded the location on Oakhurst Drive and Plymouth Avenue are still standing.

According to MGM records the film earned $518,000 in the US and Canada and $250,000 elsewhere resulting in a loss of $174,000. Time magazine characterized the film "as the year's first thriller with an honest quota of thrills. It pulls off the old Hitchcock trick of giving commonplace people, events and settings a sinister meaning, and it develops its simple, one track idea with frightening logic." Time's review also noted the strong supporting performances of Margalo Gillmore and Irving Bacon along with the film's "quiet, sunny atmosphere of a pleasant residential street" in Los Angeles. However, in later decades the film was widely ignored (falling into the public domain) and the few retrospective reviews were less flattering. François Truffaut's short overview of Cause for Alarm! was kinder than many when he wrote, "But all those effects hit home, perfectly timed, and isn't that what counts?" 21st century reviews have tended towards Truffaut's take along with citing the film's suburban noir setting. Critic Craig Butler also cites the performances of Gillmore and Bacon, along with describing the cinematography by Joseph Ruttenberg and score by André Previn as "huge pluses." Sean Axmaker calls Cause for Alarm! "An unusual entry into the film noir school of paranoia" which "trades the dark alleys and long shadows of urban menace for the sunny, tree lined streets of middle class domesticity" whilst noting, "Young's deadened narration adds an eerie mood of doom to the suburban setting."