Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Brainsbell The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

utgard14 Loretta Young plays a woman whose husband (Barry Sullivan) has a heart condition and is bed-ridden. She doesn't realize it but her husband believes she is having an affair with his doctor and longtime friend (Bruce Cowling). He mails a letter to the district attorney, telling a wild story about how the two are plotting to kill him. He then tells Young what he has done and promptly keels over of a heart attack! Young is panic-stricken and desperate to get that letter back before she is wrongly accused of her husband's murder.I'm not sure why this movie has always stood out to me but it has. I enjoy it tremendously. Loretta Young is terrific, especially when she starts to freak out. But even before that she has this nervous quality about her performance that makes the later panic seem in keeping with her character. Some have criticized her character as being unduly stupid in order to service the plot. I don't feel this is true. Everything hits her quickly. Within a matter of minutes she hears what her husband planned and then he dies, so naturally she wouldn't be thinking clearly. Barry Sullivan gives one of his best performances as the crazy husband. Contrary to what some reviews have stated, he did not exhibit a sudden change of behavior from nice guy to psycho nor was his psychosis brought on by his heart medicine. The film shows in flashbacks that this man is self-serving, possessive, and manipulative. Further, Sullivan tells Young a story from his childhood that paints a clear picture that he has always been disturbed.This is a wonderfully subversive suspense film. Here you have this crazy story going on in a typical suburban American home during a decade in which the idyllic picture of American suburbia was born. My advice is to pay full attention to the film for answers to many of the nitpickers' complaints. I can think of far more respected and beloved films with plots that are full of more contrivances than anything in this. In my opinion, this is a real treat that builds slowly then grips you and doesn't let go. One of my favorite films of the '50s.

Spikeopath Cause for Alarm! is directed by Tay Garnett and adapted to screenplay by Mel Dinelli and Tom Lewis from a story written by Larry Marcus. It stars Loretta Young, Barry Sullivan and Bruce Cowling. Music is scored by Andre Previn and cinematography by Joseph Ruttenberg.George Jones is suffering from a heart condition and confined to his bed. An aloof and suspicious man, he assumes his wife and doctor, the latter a good friend, are conspiring to poison him and outlines his suspicion in a letter to the District Atttorney. Getting his wife to pass the letter on to the postman, he gleefully tells his wife what he has done. So when he actually does die, shortly after, wife Ellen panics and sets about retrieving the letter.....Slight plot but well acted, Cause for Alarm! is an efficient pot boiling thriller. Tagged as a "suburban noir," it's a film that has had an up and down experience in terms of critical appraisal. What we can say now is that it does carry with it a degree of ambiguity, where once back in the day it was seen as a straight forward narrative, with Young's ever increasingly fraught wife trying to correct a wrong she hasn't in fact done; now it's quite possible that her telling of the story (via narration) is "arguably" a hokey smoke screen for a dastardly deed. It's the ambiguity, to me at least, that gives the film watchable value. For without it the film just plays out as a chase and deceive movie, one with a couple of colourful characters inserted in for plot suspense enhancement, and featuring a clumsy character thread about parental yearning.Production (in 14 days) and cast performances are good. Young engages by exuding genuine sweaty stress, and supporting turns from Margalo Gillmore and Irving Bacon, as annoyingly talkative aunt and postman respectively, leave favourable marks. Direction from multi genre helmer Garnett is nicely on the simmer, while Ruttenberg's photography brings shadows and light to this twitchy part of suburbia. But the ending, if indeed there are no tricks being played, is a thoroughly unsatisfying outcome. There are those who have delved deep in search of meaning and explanations of character motives and reactions, with that the film has an aura of mystery about it. Certainly there are more questions than answers unfolded during the relatively short running time, and that's OK, we like that Sullivan's bile based husband courts no sympathy. However, it may well be that the film was merely just meant to be a suspenseful little ole race against time drama, a tale about a woman who just married a less than honourable man.It's watchable and the paranoia elements do indeed bring it into the film noir realm, but your enjoyment of it may depend on if you side with the theory that there is more than meets the eyes and ears. Personally I have my doubts, and the thought of having to watch it again is about as appealing as painting Loretta's picket fence on the hottest day of the year. 5/10

Kenneth Anderson I've never cared for Loretta Young but I really LOVE this movie…though I suspect for all the wrong reasons.Fans of film noir may go for the voice-over narration of a hard-boiled private eye, but me, I'm a sucker for a film that features the breathless, panicky narration of a woman in distress (like Doris Day in the 1956 film, "Julie"). Loretta Young narrates "Cause for Alarm!" and the exclamation point in title is no blunder. The film starts out at fever pitch and never lets up to rather hilarious effect.Young plays a perfect 50s housewife who endures one exceptionally crappy, hot summer day. Young is married to Barry Sullivan, a terminally ill, verbally abusive husband who is also suffering from paranoid delusions (he wasn't always that way, a brief flashback shows how they met "cute" when he was just a creepily slimy suitor heavy on charm and low on friendship loyalty). Young's general twitchiness gives way to full out hysteria when, in rather rapid order, her unstable hubby pulls a gun on her and accuses her of conspiring with the doctor (Sullivan's former friend whom he stole Young away from) to kill him. What's more, Sullivan has had her unwittingly mail an incriminating letter to the D.A. detailing his allegations. When he inconveniently (or conveniently, after all, he was going to shoot her) drops dead in a way that will only serve to seal her doom, Young spends the rest of the film tying herself into knots trying to keep his death a secret and get that letter back.It's clear that all of this is supposed to be dramatic as hell, but Young's performance is so earnest and her missteps so consistent, that it plays like a Carol Burnett skit. It's hilarious and wildly enjoyable even if you do prefer to take it seriously.Adding to the comedy is the fact that the nastiness of the circumstances and Sullivan's bullying cruelty contrasts so sharply with the nostalgically artificial-looking neighborhood they live in (favored by TV shows like "Father Knows Best" and "The Donna Reed Show"). Watching Young and Sullivan spar is like watching a Rod Serling version of those old Folger coffee commercials where the husband's criticism of his wife's coffee always struck me as masking a deeper hostility.Peppered throughout are some great bit parts like Sullivan's nosy aunt Clara ( "A man wrapped up himself makes a very small package!"), and my favorite, a really cute neighbor child (cute because he is so odd and endearingly natural on camera) who calls himself Hoppy. He is such a doll and a welcome relief from the kind of Disney Channel androids that pass for child actors today.To say that I find it impossible to take the film seriously is not to say it isn't good. No, in fact it's rather excellent. Even as you're giggling over Young's clumsy lies to the postman, her neat as a pin kitchen, and high-strung hand-wringing, you can't help but root for her. I've seen it many times and never tire of watching it. Of course I'm laughing my head off all the while, but a film that entertains is a film that entertains, right?

dougdoepke Decent enough thriller that nevertheless suffers a gap in exposition. In spite of reviewer Jacobfam's highly revealing analytic, the narrative jump from a healthy if quirky George (Sullivan) to a bed-ridden, full-blown paranoic is simply too visually abrupt to be convincing-- and this remains the case despite the clues that Jacobfam so brilliantly assembles. After all, this is a movie and not a literary assignment . The way the narrative stands, it's as if the producers wanted to get rid of co-star Sullivan as quickly as possible so the movie would become exclusively Young's. And admittedly, the last three-fourths do become hers, in spite of the shadow George casts.Where the film works well is showing how innocent daily occurrences transform into a pattern of guilt once suspicion takes over. Ellen (Young) sees the trap closing around her that George has so cleverly laid, but there is little she can do unless she retrieves that incriminating letter. It's that pursuit that generates audience involvement. It's simply one frustration after another—a pesky salesman, a nosy neighbor, but above all, a quirky mailman (Bacon), who are sealing her fate. The script cleverly turns the mailman into just the kind of character who would stand on an unthinking rule rather than a dose of common sense. Meanwhile, the letter floats tantalizingly just beyond her reach. Some reviewers fault Young's emotional performance during the pursuit. But put yourself in her place. Her whole life hangs in the balance because of that letter. Given what's at stake, her emotional pitch seems about right. In passing—Can't help noticing similarity between this film and 1952's Beware, My Lovely, both scripted by Mel Dinelli, and both concerning a housewife trapped by an unbalanced man. But, notice in Beware how well the unbalanced man's (Robert Ryan) background is visually sketched in. Unlike Cause, there are no developmental gaps, an inclusion that makes for a more persuasive and effective narrative. Also, I recall an episode of Hitchcock Presents where a woman frantically tries to retrieve an incriminating letter. But when the missive is returned for insufficient postage, a good Samaritan maid supplies the missing postage!-- A typical touch of Hitchcock irony. Anyway, Cause remains a decent, if flawed, 75 minutes of entertainment.