A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

This is an intriguing psychological drama with apparent supernatural elements which however prove perfectly natural. The spider in the web is Sydney Greenstreet, Humphrey Bogart being entirely at his mercy without even being aware of it. The tangle gets constantly further messed up, until finally everything is settled because of an innocent rose. Alexis Smith is here in one of her early roles, always stylish and making an absolutely convincing character, although her character here is not very interesting. Humphrey is the greatest actor here and steals the show entirely, while the audience, like himself, gets constantly more confused. We never see the murder being committed, no dead body is ever shown, so it's only natural to assume that the victim somehow got away. Well, if that really was the case, the target certainly got away with a vengeance. Least suspicious of all you must be of the kind old doctor Sydney Greenstreet, while he actually is the one who Humphrey should suspicious of.A great intelligent crime plot, actually originated by Robert Siodmak.

This is not one of Humphrey Bogart's finest films. He plays an architect named Richard Mason who after five (5) years of marriage he has gradually fallen out of love with his wife Kathryn (Rose Hobart) and in to love with Kathryn's younger sister Evelyn (Alexis Smith). To resolve his dilemma Richard Mason executes what he believes to be a perfect murder thus freeing himself to woo his younger sister-in-law Evelyn.The first 30 minutes of the film was suspenseful but after that Richard seems to be haunted by clues that lead him to believe that his poor murdered wife is mysteriously still alive. We the audience are lead on a string of clues that seem to be leading Richard Mason (murderer) into madness until he cannot take it any longer so he resolves himself to get to the bottom of his new dilemma and confirm once and for all if his wife Kathryn is still alive or truly dead since he can still visualize that he murdered her.The latter half of the film was a mixed bag of sudden and unexplained clues that leave Richard stunned that someone is screwing with him. I felt the same way just like how my interest in this film waned very quickly. The ending was less than memorable so I would leave this film on the shelf. I give it a 5 out of 10 rating.

An architect (Humphrey Bogart) murders his nagging wife (Rose Hobart) in hopes he can be with her younger sister (Alexis Smith). After the murder things start to happen that make him question whether his wife is really dead after all.Entertaining film despite a plot that's easy to get ahead of. It's helped by some good acting and decent direction. Similar in some ways to The Two Mrs. Carrolls, which also had Bogie plotting to kill his wife so he could marry Alexis Smith. Of the two movies, this is the better, helped largely by the presence of Sidney Greenstreet. Bogart also gives a less over the top performance here than in the other movie. Both films have something else in common: they both sat on the shelf for two years after filming before they were released.

Conflict is directed by Curtis Bernhardt and collectively written by Arthur T. Horman, Dwight Taylor, Robert Siodmak and Alfred Neumann. It stars Humphrey Bogart, Alexis Smith, Sydney Greenstreet, Rose Hobart, Charles Drake and Grant Mitchell. Music is by Frederick Hollander and cinematography by Merritt B. Gerstad.Still under exposed after all these years, Conflict is deserving of reappraisals by the film noir crowd. Plot has Richard Mason (Bogart) stuck in a loveless marriage to Kathryn (Hobart), with his misery further compounded by the fact he's in love with his sister-in-law, Evelyn (Smith). Finally having enough, Richard murders his wife and intends to woo the younger Evelyn into his life. However, when Richard starts glimpsing his wife out in the city and little items of hers start turning up, Richard starts to doubt his own mind.In essence it's a psychological thriller spiced with German Expressionism, perhaps unsurprising given that Bernhardt and Siodmak are key components of the production. The psychoanalysis angle played out would of course become a big feature in the film noir cycle, and here it makes for a most interesting story as Bernhardt and Gerstad dress it up in looming shadows, rain sodden streets and treacherous mountain roads. The pungent air of fatalism is evident throughout, the pace of the piece purposely sedate to marry up with the sombre tones as Richard Mason, a disturbed menace, him self becomes menaced.OK, you don't have to be an ace detective to figure out just exactly what is going on, so the reveal at film's closure lacks a bit of a punch, but the atmospherically tinged journey is well worth undertaking regardless. Bernhardt's camera is often like some peeping tom spying on the warped machinations of Mason, and all the while Hollander adds thematically compliant music to proceedings. Bogart was pretty much press ganged into making the picture, but come the final product it's evident that even though he may have been unhappy initially, he ended up delivering one the most intriguing turns in his wonderful career.Greenstreet is his usual presence, here playing the psychiatrist family friend who delivers the telling lines whilst being ahead of the game. Unfortunately the two principal lady characters aren't done any favours by the otherwise taut screenplay, especially Evelyn, who as the catalyst for the sinister shadings never gets chance to build a strong emotional bridge to Richard Mason's psychological make-up. Still, when you got Bogart as an unhinged killer attired in trench-coat and fedora, and a director who knows how to place him in the right visual scenarios, the flaws can't kill the film's strengths. 7/10