Lady in the Dark

A gorgeously garish adaptation of the Moss Hart musical, with songs by Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin, in which a high-powered fashion magazine editor (Rogers) turns to psychoanalysis to resolve her inability to choose between three loves: a middle-aged backer (Baxter), an attractive but independent-minded employee (Milland), and a hunky movie star (Hall). It doesn't bear too close examination, since Hollywood got cold feet about the lady's Electra complex, leaving only hints of her competition with mommy for daddy's love, and completing the bowdlerisation by removing the haunting key song 'My Ship'. What's left is a cardboard charade, but one given a dynamic charge by Leisen's witty visual styling. The three dream sequences, in particular, are superb, with the first two coolly designed, respectively in shades of blue and gold, the third - the circus sequence in which Jenny finds herself on trial for emotional delinquency - bursting into full colour.