Wives Under Suspicion

James Whale remakes his own The Kiss Before the Mirror (1933) as a talkie about a district attorney who cannot see the case in his own house. Warren William prosecutes a man for killing an unfaithful wife, then comes home to Gail Patrick. Universal, 1938. The first version was Viennese and elegant; this one is American and sour. Whale, already on his way out at the studio, directs it as a closed room: offices, bedrooms, a courtroom that is just another domestic interior. It is not Bride of Frankenstein. It is the film of a man who knew what a marriage looks like from the wrong side of the desk.