Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

Overrated

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

Slick suspenser from United Artists. Courtland (Ameche) has an elaborate plot to kill his wife, Alison (Colbert), get her money, and shack-up with mistress Daphne (Brooks). Good thing Bruce (Cummings) takes a covert romantic interest in Alison otherwise she'd be toast. The material may be derivative but director Sirk knows how to smooth out the rough spots, maybe too much so. The suspense never really kicks in. I suspect that's because Ameche's too bland to generate needed menace. (Perhaps he was looking to modify his nice guy screen image, but not too much.)Thus bad things happen to a drugged-up Alison, but in serial fashion without the driving dark force behind it. Instead Coulouris (Vernay) conveys what evil sense there is. As a result, the narrative builds, without intensifying. Nonetheless, the movie has its moments—the train's sudden passage that had me clutching my chair, the sudden shattering of the office door, the plunge through the corkscrew staircase. But most memorable to this noir fan is Hazel Brooks. She's the most commanding spider woman I've seen in years of viewing. Icy, majestic, sensual, no wonder Courtland conspires to dump the ordinary-looking Alison. I love that scene where she sits, bare legged, in an elevated queenly chair while commoner Courtland supplicates from below. I wish there were more bio on her all-too-brief career.All in all, it's decent noir but minus the character edges to make it memorable.

The best scenes in "Sleep, My Love" come right away -- awaking on a train, our heroine (Claudette Colbert) can't remember how or why she got there, although an old woman on the train swears she saw her get on in Baltimore. Later, it turns out the woman is a plant, part of a scheme dreamed up by the woman's husband (Don Ameche) and an unscrupulous passport photographer (Ralph Morgan).Sadly, many of the film's moments that seem to be designed to be creepy or disturbing are unintentionally humorous. Ameche has a book about how to hypnotize people, and he uses it to try to lure Colbert into suicide. It's impossible not to laugh as he whispers next to her head while she sleeps, "go to the window, jump! jump!" Robert Cummings is equally ridiculous for most of the film's running time, although he does allow some interesting moments to creep in after he's discovered Ameche's plot and tries to trap him into revealing himself (he reveals a more forceful side than we usually see from Cummings). I've never been a huge fan of Colbert in anything other than comedy, as she just doesn't seem to me to have the face or the style for drama. She's a fine actress, but I just didn't see what Cummings was so crazy about. She seems much too much of a square. Rita Johnson is more interesting to me, sorry..... wish we had seen more of her in films, but she definitely had some talent and was camera friendly.

Claudette Colbert doesn't realize her husband is out to kill her in "Sleep, My Love," a film directed by Douglas Sirk and also starring Don Ameche, Robert Cummings, and George Couloris. Sirk, later known for some big dramas in the '50s, was clearly out of his element here in this derivative story. The film begins like a Pat O'Brien film from the '40s, "Crack-Up" - on a train with another train coming in the other direction, its light shining in the face of the main character - and ends on a terrace like "Gaslight." "Crack-up," "Gaslight" and "Sleep, My Love" all have similar premises, give or take a few elements.Colbert awakens on a train she doesn't remember boarding; it soon is revealed to the audience that her husband (Ameche) is trying to kill her, get her money, and live happily ever after with a babe (Rita Johnson). His accomplice is a photographer who works with Rita (Couloris). Bob Cummings, however, who is a little smitten with Colbert, starts smelling a rat.The pacing of this film is off - what should or could be exciting just isn't. It just kind of moseys along. Partly this is due to some dull performances. The only interesting role is that of Colbert's; the rest of them just stand around being cardboard. I don't dislike Ameche or Cummings - they were both two very likable actors, Ameche being quite versatile, but they don't offer much in the way of oomph.Derivative films can still be fun and thrilling. Because I like this genre so much, I was disappointed.

We're into familiar territory again with this would-be sleeper about a woman being drugged by her husband (DON AMECHE) for her inheritance and trying all manner of tricks to get her to think she's going insane.It all has a familiar ring--although this time, under Douglas Sirk's direction, it's all much too contrived and not too convincing in its execution.CLAUDETTE COLBERT is the poor victimized wife (but she's no Ingrid Bergman) and the cast-against-type DON AMECHE is much too affable to be chilling as the husband, unlike CHARLES BOYER in "Gaslight". Interestingly, ROBERT CUMMINGS is playing the same sort of role he essayed years later in "Dial M For Murder" whereby he helped Grace Kelly who was caught up in a sinister plot by her husband. Whatever, he's still pretty bland.In fact, that's the trouble with the whole film. It's bland despite the makings of a plot that should be mystifying and terrifying. Maybe a director other than Sirk could have done things with the bare bones of the story that would have turned it into the kind of chiller it's striving to be.Summing up: Not really worth your time.