"Lady Possessed"

Tonight I watched the James Mason movie, "Lady Possessed." It wasn't his best, but I still enjoyed watching it. In this film, Mason played a pianist whose wife died after he removed her from the hospital against doctors' orders. At the same time, a woman who lost her baby was wheeled out into the corridor and absorbed what was happening in her semi-conscious state.

Then, to get over her depression, she and her husband rent a house in the country (it's called a cottage but it is pretty big for a cottage!) and it turns out to be the one that belonged to the De Palma family (Mason played Jimmy De Palma). So this woman begins to imagine that the spirit of the dead woman is inhabiting her. She wears some of the dead woman's clothes that are still in the cottage, dyes her hair dark to look more like her, and develops an obsession for Jimmy DePalma.

He is disillusioned and furious with her when he realizes that she knew things about his dead wife because she was living in the cottage and not because his wife was communicating with him. She tries to throw herself under a train like Anna Karenina but her husband stops her, and it seems that at that moment the peculiar delusion she was under is broken.

I always enjoy seeing a Mason film although this one was not my favorite. For psychological issues I much prefer his role in "The Seventh Veil." Still I was glad to have a chance to see this film, I am filling in the gaps of the ones I have missed.