The Lost Moment

  • Drama
  • Thriller
  • Romance
11/21/1947
89
NR

Storyline

In a long flashback, a New York publisher is in Venice pursuing the lost love letters of an early-19th-century poet, Jeffrey Ashton, who disappeared mysteriously. Using a false name, Lewis Venable rents a room from Juliana Bordereau, once Jeffrey Ashton's lover, now an aged recluse. Running the household is Juliana's severe niece, Tina, who mistrusts Venable from the first moment. He realizes all is not right when late one night he finds Tina, her hair unpinned and wild, at the piano. She calls him Jeffrey and throws herself at him. The family priest warns Venable to tread carefully around her fantasies, but he wants the letters at any cost, even Tina's sanity.

Director:

Cast

Reviews

  • John Chard

    Dead among the living and living among the dead.

    The Lost Moment is directed by Martin Gabel and adapted by Leonardo Bercovici from the Henry James novel, The Aspern Papers. It stars Robert Cummings, Susan Hayward, Agnes Moorehead and Eduardo Ciannelli. Music is by Daniele Amfitheatrof and cinematography by Hal Mohr.

    Lewis Venable (Cummings) is a publisher who travels to Venice in search of love letters written by poet Jeffrey Ashton. Insinuating himself into the home of the poets lover and recipient of the letters, Juliana Bordereau (Moorehead), Venable finds himself transfixed by the strangeness of the place and its inhabitants, one of which is Juliana's off kilter niece, Tina (Hayward).

    A splendid slice of Gothicana done up in f...

    January 29, 2017
  • Geronimo1967

    When opportunistic publisher "Lewis Venable" (Robert Cummings) sets out to track down some long-lost love letters from recently re-discovered poet "Jeffrey Ashton", he ends up in a Dickensian-style mansion house where the writer's former mistress, the very elderly "Juliana" (an almost unrecognisable Agnes Moorhead) dressed in black, sits in her chair most of the time with frustrated daughter "Tina" (Susan Hayward) tightly wound up living the life of a caged bird. Rather than come clean about his motives, "Venable" poses as a novelist to ingratiate himself with the women - but soon, is embroiled in a complex intrigue involving the two ladies and the letters. Hayward is super - she exudes an eeriness and almost schizophrenic charisma as the y...

    July 7, 2022

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