Movie review

Pharmacist Warren Quimby (Richard Basehart), night manager of a 24-hour Los Angeles drugstore, is a fool.

In an early scene in 1949’s Tension his wife Claire (Audrey Totter) is introduced by  sultry music as she’s eating dinner at the soda counter in Quimby’s drugstore.  Dressed in a slinky blouse, she takes an indifferent glance at her husband as he approaches tentatively, and she mumbles as she bites into a hamburger.

When he goes back to work on the other side of the store, Claire’s boyfriend shows up.  In an undisguised lie, she tells the counter clerk she’s going back to the Quimby’s apartment above the store.  Then she slips off her wedding ring and follows her suitor outside to his car.

Richard Basehart: resentful or scheming?

Quimby’s blindness to his wife’s blatant infidelities, coupled with his puppy-dog devotion—even after she deserts him for a boyfriend—is the film’s plot foundation.  You know this is more than a domestic drama however; because, in addition to its suggestive and suspenseful musical score and noirish nighttime settings, the movie is introduced and narrated by a homicide detective, Lieutenant Collier Bonnabel played by Barry Sullivan.

Basehart’s character is so innocent and trusting you want to root for him, but he’s so foolish you just want to smack him.  He’s stuck on his wife even after he tracks her down to a love nest in Malibu, vainly begs her to come home and gets beat up by her boyfriend, Barney Deager (Lloyd Gough).

When the film played in a 1998 San Francisco festival, SF Chronicle movie reviewer Walter Addiego wrote that Quimby was a “prize-winning sap.” 

Does he ever wise up?

Yes, but slowly.

While Claire continues her suggestive shenanigans at the beach, Quimby concocts a complex plan creating a new name and a layered second identity for himself. It’s unclear if he still wants Claire back, but his main goal is revenge and his phony identity will somehow be his cover.

In his new name he rents a Westwood, Calif. apartment—in addition to his flat over the pharmacy.  He meets an attractive Westwood neighbor, Mary Chanler (Cyd Charisse). Chanler is attracted to Quimby, who tells her he sells cosmetics and is on the road on weekdays, home on weekends. The two go out together, but Quimby tries not to return her affections.  He’s working on his revenge. Continue Reading →