Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

Colibel Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

BeSummers Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

JohnHowardReid Hollywood certainly lived up to its Hollyweird reputation when Mr. Arch Oboler started the 3-D revolution in 1952 with "Bwana Devil". In fact, the very last person in the world you would expect to become involved in a process that was one hundred per cent visual, was Arch Oboler. Mr. Oboler was primarily a radio writer. He had virtually no visual sense whatever. And a good example of Oboler at his worst is Metro- Goldwyn-Mayer's "The Arnelo Affair" (1947). You don't need to actually view the movie. You can close your eyes and Oboler will tell you everything that's going on, courtesy of off-screen narration and instant information dialogue. Aside from Eve Arden (admittedly she has the best of the wordy screenplay), the acting, led by frozen-faced Frances Gifford and stiff-as-a-dummy George Murphy, is almost as bad as the over-lit sets and the incredibly store-windows wardrobe.

MartinHafer "The Arnelo Affair" is like a pig wearing a Chanel dress. It's a lovely dress....but you still have a pig hiding underneath. So, while the movie looks nice since it was made by the top studio of the day, at its heart the film is unappealing.Mr. and Mrs. Parkson (George Murphy and Frances Gifford) appear to be a happy and successful couple. After all, he's a lawyer, they have a cute son (Dean Stockwell) and have a lot going for them...except Mr. Parkson is about as romantic as a punch in the kidneys! Considering how much he neglects his wife, it's not surprising that Anne would be drawn to Tony Arnelo (John Hodiak)...a suave thug who runs a swank nightclub. On the pretense of going to his apartment to give him decorating ideas, Anne goes alone to Arnelo's...and he tries to woo her. She never says yes, she never says no...and seems like a bit of a milquetoast, actually. Later, she comes to his apartment again and witnesses him slapping around an actress...and Anne stomps off due to his boorish behavior.The next day, the newspaper says that the same actress was found dead...and Anne is pretty sure Arnelo did it. EVERYTHING she does from her on in the film makes zero sense and made me question whether or not the character was supposed to be suffering from a head injury or a case of indigestion. Regardless, Frances Gifford delivers a confusing mess of a character--some, no doubt, due to bad writing. And, by this point, the film completely lost me. Bad dialog, confusing and irrational characters and a script that seems like it never even went through re-writes or revisions make this a very difficult film to finish. It does look great...but is a mess nevertheless.

Neil Doyle FRANCES GIFFORD had one of the best roles of her career as the troubled wife of lawyer GEORGE MURPHY in THE ARNELO AFFAIR, but the director fails to get more than worried looks and a coma-like expression that she wears most of the time--while looking very beautiful. Facially, she bears a strong resemblance here to Donna Reed.She's a woman who feels neglected by her busy husband and falls prey to the flattery of a womanizing man (JOHN HODIAK) who later kills a woman and sets up Gifford as the murderess. Only through the keen detective work of a doggedly determined officer (WARNER ANDERSON) and the gradual realization of her husband that she's been seeing Hodiak, do the deceptive Hodiak's schemes fall apart as clues are unraveled. EVE ARDEN, as a dress designer friend of the heroine, has her usual quips but none of them are particularly inventive.It's strictly a B-film that has all the MGM gloss but falters because of a weak script and a poorly directed actress in the leading role. Miss Gifford gives a bland performance in a role that calls for more than close-ups of a fixed expression.Hodiak is fine as the cunning predator and nine year old DEAN STOCKWELL is lively as Gifford's loving son. GEORGE MURPHY is unable to do much with the role of the neglectful husband, a thankless role that he plays in stolid style.

bmacv In The Arnelo Affair, the letter `A' keeps cropping up again and again - as a monogram on a dressing gown, a compact, a key. Ostensibly it signifies one of the two main characters: Tony Arnelo (John Hodiak ), a predatory nightclub owner, or Ann Parkson (Frances Gifford), wife of Arnelo's square-rigger of an attorney (George Murphy). But really the `A' serves to remind us that the story is chiefly about the Scarlet Letter of Adultery - the Affair of the title.The movie's sinister, noirish elements are not quite an afterthought, but almost. During the first half of the movie, ignored and restive, Gifford sulks nobly in the household she shares with Murphy, forever working late on his legal briefs, and her nine-year-old son (Dean Stockwell) who thinks he could benefit from psychoanalysis. (She, however, may be a riper candidate for the couch, given as she is to swoons and passive-aggressive feigned headaches.)When smooth-talking Hodiak flatters her and hires her as decorator, she obliges and soon finds herself with the key to his apartment and an inclination to use it for naughtier purposes than updating the chintz. But she soon finds out that Hodiak has many another slip in which to dock his dinghy; and when one of his stable of lady friends is found murdered, Gifford's initialed compact is found with the body. With the prompting of police detective Warner Anderson, Murphy is jolted out of his complacency and sets out to find the truth....Like The Unfaithful of the same year (a sweetened-up remake of The Letter), The Arnelo Affair seems geared to the women in its audience, more a weeper than a noir. Even the redoubtable Eve Arden, as a dress-designing upstairs neighbor, gets paraded out as much for her eye-popping post-war get-ups as for her trademark mordant lines (and she's a welcome foil to all Gifford's suffering saintliness). The Arnelo Affair holds interest, if slackly; its director, Arch Oboler, hadn't much of a feel for the possibilities inherent in the script or the knack for bringing them out. It's telling that the most memorable characters in the movie are not the principals but Anderson, Arden and the nine-year-old Stockwell.