A Letter to Three Wives – Review

A brief browse on the internet through Hollywood films released in the ‘40s and ‘50s will reveal no small number of ensemble-driven, narrative-fractured pictures. But only a number of those fully grabbed the potential of such devices, and made it feel indispensable to that particular story; one such movie is 1949’s A Letter to Three Wives, a domestic parable of three women who revisit their respective pasts in a desperate attempt to make sense of their present.

At its core, it’s a three-hander: Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell and Ann Sothern all play the titular wives, who occupy various levels of society; the higher up, the lower down, and the upcoming. What Deborah, Lora and Rita don’t realise, however, is that they’ll be brought together by a mutual enemy, Addie Ross, a mysteriously unseen, terribly upscale woman who lets them all know, in a politiely worded letter, that she’ll be running off with one of their husbands that very evening – she just forgets to mention whose. What entails is a movie whose bulk consists of long flashback segments, each detailing the wives’ relationship with their husbands, and how Addie hangs over it all like a brooding, laughing shadow. Over the course of the movie, we come to like and respect these characters, seeing the vulnerability in each of them via their own pitfalls. Through director Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s ever thoughtful framing and his actors’ deep wells of personality, we come to care for even the most annoying types of people; Crain makes a ditzy, adolescent-acting woman a beacon of lost hopes and dreams; Sothern’s busybody careerist is really only looking for love, not more work; and Darnell has probably the toughest job of all in convincing us that a femme fatale-type can be just as human as us. They are the shining lights of this movie, its heart, soul and mind.

As we delve deep into their memories, Mankiewicz’s picture becomes something much more than its initial ‘whodunit’-style plot. The time we spend with them as they ruminate on past circumstances, searching for clues as to if their husband was the one who’s run off with Addie, reveals a breathtaking amount of insight; Rita’s husband, played by Kirk Douglas at his most wonderfully hammy, is an angst-driven English teacher with some profound views of his own, while Lora’s ascent to the top by romantically entangling a rich suitor is dripping in societal commentary, feeling not out of place but rather feeding into Lora’s motivations. And then there’s Addie herself, an unseen, omnipresent entity who provides shreds of voiceover; we get the feeling this is her movie, her world, and she’s allowing us into it out of the shallow kindness of her heart. We should be thankful that she’s let us in this time; A Letter to Three Wives is a timelessly wise piece, a heavily romantic cocktail with none of the sentimental syrup, and a juicy peep at what goes on behind closed doors.

A Letter to Three Wives is out now on DVD and Blu-ray in the Masters of Cinema series.