SPOILER ALERT
Caught: (1949. dir: Max Ophuls) Ryan is fearsomely magnificent as Howard Hughes, shallowly disguised. Barbara Bel Geddes is the innocent gold-digger who has the misfortune to marry him, and James Mason is the do-gooder pediatrician who falls in love with her. Max Ophuls directs, and the way it's shot is the real star. The script is also very good, although it falls into some cliche by the end, a convenient heart attack and even more convenient miscarriage, all provided thanks to the Hays Code. Last I checked this wasn't domestically available on DVD, but it ought to be, both for Ryan's performance and for the stunning camera-work.
Act of Violence: (1948. dir: Fred Zinnemann) The sounds of this suspense thriller (about a threatened vengeance for a secret wartime offence) are the sounds of nightmare: Ryan's dragging foot as he walks around Van Heflin's darkened house while Heflin and Janet Leigh crouch, terrified, in the shadows, or the sound of Ryan's boat creaking as he rows out relentlessly after his prey. Otherwise, it's grotesquerie in suburbia: a parade of drunks at a convention is another nightmare image. The closing noose of tension, those slow-collapsing walls, reminds me of Odd Man Out: as if the Heflin character took the killshot when he first heard the Ryan character coming, and from there on it's one long, noirish descent into hell.
Escape to Burma: (1955. dir: Allan Dwan) A project unworthy of its stars, alas. I love Stanwyck and Ryan together; he's big enough to match her strength, and she's strong enough to match his presence. This is a movie full of set-pieces, though, instead of a movie about people: there's a jungle pavilion bit, bits with elephants, stolen rubies, a tiger hunt, native bandits. The plot itself is just a MacGuffin for a big, kind of faded, Technicolor extravaganza: the Ryan character is being pursued by the authorities for the murder of a royal prince. He finds his way to Stanwyck's teak-and-elephant plantation, where passion is inevitable. They don't have much to say to one another; nobody does. Characters spend a lot of time walking across enormous rooms to pour drinks without conversation to fill the space. They're just waiting for the next action sequence.
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