THE GREAT SINNER (1949)

Fedja (Gregory Peck), a writer, is apparently lying near death in a small disheveled apartment, pages of a manuscript called "Confessions of a Sinner" tossed about by the wind. A woman enters, gathers up the pages and sits next to him. We flashback to a younger Fedja on a train from Moscow to Paris where he watches the lovely Pauline Ostrovsky (Ava Gardner) playing solitaire the entire time. They chat briefly and when she says she's getting off at the spa town of Wiesbaden in Germany, Fedja does too, and meets up with her at a casino when he learns that she and her father the General (Walter Huston) are gambling addicts. Armand, the owner of the casino (Melvyn Douglas) keeps a close eye on the proceedings, as he wants to avoid any messy suicide attempts at the tables. As Fedja gets to know Pauline and her father (who host all-night gambling parties in their hotel room after the casino closes), he thinks he might get enough material to write a book about gambling, but thinking that he needs to participate as well, he joins them in their big-money escapades. He finds himself falling for Pauline, even though she tells him that Armand, whom she considers an enemy, will probably marry her. He also finds himself becoming a gambling addict, winning and losing large amounts at the tables. How he gets to the sad state of affairs which we saw at the beginning takes up the rest of the narrative.

I run hot and cold on Gregory Peck, and here I fall closer to cold—he's woodenly stoic and not terribly expressive, without an inner fire that would have made his character truly come alive, but he doesn't ruin the movie, partly due to the rest of the cast. Ava Gardner (pictured with Peck) is beautiful and acts Peck off the screen. Walter Huston does as well. Frank Morgan has a small role as an older man who is trying to quit gambling but always returns to the tables, and he's quite good, not employing his usual bluster. Melvyn Douglas is hampered by playing a character who really doesn't need to be around, but Ethel Barrymore (Pauline's mother) and Agnes Moorehead (a pawnbroker) both do quite well in small parts. Christopher Isherwood co-wrote the screenplay, based on Dostoevsky, which may account for the numerous notable lines of dialogue. In a scene in a pawn shop involving the redeeming of a religious medal, Peck notes that "Christ was forgotten in the pawn shop and the devil thrives in the casino." When Peck calls Gardner corrupt, she replies, "But in a charming way." Huston opines, "Love is a pastime for the middle class." I don't want to ruin a good scene, but watch for the reactions around the gambling table when news arrives that Pauline's grandmother is near death. A watchable melodrama of the kind that MGM cranked out frequently in the classic era. [TCM]