Conflict 1945 Movie: How To Overtake Your Wife To Kill Her?

(*Warning for possible spoilers for Conflict, a 1945 black-and-white suspense film noir made by Warner Brothers)

Conflict (1945) (#ad) is the story of a man who kills his own wife, however, what the audience wants to know isn’t who committed the crime, but what happens to the culprit after the evil deed is committed and if the criminal was able to commit the perfect crime.

An unexpected meeting between the Masons

One of the scenes in the Conflict movie involves Kathryn Mason (played by Rose Hobart), the wife of the main character, driving alone and by herself through mountain roads until she reaches a spot that is blocked by another car.

The driver is standing nearby, but the stranger refuses to move the car. As Kathryn prepares to turn around to look for another way to her destination, the stranger approaches her and is soon revealed to be Richard Mason (played by Humphrey Bogart), her husband.

How Conflict shocks its audience?

This is surprising and shocking, not just to Kathryn who wasn’t expecting her husband to be there, but also for the audience since viewers know that Richard should have been back at the Mason house, far away from where his wife currently was. Another thing to take note of in this particular scene was how Richard was able to arrive at that spot in the mountain roads before Kathryn could get there.

Is there a plot hole in Conflict?

When Kathryn left the Mason house, Richard was still there since he wasn’t supposed to be going anywhere anyway. Furthermore, even if Richard left their house as soon as his wife did, it didn’t seem as if he could drive all that well, considering that he still had a slight limp when he walked and he still had to use a cane to help him.

As such, this part of the Conflict movie might seem like a plothole to some, but there’s actually a reasonable explanation for what happened.

Kathryn stopped by to see Doctor Mark Hamilton (played by Sydney Greenstreet), a good friend of the Masons, and she even chatted with him for a few minutes.

Aside from the possibility that the doctor’s house could have been out of the way of her destination, she was also shown to be driving at a pretty slow and leisurely way as she traversed the mountain roads that led to her destination. That was understandable since she was advised to drive carefully.

As for Richard, he actually took a much shorter route than his wife, which allowed him to arrive at the place where the 2 met up before Kathryn did.


*Notes:
- Image with added text was modified by Freya Yuki based on the image by Rusembell (CC:BY) from deviantArt
- Car in the image is meant to symbolize the car that Kathryn drove when she met up with Richard
- YouTube video features the Conflict trailer