How The Conflict 1945 Movie Scares You Into Thinking That A Character Is Going To Die?

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

Conflict (1945) (#ad) is a murder mystery featuring the story of a man who kills his own wife. Has he managed to commit the perfect crime or will he be caught in the end? One of the scenes in this movie might have you worrying for the safety of one of the characters as you fear that the criminal or the killer might commit yet another murder.

Reason to kill your own wife

Richard Mason (played by Humphrey Bogart), an engineer, murdered his wife, Kathryn Mason (played by Rose Hobart), because he was in love with Evelyn Turner (played by Alexis Smith), Kathryn’s younger sister.

After Kathryn’s death, Richard should have been free to court Evelyn, but many events occur that seem to indicate that his wife was still very much alive.

Does Evelyn know what happened to her sister in Conflict?

Just when you think that that was really the case, other incidents happen in the Conflict movie that now seem to indicate that Evelyn was the one responsible for making it look like her older sister was still alive.

For example, she actually has the same perfume as Kathryn, which can explain why Richard gets a whiff of the scent in his bedroom even though this should not have been possible since his wife was supposedly already dead. This and other such events make it seem as if Turner knew what Richard did to her sister and is now trying to scare him or something.

Is Richard planning to kill Evelyn?

When Richard sees this connection, he immediately heads over to where Evelyn was to confront her about it. He finds her packing and getting ready to leave. While the 2 are talking, she gets a phone call, but it is the engineer who answers it.

It’s the driver that Evelyn sent for. Richard sends this driver away as he insisted on being the one to drive Turner to wherever she wanted to go.

She protests this and is reluctant to have the engineer drive her, telling him that he shouldn’t have sent the driver away. She came across as being suspicious, scared and apprehensive with how reluctant she was to let Richard drive her.

Combine that with how Mason kept insisting that he would drive her and with how he pretty much didn’t give her a choice on the matter, it really seemed like the engineer was planning something sinister. I thought that he was going to murder Evelyn just like how he killed his own wife.

This is further reinforced when we hear Evelyn Turner telling Richard to please be careful in driving since the roads can be dangerous.

She sounds really scared, so the audience might start fearing for her life and her safety with Richard right next to her and sitting on the driver’s side of the car as the 2 are getting ready to leave.

However, before they can leave, Richard gets a phone call. He leaves the car and tells Evelyn to wait for him as he goes to answer said phone call. I thought Turner could use this opportunity to leave or drive away before Mason could get to her. Of course, things actually happen differently as we soon find out.


*Notes:
- Image with added text was modified by Freya Yuki based on the image by Rusembell (CC:BY) from deviantArt
- Image of the car is meant to represent the part in the Conflict movie wherein we see Evelyn and Richard in a car and they’re about to drive off when the latter is called away to answer a phone call
- Second pic is from Amazon.com; link shown above
- YouTube video features the Conflict movie trailer