Conflict (1945) (#ad) introduces us to an engineer, named Richard Mason (played by Humphrey Bogart), who decides to kill his own wife, Kathryn Mason (played by Rose Hobart). Was he able to commit the perfect crime or will he eventually get caught? If so, how?
Why did Richard and Kathryn get married?
It’s easy enough to see the reason why Richard killed his own wife. It’s because he’s in love with her younger sister, Evelyn Turner (played by Alexis Smith). But it’s harder to see exactly why Richard and Kathryn got married in the first place.I’m not sure if this is because I missed this part of the Conflict movie since I didn’t get to start it from the beginning (though it doesn’t feel like I missed all that much at all) or if there really is no real reason why the two got married.
Maybe their marriage only happened for plot convenience because the plot demanded that they get married in order to move the story along.
Would you marry someone you don’t even love?
From what I saw, the marriage between the 2 was loveless. They didn’t seem to love each other at all. One of the first few scenes that I saw was Kathryn and Richard conversing with one another as they got ready to attend a party to celebrate their 5th wedding anniversary.Did the Masons get married because the Conflict plot said that they should?
In this scene, we see Kathryn nagging Richard and then confronting him about how he’s apparently in love with her own little sister. She sounds like she doesn’t want to let him go, but it’s not because she loves him.And Richard wasn’t denying his wife’s accusations at all. He wasn’t trying to or even making an effort to defend himself or win back Kathryn’s love and affection by saying things like ‘no, I’m not in love with your sister. It’s you that I love’.
This shows that he doesn’t care what his wife thinks and that he doesn’t love her at all. All this seems to reinforce the possibility that the Masons got married to each for no real reason or that they only got married because the plot said so. What do you think?
*Notes:
- Image with added text was modified by Freya Yuki (CC:BY-SA) based on the image by hayashinomura (CC:BY-SA) from deviantArt
- Wedding image is meant to represent Kathryn and Richard who got married to each other
- YouTube video features the Conflict movie trailer