The Lost Moment

The Lost Moment (1947)

In a long flashback, a New York publisher is in Venice pursuing the lost love letters of an early-19th-century poet, Jeffrey Ashton, who disappeared mysteriously. Using a false name, Lewis Venable rents a room from Juliana Bordereau, once Jeffrey Ashton's lover, now an aged recluse. Running the household is Juliana's severe niece, Tina, who mistrusts Venable from the first moment. He realizes all is not right when late one night he finds Tina, her hair unpinned and wild, at the piano. She calls him Jeffrey and throws herself at him. The family priest warns Venable to tread carefully around her fantasies, but he wants the letters at any cost, even Tina's sanity.

Date of release
1947-11-21
TMDB
6.3 / 10 (26)
Runtime
1h 29m
Genres
Drama, Thriller, Romance
Director
Martin Gabel

Casting

Interesting facts

The Lost Moment is a 1947 American Gothic psychological thriller film directed by Martin Gabel and starring Robert Cummings, Susan Hayward and Agnes Moorehead.

Production

The film was produced at Universal Pictures by Walter Wanger, from a screenplay by Leonardo Bercovici based on the 1888 novella The Aspern Papers by Henry James. Bercovici wrote the script in 1946 for Charles Feldman who developed several projects for the property. Wanger bought the script in January 1947 for a reported $200,000. (In fact no money changed hands - Wanger bought the script in exchange for a scenario called The Washington Flyer.)

The script was called The Lost Love. Wanger said the script would be directed by Martin Gabel, who had just worked as producer on Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman for Wanger; that film starred Susan Hayward who would be in the new movie as well.

Wanger said the character of James Aspern was a combination of Shelley, Keats and Byron. He would change the name of Aspern to Ashton to avoid "exploitation of the Bayer product."

In late February, Robert Cummings signed to make the film, which was then called The Lost Love. (He was scheduled to do The Big Curtain for Edward Alperson afterwards.) Filming began March 10, 1947.

The set was not a tranquil one, with Hayward and Gabel quarreling over his interruptions of her line readings. After warning her director to stop, she reportedly picked up a lamp and threw it at him. Gabel never directed another motion picture.

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