The Man with a Cloak

The Man with a Cloak (1951)

What strange hold did this man have over the lives of these two beautiful women ?

Set in 19th-century New York, this mystery begins when a Frenchwoman shows up at the home of one of Napoleon's former marshals. The alcoholic man is badly crippled and slowly dying, but this doesn't stop the forthright lady from pushing him to change his will to include his estranged grandson so that he can help out the struggling French Republic. Unfortunately, the dying man's conniving housekeeper and butler, already planning murder to get the money themselves, overhear her and begin plotting her demise.

Date of release
1951-11-27
TMDB
6.8 / 10 (20)
Runtime
1h 24m
Genres
Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Director
Fletcher Markle

Casting

Interesting facts

The Man with a Cloak is a 1951 American film noir drama film directed by Fletcher Markle and starring Joseph Cotten, Barbara Stanwyck, Louis Calhern and Leslie Caron. The screenplay is based on "The Gentleman from Paris", a short story by John Dickson Carr.

Production

Director Fletcher Markle originally wanted Marlene Dietrich for the role of the scheming mistress and Lionel Barrymore for the ailing millionaire. However, Barrymore was too ill and Dietrich declined, with her role awarded to Barbara Stanwyck. During filming, Stanwyck was experiencing a difficult divorce from actor husband Robert Taylor.

Although the film suggests that Poe's name would have been unknown to the other characters in 1848, he was already famous. C. Auguste Dupin appeared in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841), "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" (1842) and "The Purloined Letter" (1844), and Poe's poem “The Raven” earned him great popular acclaim when it was published in 1845.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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