The beautiful Joan Leslie regrets killing her husband but then has the good fortune to travel back in time in 1947's noir fantasy Repeat Performance. This one is really charming.
After pulling the trigger, Sheila (Leslie) rushes off to a New Year's Eve party where she finds her droll but affectionate friend William Williams (Richard Baseheart) recently escaped from a mental institution.
She asks him if she should go to the police to which he replies, "They'd only arrest you for murder. They've got such one track minds." There are lots of cute lines like that in the film.
Sheila puts the blame for everything that went wrong on a trip to London she and her husband, Barney (Louis Hayward), made the previous January. If only she could travel one year back in time! And then, inexplicably, she does.
Someone at Wikipedia categorised this as a time loop movie like Groundhog Day but it's really not, it only features the single trip back in time. But like Groundhog Day, it's left unexplained. Sheila is walking up to her producer's apartment (she's a famous actress) with William when William disappears and her outfit under her fur coat changes. She doesn't realise what's happened until she's talking to her producer, John (Tom Conway).
She sets out trying to make the year different from the first time she lived it but finds destiny to be a stubborn thing--or, as this is a noir, let's say fate. Joan Leslie is gorgeous in this and a great pleasure for a point of view character.
Repeat Performance is available on The Criterion Channel as part of their Holiday Noir collection.
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