Ambiguity of the movie and its characters

There are some interesting speculations in your post. I agree with you that a reading of the film where Lilith (Helen Walker) is truly a conscientious and caring psychologist with a delusional patient is possible. However, I don't buy Grindle putting $150 in the envelope. There is nothing to suggest he is any kind of a shakedown artist. He would stand to gain precisely nothing and would stand to lose $150 with the play you suggest. If there really only was $150 in the envelope, then it was Stanton who put it there.

******** SPOILER ALERT!!! *********

While you do make some interesting points (and what a spectacular scene between Lilith and Stan towards the end!), I think it is pretty clear that Lilith has set Stan up, conned the con man, as it were, and the movie is painting her as the queen of the cons...notwithstanding his own skills, Stan was in way over his head.

I feel certain in saying this for several reasons. I agree that Grindle could not have swindled Stan. First of all, a con man like Stan would definitely have counted the $150K at some point. I also really can't see any reason why Grindle would try to shortchange Stan, considering how much he admired Tyrone's "powers" (ha!).

More importantly, Lilith knew there was (or was supposed to be) $150K in the envelope because Stan told her so in the scene where they meet on the boat on Lake Michigan. She should have acted as surprised as Stan was at the end if she wasn't guilty and there wasn't enough money in the envelope. Also, you can see how reluctant she is for Stan to open the envelope when he picks it up from her; he wants Lilith to keep some of the money so that he has a back up in case he gets picked up by the police, presumably. She insists that he should keep it all because if he came back to her, he would lead the authorities right to her as well. It struck me as odd at the time that Lilith didn't even want some of the money for her trouble...and when Stan found out the truth, I had an "a-ha" moment.

Part of what makes that last scene with Stan and Lilith so great is that it really does make us wonder whether Stan was crazy or not (and it clearly makes Stan wonder as well). Even during that scene, I knew deep down that Stan wasn't crazy, but that he got swindled...and that's probably even worse. I think Stan knew it as well...I think he begins his downward spiral at the end not because he is afraid he is crazy, but because he knows he fell victim to the very ruse he had been using his whole career to trick people.





"Remember last week when you asked me what the definition of irony was......."

Hi there, funkfry here... I just rewatched the movie for the first time in a couple years and thought I'd come around here to see what the conversation is. I'm glad my original comments have had such a good response. In fact one person was so excited about them that she sent me a whole bunch of Tyrone Power movies so I could review those too! Unfortunately although many are quite good, especially "Prince of Foxes", I haven't seen another movie where Tyrone Power is just so incredibly well suited to his role.

I'm surprise so many of the responders have said "Stan would have counted the money first." You can clearly see the envelope is still sealed when he gives it to Lillith. At that point he thinks that he's really got Grindle hooked so he's not that hugely concerned about the "insurance" fund. Certainly it's obvious that Lillith was just tricking him and that she exchanged the money... but then maybe that's TOO obvious. And the envelope is still sealed. It's not as if Grindle was a particularly trusting soul, was he? I just think the film presents more angles than just the most obvious one where he got outsmarted by a better con. I'm not convinced that he hallucinated the meeting at the river when she tried to seduce him, plus how would he have gotten the information on Grindle without Lillith's help? Then again, just because I'm not convinced doesn't mean I'm not open to the possibility. In the meeting of the river, there are some odd occurrences, such as the way their last lines of dialog are drowned out by the motor. That could be the sign of a fragmenting auditory hallucination. And perhaps Stan snuck back into Lillith's office and stole the records of Grindle's sessions to get that information.

I don't believe the film was clearly saying one thing or the other; they wanted us to be uncertain ourselves at that point, as to what is and what is not real. That makes the whole film much more interesting.

Did I not love him, Cooch? MY OWN FLESH I DIDN'T LOVE BETTER!!! But he had to say 'Nooooooooo'

I'm inclined to believe that Lilith is setting Stan up to doubt his own sanity so as to make it easier to deal with him, but it seems just possible that Grindle deliberately gave him less money than he claimed, perhaps testing him.

The other ambiguity of course is the question of the possibility of the genuine supernatural existing alongside of the bogus mystical trickery of Zeena's mind reading act and Stanton's mediumistic powers. The tarot cards that Zeena believes in may also hold genuine predictions of the future, but it's up to each viewer to determine how much might be real and how much just coincidence. It's an unusually thoughtful and interesting way of presenting these ideas, for a movie made in the Forties.