Rent The Unguarded Moment (1956)

Corridors of Power - The Unguarded Moment review by CH

Brightly lit, in colour or perhaps one should say color, and opening with a high-school bop, The Unguarded Moment (1956) might look at first to be, at most, a diversion. After all, its star – on screen for most of these ninety minutes – is Esther Williams. In fact, no water was injured in the making of this film, but pain is felt by many of those involved as events prove creepily at odds with this small-town setting.

After all, a woman's body has been taken away from a pavement after a murder one night. Another surprise is that all this is based upon a story co-written by Rosalind Russell.

Esther Williams is a music teacher who has received messages from an infatuated pupil, one whom a detective – George Nader (who appears to own one jacket) – believes could be that murderer. After all, the pupil (John Saxon) has been brought up by a man (Edward Andrews) who is more than embittered after his wife left him when their son was a few years old.

All of which, with a duplicitous school Head (Les Tremayne), could have been the stuff of a noir movie a decade earlier (not least a scene filmed from within a wardrobe). Director Harry Keller had by this time become better known for his work on television series. He had, though, made a film, lasting less than an hour, called Red River Shore. That title is now far better known as a song by Bob Dylan. Could Dylan, a great one for watching films and adapting their dialogue, have seen it one some late-night American channel?

As it is, with teacher-pupil relations the stuff of life and films the past sixty decades and more, it is well worth looking at this effective take upon that scenario – and the school's separating into brawling gangs was ahead of West Side Story.