Not like I have given it much thought, but I have wondered on occasion exactly how difficult it might to be completely impersonate somebody.  It would be one thing to try to appear to be somebody else around those who have not actually met that person before, but I can’t imagine successfully impersonating another around the people who know them best.

I don’t see how this would work even if you were a person’s identical twin, as Bette Davis is when she plays sisters in 1963’s Dead Ringer.  In this, she plays both poor Edith Phillips and rich twin Margaret de Lorca.  For the sake of simplicity, I will be referring to the characters for each part played by Davis.

Both had been in love with the same wealthy man a long time ago, and Margaret landed him with a false claim of pregnancy.  The sisters had long since stopped communicating, until the death of that husband brings about a tentative reconciliation.  There is much that can be assumed from a conversation between them while Margaret goes through her closet and gives Edith such hand-me-downs as her “old” furs: “They’ll be out of style before I’m out of mourning”.

The family chauffeur takes Edith home to her apartment above the tavern she owns.  They have an interesting talk on the way, where the driver expresses confusion over Edith’s questions about the fate of the child Margaret conceived out-of-wedlock.  He is adamant there has been no child born in the family, boy or girl, in the forty years he has been driving for the estate.

With this, a plan starts forming in Edith’s head.  She summons Margaret for a discussion, only claiming she “knows all about it”, without elaborating upon what “it” might be.  With Margaret seated, Edith shows her the suicide note she has written as herself and then stands behind the chair and shoots her twin in the head at the temple.  Then Edith swaps clothes with Margaret.

Now it is time for Edith to try to pass herself off as her twin and start living the life of luxury.  This leads to the most suspenseful and interesting setups in the film, as Edith has to navigate the many acquaintances in her sister’s orbit of whom she is unfamiliar.

First, she just has to learn how to navigate the house as if it was somewhere she has lived the majority of her life.  She is quickly paid a visit by police detectives who have arrived to inform her of Edith’s suicide.  Butler Cyril Delevanti tells her they are in the living room.  Naturally, she can’t ask where that is, so she says, “Why don’t you show them in here?”  Then the butler heads towards the correct door and Davis follows him to the correct room and says she has changed her mind and will see them there.

One of the detectives on the case is Karl Malden, who happened to be Edith’s boyfriend.  It would definitely be easier for the real Edith to pass off her ruse if her lover wasn’t involved, but that is another complication. 

Then there’s Margaret’s lover, played by Peter Lawford.  He is confused by the complete change in personality of the woman he thinks Davis is.  Lawford is cunning and has the kind of mind which makes him a dangerous person to try to engage in such a deception around.

This a good setup, but something about the viewing experience left me feeling this picture doesn’t maximize its potential.  Some scenes feel a bit laggy, and I find it hard to pinpoint exactly what is bringing down the energy.

It isn’t Davis, who gives it her all, as she did in every movie in which she appeared.  There is one horrific scene she sells on facial expressions alone, given it wouldn’t have been possible to show gore back then. This is when she deliberately seizes a hot fireplace poker after conceding she isn’t able to successfully forge Margaret’s signature. 

Malden is also as solid as always.  It is easy to believe him as a detective, and he completely sold me on a man tormented by the inexplicable suicide of the love of his life. 

Also good in smaller parts are a succession of horrible friends and hanger-ons of Margaret’s whom Edith must now act as if they are friends.  The best of these is Estelle Winwood, who is a pleasure in everything in which I have seen her.  Her best performance is in the Alfred Hitchcock Show episode “There Was an Old Woman”, which I highly recommend for all.

As far as the special effects go, the twinning effects are decent, though modern viewers will likely, and easily, discern how they were accomplished.  What I find strange is this is the second time Davis played twins on the screen, the other occasion being 1946’s A Stolen Life.  Also, since Margaret exits the picture early on, there isn’t even much of the twinning effects.

Paul Henreid, of Casablanca fame, directs, and I confess I was not aware he had roughly as long of a career behind the camera as he did in front of it.  There is nothing about this particular film which says this is the work of an auteur, but there also is nothing embarrassing about how he handles the material.  I say that even though the most suspect performance in the film is a maid played by his daughter, Monika Henreid.  At the risk of sounding cruel, it isn’t surprising she didn’t have much of a career beyond this.

Dead Ringer is a superficially enjoyable but rather empty experience.  It wouldn’t have been appropriate for it to reach for the histrionics of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, yet something kept me from being fully invested in the peril faced by Davis’s murderous sister.  Perhaps the root of the problem is I felt she actually made the right decision and I can understand why she wanted to live the life of wealth she had been denied.  If she had stayed with Malden, his plan for retirement was to buy an egg farm.  Sure, eggs are currently worth their weight in gold, but have you ever smelled one of those places?

Dir: Paul Henreid

Starring Bette Davis, Bette Davis, Karl Malden, Peter Lawford

Watched on Warner Bros. blu-ray