THE SECOND WOMAN (1951) **1/2 Psychological noire from a time when much of the population still equated psychological problems with demonic possession. Actually, I'm not sure that the answer is quite as simple as the one we're satisfied with. Psychology, or the mystery posed by the film? Yes. Two obvious possibilities, two more obscure ones; James V. Kern gets you to that crossroads by rolling gently forward from a double flashback. There's nothing remarkable about the performances of Robert Young and Betsy Drake, which can be interpreted as meaning that they stay in character. California must have been beautiful then, not that the people were less strange, only that there were fewer of them and more room in between. Moral of the story? If you're a guy with a lot of confusing problems, go get you one of them insurance investigator women. Hurry! There aren't enough of them to go around. It's kind of like The Usual Suspects, in a way, this film, in that it leaves you with enough to think about after; except that it rubs your nose in the answer first, and it doesn't all quite fit together once you've thought it all the way through.
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