In 1949, I don't know what your best bet would be if you found a dead guy behind your house. I assume police weren't that smart back then. Even if you did nothing wrong, you might be better off dumping the body somewhere.
The mother (Joan Bennett) in a fairly wealthy family drives to Los Angeles and to confront her 17-year-old daughter's middle-aged criminal boyfriend (Shepperd Strudwick). I don't know what the laws were back then, but statutory rape wasn't mentioned. The criminal offers to break up with the girl if the mother pays him off.
The daughter (Geraldine Brooks) doesn't believe it when the mother tells her what he said. The daughter meets him in the boathouse. He doesn't deny telling her mother this but says it was just a ruse to get money out of her. The girl struggles with him and wisely hits him on the head with an object and runs back to the house. The geezer falls through an inadequate railing and is impaled on an anchor. The mother finds him in the morning, drags his carcass to the family's small boat and dumps him in a swamp.
The body is quickly discovered and identified. A young James Mason soon appears with a stack of love letters the daughter sent him and threatens to hand them over to police. He'll sell them to the mother for what was then a very large sum of money.
What follows could have been an expose on sexist 1940's lending practices. Her husband is away on business and she has to scramble to raise the money. It would have been cheaper and within her means to send her daughter out of the county, send her to Berlin where her father was. She could lie low for a while.
It's a Christmas movie set during the holiday season with an important lesson for teenage viewers.
Even in a wealthy family, the tween son (David Bair) had to share a room with his grandfather (Henry O'Neill).
The film reportedly got bad reviews at the time but is now considered one of Ophul's best movies.
Free on Tubi.
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