Ginger Rogers stars with Stanley Baker and Herbert Lom in "Twist of Fate," a 1954 film shot on location in the Riviera. Even in black and white, the scenery is wonderful.
Rogers is Johnny, an ex-showgirl living on the largesse of her sugar daddy Louis Galt (Baker), who's been separated from his wife supposedly for years and whose divorce will be final any minute. After a fight with him, she runs off and has a minor accident with her car. Going to the nearest house, she meets Pierre (Jacques Bergerac). (In real life, Rogers had the same reaction when she saw him as Dorothy Malone did - she married him.) Johnny and Pierre fall in love, and she wants to leave Louis. First of all, he's a criminal, though she's unaware of this; secondly, he's been lying to her, which she finds out the night of the accident; and thirdly, he turns out to have a violent streak. He announces that he won't let her leave.
Louis sees that the diamond bracelet he gave her is in the hands of a con man (Herbert Lom) and thinks he's her lover. That's where the twist of fate comes in.
Very derivative film, with Rogers excellent as Johnny, and with good performances by Baker and Lom, both scary in different ways.
Jacques Bergerac was a handsome Fremchman, and that was about it. My mother once told me, "He was someone who married beautiful actresses." After he had married a couple of them and done some films, he became the head of Revlon's Paris office. Bless his heart, at 86, he's still with us.
