*** out of 5
"You're no psychiatrist, you can't tell truth from a lie. you're just a lovesick quack."
This is the "Inception" of flashbacks. What Chris Nolan's film does for dreams, this did for flashbacks. Maybe it helped inspire his movie "Memento"? The narrated flashbacks details in this story end up going 4 layers deep, making for quite complex storytelling. The drawback to the technique is that it essentially breaks the film up into 4 mini-stories, making it less cohesive than it could have been.
Regardless, this film earns a respectable place in the annals of noir, not only for its use of narration and flashback, but especially for the way it plays out its final act. That it is an act of kindness that ultimately causes Laraine Day's character to reach her come-uppance is a notable example of the kind of cruel irony of fate that pervades the genre.
Momento was a crazy movie. I remember watching it in high school with friends. It was good tho. Like the backwards episode of seinfeld. Nice to see something done different!
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