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.

In fact, there are so many coincidences and misunderstandings in this movie it looks as though the makers of 1986's "Ruthless People" looked to this film for inspiration in writing that comedy.Ginger Rogers plays Johnny Victor, an ex-showgirl who has become the mistress of Louis Galt (Stanley Baker). Everything she thinks she knows about him is wrong. She thinks he's been long legally separated from his wife and waiting on the divorce to become final - in fact he is estranged from his wife but very married. She thinks him to be head of a family business - he is, but it's his wife's family business, and any divorce would be the end of his executive life and the end of the front for his real business - counterfeiting illegal coins.Now that's the straight-forward part of the film. The rest of it is one long string of coincidences and misunderstandings. First off, Johnny is friends with Emil (Herbert Lom) who is a con artist. She gives him money because she thinks the money is going to his sick wife. Emil is also working for Louis (several flights down in the chain) selling the counterfeit coins. Neither Louis nor Johnny know that the other one knows Emil. Emil owes Louis a bunch of money he can't pay back because he gambled it away, so he thinks he can get the money back by robbing Johnny's safe when she's away from home. He does so, and escapes detection by Johnny, but he takes something that was a personal gift from Louis. When Louis sees the bracelet up for hock and realizes Emil hocked it he thinks Johnny has a lover and it is Emil. Well, Johnny does have a new love, one she met after she found out Louis was permanently married, but he is an artist in the village, not Emil.The end result is all of these people are arguing with each other yet none of them are on the same page. Emil is the only one who has most of the facts, and he's perfect as the cowardly little weasel. Somehow this not too bright piece of inhuman slime manages to steal even more loot, commit what seems to be the perfect murder, and frame unknowing suspects. One piece of advice here from years of watching Perry Mason - if you are ever in such a catbird seat, just walk away from the scene of the crime and act like you were never there - that's what people who want to appear innocent do. Do not follow the people you framed to see how it all turns out.This is a European noir so there are certain techniques in style and acting that make it different from its American counterparts, but it is still an edge of the seat viewing experience. Only Ginger Rogers and maybe Herbert Lom will likely be familiar to American viewers. If those of you who recognize Lom know him only as Inspector Dreyfuss from the Pink Panther movies you'll find Lom's portrayal of the slowly emotionally unraveling Emil a revelation. Highly recommended.

Decent little thriller with an oddly cast Stanley Baker and hard-to-understand Jacques Bergerac, but the story is pretty good: about the mistaken identity of a thief amid the lies and deceptions of others.Ginger Rogers plays a third-rate performer who is shacked up with Baker, a wealthy businessman. They have a fabulous house in Cannes, and everything seems to me going well until an old acquaintance turns us (Herbert Lom) who seems to bring bad luck to anyone he associates with. Aside from that he is a thief. Rogers soon learns that Baker is really not separated from his wife (Margaret Rawlings) or divorcing her. He's also a crook. In a snit of hysterics, she almost drives her Rolls over a sea cliff and wanders to a funky beach house where she meets Bergerac. They fall in love. But how to get rid of Baker? Meanwhile, Lom robs the Cannes house and the diamond bracelet he steals ends up back with Baker, who gave it to Rogers. So he assumes Rogers and Lom are an item. From there everything goes wrong with botched killing attempts, escapes, and each person trying to figure out who is with who.Rogers looks great and acts imperiled well but beyond that has little to do in the finale as the men thrash it out on the sea cliffs. Lom turns in an excellent and subtle Peter Lorre like performance. Coral Browne steals the one scene she is in. Atmospheric and tense and not bad at all.

This is worth watching for the fine, understated performances by Stanley Baker and Herbert Lom, each of whom exudes menace: a coiled snake and a desperate weakling respectively. The story strains credibility to achieve its effects and keep the plot moving, notwithstanding its reliance on the familiar trappings of melodrama - e.g., greed, betrayal, characters who are not what they seem to be. For a "kept woman," Ginger Rogers displays remarkable innocence. And is it actually possible to open the combination lock on a wall safe by merely turning the dial slowly and listening for clicks? The picture is minor-league Hitchcock (without Hitchcock), and it shows.