Madeline (Leslie Caron) arrives in the United States to meet with a horrible old man, Mr. Tevenet (Louis Calhern). Why? Because Tevenet's grandson, a revolutionary, wants money to help him and the republican cause*. Tevenet is not in favor of the new republic and is a nasty old crank...but inexplicably likes Madeline and asks her to stay. This is a problem, as the staff in the Tevenet household was planning on taking all his money once the old man dies...and now, potentially, he'll give it to the grandson. How will they try to stop Madeline? And, how will Madeline's new acquaintance (Joseph Cotten) fit in to all this?When "The Man With a Cloak" debuted, it lost a ton of money (several million in today's money). Does this mean the film is terrible or was it just a good film that didn't find a market? After all, with Barbara Stanwyck, Joseph Cotten and Leslie Caron, it obviously had some excellent actors in the picture. I found this film to be extremely talky. All too often, instead of action, folks talked...and talked. Sadly, there was a great fight scene near the end...but it was too little, too late. Plus, instead of just ending there, the film went on a bit...resulting in a very good ending being not so very good. Worth watching if you are a bit fan of the actors...otherwise an easy film to skip. Or, perhaps, you might want to watch the film as there are a few clues scattered here and there about who Dupin actually is.By the way, there is a trick or treating scene in the film. The film is set around 1940...but trick or treating didn't come into vogue until the 1920s. Oops.

It's 1848. Young Frenchwoman Madeline Minot (Leslie Caron) arrives in NYC to see Charles Francois Thevenet (Louis Calhern). He is the wealthy grandfather of her fiancé and had been with Napoleon. His grandson hopes that he's willing to support the Republic. She is introduced to Lorna Bounty (Barbara Stanwyck) who manages his affairs and tries to keep Minot away from him. She pushes her way in to ask for money to help the cause. Bounty and the butler Martin seems to be waiting for the old man to die and leave the fortune to them. They are not happy that Minot is invited to stay. The only man who helps her is the broke Dupin (Joseph Cotten), the man with a cloak. Minot tells him that they're trying to kill Thevenet.The movie starts very simply and there is no mystery. There is some overacting and unimpressive writing at the beginning. The movie does improve a little. Stanwyck is quite good as a cold calculating character. She's like a black widow spider. However it's not as dark as it needs to be. I wanted the Dupin character to be more complicated and more murky. The movie never gets truly interesting. There is a reveal of the name at the end but I don't see it as that fascinating or that enlightening. It answers a question that nobody is even asking.

Not bad, but aside from the "surprise" last denouement, quite an unremarkable period piece. A heavy bit of Melodrama with some interesting Dialog exchanges. It all seems rather confined and is not as much gloomy as it is less roomy.Things are strung together with as much threading as necessary but it does seem to ramble a bit and is lesser for it. The suspense suffers as things can get a bit talky with much ado about drinking and fortunes.But it is Worth a Watch for its sums are better than the parts and it comes together nicely, if suddenly, and makes the experience worthwhile. There are some offbeat Characters and some nice interplay, but in the end it could have used more tension and less talk.

A curious film hampered by an overwritten and stagy script, Man With a Cloak starts off looking like it might deserve to be as forgotten as it apparently is. However it recovers nicely when we see its plot unfold. Joseph Cotten plays Dupin, an intellectual, fond of drinking, but without a steady income, who spends much of his time in the local establishment owned by the kindly yet pragmatic Flaherty (Jim Backus). The young French woman Madeline Minot (Leslie Caron) arrives in New York from France with a letter of introduction from her fiancée, now manning the barricades in Paris, to his grandfather, the wealthy but dying Charles Therverner (Louis Calhern) who must spend his last days surrounded by the avaricious staff of the house, who impatiently await his death, in the vain hope that they will somehow get his money. Barbara Stanwick, as the head of the house, and Joe De Santis as the brutish and menacing butler, along with Margaret Wycherly as the housekeeper, have waited years for the old man to die, and are now confronted with the arrival of Madeline Minot, who is also seeking the old man's fortune although for the altruistic purpose of aiding the establishment of a republic in France. While the dialog tends towards the verbose, the story maintains your interest, especially the unlikely romance of sorts between Stanwick and De Santis, a romance based not on any mutual attraction, but on their shameless complicity in hastening along the dying process. Cotten, as Dupin, manages to come between them and in the process infuriates the butler though his anger is played with taut control by De Santis, whose performance is memorable. All in all, it is one of those films, that if you can catch it on TCM, is definitely worth watching.