The Bigamist

In the hush of a London suburb that still smells of post-war coal-smoke, Herbert’s double life germinates like a fungus behind floral wallpaper: by day the doting paterfamilias who hoists his giggling twins onto his tweed shoulders, by night the suave commuter gliding toward another hearth where an unsuspecting second wife keeps a duplicate photograph in a tortoiseshell frame. When the postman—unwitting Mercury—delivers Pamela’s crisp ivory envelope addressed to “Mrs. Herbert Endicott, No. 2,” the paper cut she receives is deeper than skin; it is the fissure of her universe. From here the narrative coils backward through flashbulb memories—whispered phone calls, forged signatures on lease agreements, a twice-sold wedding ring—then snaps forward into a courtroom whose oak-panelled gloom seems to absorb even the gasp that escapes when both women discover they share the same anniversary date. The film refuses the melodramatic catfight the poster promises; instead it lingers on the queasy geometry of three adults trying to fit inside a moral space built for two, while the camera—half-peeping tom, half-confessor—watches Herbert’s face calcify from boyish charm into a death-mask of self-disgust. When the verdict arrives, it feels almost incidental: what convicts him is not the law’s gavel but the echo of children’s footsteps in an empty hallway, a sound that follows him even as the fade-out reclaims him for the shadows.