Except for Letter From An Unknown Woman, Max Ophuls' American pictures have been unfairly slighted in favor of his later French masterworks, though Caught is catching on as a key Ophuls classic. The Reckless Moment is almost as good as Caught, and shares with it certain noir characteristics as well as common (outsider's) insights into the seamier side of post-war American society: more specifically, into the illusions of domestic security harbored by middle-class women. James Mason is cast against type as a lower-class blackmailer, Joan Bennett is a repressed housewife whose routine (unthinking) existence is shattered by her daughter's involvement with a philanderer, and a murder which she accidentally provokes. Ophuls' European perspective on suburban forties life in Southern California is fascinating.