FEAR (1954)
Directed by Roberto Rossellini
83 minutes
Irene Wagner (Ingrid Bergman) has it all: cherubic kids, loyal servants, a chalet in the country, a Mercedes, a distinguished older husband (Mathias Wieman) who works as a research scientist. In her spare time, she oversees a factory that is critical to Germany's industrial recovery. But Irene also has a paramour–and finds herself blackmailed by her lover's ex-girlfriend, who threatens to blow up her marriage unless she submits to escalating demands. Shot in Munich, FEAR takes the outline of a 1910 Stefan Zweig novella and updates it to the post-war present where prosperity and precarity are uncomfortably proximate. What begins as a melodrama soon evolves into an icy essay on modern relationships: marriage as a laboratory experiment. "One shouldn't fear poison when it is used by a doctor," intones Irene's husband, his lab coat not at all reassuring. "One poison is an antidote to another."