One of two film noirs directed by Austrian émigré Max Ophüls during his brief stay in Hollywood, The Reckless Moment was ostensibly a “woman’s picture,” a fable of a mother’s desperate attempt to shield her daughter from a dangerous Lothario. In Ophüls’ hands, however, the story gives way to a multidimensional portrait of domestic America during the war years and a tender evocation of the loneliness and confusion of the home front. Joan Bennett brings a chipped dignity to the fluttering role of the chain-smoking mother pulled into the dark quicksand by James Mason’s darkly sympathetic blackmailer.