Dead Ringer 1964

For 18 years, identical twin sisters Margaret Bette Davis and Edith Bette Davis have been estranged, each carrying the weight of a long-ago rift. The split began when Margaret faked a pregnancy to “steal” Edith’s fiancé, Francesco “Frank” DeLorca, a wealthy American military officer whom both sisters had dated during World War II. The stakes are personal and financial: Margaret enjoys the security of Frank’s vast wealth, while Edith’s cocktail lounge business teeters on the brink of eviction and bankruptcy.

The two sisters unexpectedly cross paths again at Frank’s funeral, where the pair must confront their painful history. Edith, desperate to reclaim control of her life and her own future, concocts a ruthless plan to settle the score once and for all. She phones Margaret, inviting her to a room above the bar to finally settle their vendetta. When Margaret arrives, Edith murders her in a staged shooting, then swaps clothes with the corpse and makes it look like Margaret killed herself. With this brutal ruse, Edith seizes control of the DeLorca mansion and steps into Margaret’s identity, hoping to erase the past and secure her own position.

Yet the mansion’s atmosphere begins to feel unsettled, and the signs of Edith’s deception accumulate. The household staff grow wary: the Great Dane that had once shown clear animosity toward Margaret now treats Edith with unusual familiarity, almost curiously protective. Edith herself, unlike Margaret, is a smoker—a small but telling habit that jars with the memories the servants hold of the late Margaret. The suspicious eyes of the house’s inner circle grow louder as Edith assumes two crucial roles at once: the widowed heiress and the living portrait of Margaret.

Into this carefully constructed illusion steps Jim, a police detective who had been seeing Edith before she faked her own suicide. Jim’s inquiries begin as casual questions but soon chip away at Edith’s cover, as he repeatedly encounters the supposed Margaret and she must improvise to maintain the facade. The plot thickens when Tony, Margaret’s former lover, unexpectedly returns and immediately senses something is off. He recognizes Edith, not Margaret, and begins to press for truth. In a dangerous turn, he tries to leverage Edith by threatening exposure, demanding expensive jewelry as payment for his silence. Edith’s plan encounters trouble when she discovers that Margaret and Tony had previously conspired to poison Frank, a revelation that shatters her confident control.

A confrontation with Tony escalates as he taunts Edith, and the two exchange heated words. In a dramatic moment, Margaret’s loyal Great Dane intervenes, attacking Tony and fatally ending the threat. This act—seemingly a final reminder of the dog’s loyalty to Margaret—further unsettles Edith’s already precarious mask.

As suspicion deepens, Jim advances the investigation with more determined resolve. He arranges the exhumation of Frank’s body and finds traces of arsenic, a damning clue that reopens the case and points toward murder rather than suicide. When Jim finally confronts the woman he believes to be Margaret, Edith makes a last, desperate bid to maintain the deception by denying her true identity. Yet Jim remains skeptical, holding to the line that “Edie would never hurt a fly” and thus refusing to accept Edith’s confession as truth.

The evidence mounts, and Edith’s carefully constructed lie begins to crumble under the weight of forensic findings and inconsistent testimonies. Convinced of Edith’s central role in the killings, the authorities proceed with a formal arrest and a high-stakes trial. Edith is convicted of murder, condemned to the death sentence, and led from the courthouse with no immediate hope of reprieve. As she is taken away to face the gas chamber, Jim approaches her and repeats the old line, challenging her final identity: is she truly Edith, or has the person she has been all along been someone else? Her response—an assertion of defiance in the face of judgment—leaves the truth suspended in the tense air of the courtroom and the inevitable consequences of a life built on deception.

In the end, the film lingers on the courtroom’s conclusions and the chilling transformation of Edith, a woman who chose power through a fatal act of impersonation and murder. The story remains a stark study in identity, loyalty, and the cost of revenge, carried by a performance that juxtaposes tenderness with ruthlessness and a plot that twists the line between illusion and reality until the final, irrevocable moment.