Suspicion (1941)

Premiered November 9, 1941: SUSPICION, starring Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine, Cedric Hardwicke, and Nigel Bruce.  Directed by Alfred Hitchcock (Shadow of a Doubt, Strangers on a Train, I Confess).

Suspicion exemplifies one of Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest strengths as a director and storyteller: the art of misdirection.  Starting out as a lighthearted romance infused with comedic levity, the story very subtly and gradually turns darker and more ominous, until the tension becomes overwhelming.  Hitchcock takes his time, letting the charming romance between Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine develop in a swirl of playfulness and wit.  But right from the start, Fontaine is continually kept off balance by Grant’s cavalier attitude and irresponsible decisions.  At first, Grant’s behavior is that of an impulsive man-child, and can easily be forgiven, but his actions become increasingly questionable as the story develops, eventually leading Fontaine to believe he has truly evil intentions.  Hitchcock pulls off the gradual transformation in tone using every tool at his disposal, including subtle alterations in the music, lighting, camera angles, cuts to close-up glances, and by the end of the film, drenching the frame in oppressively dark shadows.  Fontaine serves as the audience surrogate, letting us experience the story through her eyes, as Hitchcock deftly plays a game of cat and mouse with the audience.  Every time Fontaine sinks into darkness and suspects Grant is lying, scheming, or worse, Hitchcock leaves us dangling uncomfortably for a short while, then abruptly pulls us back into the light with a whimsical explanation that sets everything right again.  This disorienting rollercoaster ride of doubt and relief is particularly effective because of the brilliant casting of Cary Grant.  Even when Fontaine becomes certain Grant is plotting to kill her, we still believe there’s room for hope because for God’s sake, it’s Cary Grant after all! He can’t possibly be a killer! What are you doing, Hitch? And indeed, the film’s ending deviates from the novel on which it’s based, Before the Fact by Francis Iles, because RKO was concerned about tarnishing Grant’s positive screen image. Film historians have differing opinions about whether Hitchcock wanted the ending to adhere to the book or not, and some have suggested the ending is actually inconclusive and leaves room for potential ambiguity.  Either way, the film’s climax is tense and satisfying.  Joan Fontaine gives an excellent performance laced with subtlety and emotional range, that deservedly earned her an Oscar win. Cary Grant is superb as always, but was snubbed at the Oscars, and reportedly deeply resented the accolades and attention given to his co-star.  Nigel Bruce is on hand to infuse the story with added levity, delivering one of his trademark performances as a bumbling good-natured Englishman, almost as if his Dr. Watson character just stepped off the set of a Sherlock Holmes movie. Suspicion is a superbly crafted thriller, that’s masterfully written, acted, and directed. We give Suspicion 5 out of 5 fedoras.

Crack-Up (1946)

Released September 6, 1946: CRACK-UP, starring Pat O’Brien, Claire Trevor, and Herbert Marshall.  Directed by Irving Reis (The Big Street, The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, All My Sons).

The film opens with a crazed Pat O’Brien smashing through the front door of an art museum at night, tussling with a policeman, then passing out.  We learn that he works at the museum as a forgery expert, and when he comes to, claims that a few hours earlier, he was riding on a train that was involved in a catastrophic collision with an oncoming train, but he can’t remember anything that happened after the crash. O’Brien’s co-workers and the police are skeptical of his story, because no actual train wrecks were reported that evening.  As a result, O’Brien begins to question his own sanity and decides to retrace his steps to figure out what actually happened to him. Following a string of leads, O’Brien is kept busy all night as he uncovers an increasingly complicated web of conspiracy and deceit involving stolen artwork and forgeries.  At the same time, an art expert from Scotland Yard (Herbert Marshall) befriends O’Brien’s girlfriend (Claire Trevor) and shadows O’Brien because he suspects O’Brien may be involved in an art caper. Crack-Up starts with a bang and presents a potentially intriguing mystery, but ultimately gets dragged down by a muddled and contrived plot, that’s further hobbled by a poor casting choice in Pat O’Brien.  A story that centers on art forgeries and stolen paintings is an interesting change of pace from the typical noir fare of murder and mayhem, but the plot feels over-engineered and too intricate for its own good. As O’Brien runs around the city chasing clues, it’s not always clear how or why they’re connected to the main plot. Add to that a series of improbable lucky breaks that go O’Brien’s way, and we end up with a story that’s difficult to invest in. Also, O’Brien is simply not the right actor for the part. Besides lacking the charismatic vitality to play a forceful man of action, O’Brien’s age and general physical shape make it hard to accept that he’s able to scale walls, climb ropes, and maintain stamina throughout the long night. It doesn’t help that the story revolves almost entirely around O’Brien, so Trevor and Marshall are essentially reduced to supporting roles, which is unfortunate. Claire Trevor has considerably more screen magnetism than O’Brien, and the film would certainly have benefitted from having her play a more integral role in the plot. Ironically, O’Brien is pretty much excluded from the film’s rather anti-climactic finale, as he lies unconscious after being drugged while the plot resolves itself without his participation. On the positive side, the film’s greatest asset are its many varied settings and overall visual style, especially the train sequences, a shadowy shipyard, dimly lit train station, and a penny arcade.  The latter is particularly interesting in that it provides a wonderful slice-of-life glimpse into 1940s America, making the arcade scene worth watching simply for its historical value, even if you have no interest in the rest of the film.  But visuals alone can’t save Crack-Up from a convoluted plot, lack of tension and suspense, a lackluster payoff, and a miscast lead. We give Crack-Up 2 out of 5 fedoras.

Murder Is My Beat (1955)

Released February 27, 1955: MURDER IS MY BEAT, starring Paul Langton, Barbara Payton, and Robert Shayne.  Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer (Bluebeard, Detour, Ruthless).

Paul Langton is a police detective assigned to investigate the murder of a man named Frank Deane, who led a mysteriously elusive life.  Deane’s face was badly burned after he was killed, and the only person who can definitively identify him is his girlfriend (Barbara Payton), who left town immediately after the murder, and is the primary suspect. Langton eventually tracks her down, and after spending some time with Payton, begins to feel sympathetic towards her, but the wheels of justice must roll on and Payton is tried and found guilty of Deane’s murder. When Langton escorts her to prison by train, Payton suddenly claims to see Frank Deane standing on a passing station platform, still alive.  She pleads with Langton to help her before it’s too late and the train reaches the prison. Not sure if she’s trying to con him or is telling the truth, Langton finally succumbs to his feelings of affection for her, and together they jump off the train and set out to prove her innocence.  Directed by the man dubbed the “King of B-Movies”, this modest crime mystery oozes low budget in every frame, from cheesy dialog and clumsy fight choreography to cut rate sets and crude lighting.  The acting isn’t much better either. Langton is prone to random bombast, suddenly delivering his lines with over-the-top intensity for no apparent reason.  Perhaps he was trying to compensate for Payton, who gives an almost comatose performance, as the tragic trajectory of her difficult life was clearly starting to take its toll, this being her last significant film role. However, in spite of all the flaws and imperfections, Murder Is My Beat somehow manages to hang together well enough to keep us engaged, thanks to a brisk pace and a serviceable mystery that only gets stronger in the second half. Also, a parade of quirky and memorable supporting players help to make up for the lack of any palpable spark between Langton and Payton. Namely, Deane’s elderly neighbor (Kate MacKenna), the local bartender (Jay Adler), Payton’s roommate (Tracey Roberts), and a gas station attendant (Harry Harvey).  Ulmer wisely gives these secondary players ample dialog and screen time, enabling their idiosyncratic personalities to add some much needed vitality and interest to the film.  Murder Is My Beat won’t win any awards, but it has just enough going for it to make it worth a look, especially if you can ignore its low budget trappings. We give Murder Is My Beat 2.5 out of 5 fedoras.

Out of the Fog (1941)

Released June 14, 1941: OUT OF THE FOG, starring Ida Lupino, John Garfield, and Thomas Mitchell.  Directed by Anatole Litvak (All This, and Heaven Too, Blues in the Night, Sorry, Wrong Number).

Thomas Mitchell and his longtime friend (John Qualen), live and work at the water’s edge in a poor working class section of Sheephead’s Bay, in Brooklyn. Like everyone who lives and works in the neighborhood, their lives are unspectacular and routine, but they do their best to find happiness in simple pleasures. Several nights a week, Mitchell and Qualen escape the daily grind for a few hours by taking their tiny boat out on the bay to fish. It’s a pleasure they both enjoy tremendously, but their lives are thrown into turmoil when a malevolent thug (John Garfield) extorts protection money from local boat owners, threatening to set their boats on fire if they don’t pay a weekly fee. Initially, Mitchell and Qualen protest, but Garfield puts them in an untenable position, leaving them no choice but to pay. To add insult to injury, Garfield begins dating Mitchell’s daughter (Ida Lupino), who still lives at home with Mitchell and his wife. Lupino longs to break out of the drudgery of her dead end working class life, and is drawn to Garfield’s wealth and high flying lifestyle. When she innocently mentions to Garfield that her father has a large nest egg that he’s been saving for years, Garfield wastes no time in turning the screws on Mitchell, demanding all of it. Pushed to the limit, Mitchell must now decide whether to comply or find a way to fight back and get out from under Garfield’s thumb. If you want to see John Garfield play a despicably vile character, this is the movie for you. Not only is he callously heartless (“I got rocks inside me,” he boasts), he’s also smart enough to cover all the angles that could lead to his undoing, resulting in a smug and impenetrable villain who wantonly preys on the weak. When Garfield seemingly reaches the limits of his cruelty, he manages to go a step further with ruthless indifference, and we desperately want to see Mitchell and Qualen find a way to overcome him. But Garfield thrives on the belief that ordinary people will always avoid confrontation and capitulate when faced with the threat of violence, and his continued success openly validates his world view, making for a hopelessly bleak reality.  While Sheephead’s Bay is part of a bigger city, the film focuses on just a small area at the water’s edge, and creates an atmosphere of isolation by having all the action take place at night or indoors.  We never get to see the sun or daylight.  Even when Mitchell and Qualen take their brief fishing respites, it’s at night under a shroud of thick fog.  Garfield inserts himself into this gloomy environment like an alien intruder from a much bigger, brighter, and faster moving world, where only the strong survive, and he easily dominates the timid inhabitants of this desolate locale. Out of the Fog is a gripping examination of average individuals struggling against powerful forces, and the choices they make in the face of adversity.  It’s certainly not a lighthearted or upbeat film (it’s film noir, after all), but Garfield’s ruthlessness is fittingly counterbalanced by Mitchell and Qualen’s warm-hearted friendship and attitudes of kindness, which infuse the story with an undercurrent of hope and optimism.  In keeping with 1940s storytelling sensibilities, the film’s ending wraps everything up in a neat little bow. Perhaps too neat, but it provides us with a welcome sense of resolution.  The film’s excellent supporting cast includes Dead End Kid, Leo Gorcey, and a young Eddie Albert, some 25 years before achieving television fame on Green Acres (1965-1971).  We give Out of the Fog 4 out of 5 fedoras.

Guest in the House (1944)

Released December 8, 1944: GUEST IN THE HOUSE (reissued in 1949 as Satan in Skirts), starring Anne Baxter, Ralph Bellamy, and Ruth Warrick.  Directed by John Brahm (The Lodger,  Singapore, The Brasher Doubloon).

Anne Baxter arrives at the isolated seaside home of Ralph Bellamy and his wife (Ruth Warrick) to recuperate from a recent nervous breakdown.  She’s brought there by Bellamy’s younger brother (Scott McKay), who is Baxter’s fiancé. Outwardly, Baxter is very attractive and friendly, but telltale signs of her psychosis make occasional appearances, such as speaking in an affected and overly-dramatic manner, not wanting her face touched, repeatedly playing a recording of Franz Liszt’s Liebestraume, and exhibiting a hysterical fear of birds. Later on, we also learn she once contemplated suicide.  But in spite of her occasional quirky behavior, Bellamy’s family, that also includes his young daughter (Connie Laird), an aunt (Aline MacMahon), and maid and husband (Margaret Hamilton and Percy Kilbride), happily take her in. But things take a dark turn when Baxter starts obsessing over Bellamy after he casually shows her kindness, and in her mind, she begins to believe they belong together.  So with unwavering determination, she schemes to win Bellamy’s affection and allegiance by breaking apart the family, then stepping in to fill the void in Bellamy’s heart.  She does this by shrewdly using her frail health and feigned innocence as a smoke screen to obfuscate her nefarious intentions.  Bellamy works as a commercial fashion artist, spending long hours in his home studio sketching an attractive model (Marie McDonald) as his subject. The relationship between them is very friendly, but purely platonic. In fact, McDonald lives in Bellamy’s home, and is treated like one of the family members.  This arrangement provides Baxter with the ideal opportunity to advance her own interests by quietly planting a false rumor that Bellamy and McDonald are having an affair, then insidiously manipulating each family member into believing it. As the corrosive rumor begins to take hold, the effect on the family is devastating, much to Baxter’s delight.  All that remains is for her to be there for Bellamy and offer comfort when he’s most vulnerable.  In true dramatic fashion, the film’s climax is staged during a dark stormy night complete with thunder, lightning, and a power outage, creating some beautifully filmed scenes with low light and high drama. Guest in the House offers up a perverse and disturbing melodrama centered around a truly twisted individual, and while the film’s mood is generally light and doesn’t deliver any shocking thrills or surprises, it’s Anne Baxter’s pitch perfect performance as the disturbed, psychotic femme fatale that makes it worth watching. Her subtly peculiar affectations are unsettling and creepy, but not in an overt or threatening way.  She uses ingratiating softness and a facade of vulnerability to manipulate the people around her, making her thoroughly disarming, dangerously subversive, and a delight to watch.   We give Guest in the House 3.5 out 5 fedoras.

The Night Runner (1957)

Premiered February 6, 1957: THE NIGHT RUNNER, starring Ray Danton, Colleen Miller, and Merry Anders.  Directed by Abner Biberman (The Price of Fear, Behind the High Wall, Flood Tide).

After an 18 month stint in a mental hospital for committing an act of “extreme violence”, a review board, acting against the recommendations of psychiatrist John Stephenson, releases Ray Danton back into the world. Intent on resuming a normal life, Danton travels to Los Angeles to find a job and settle down, but on his first job interview, the stigma of revealing he’s an ex-mental patient causes Danton to have a traumatic psychotic episode. Fearing he’s not yet prepared to co-exist in society, he boards a Greyhound bus and travels north with no particular destination in mind.  At a stop along the coast near Santa Barbara, Danton meets a friendly mechanic (Harry Jackson) and his pregnant wife (Merry Anders) and is won over by their welcoming attitude, so he decides to stay in the area for a while. He rents a beachside cottage from Willis Bouchey and develops a strong bond with Bouchey’s grown daughter (Colleen Miller), and eventually the two fall in love, in spite of Bouchey’s fervent disapproval.  With Miller’s support, Danton becomes more self-confident, lands a good job, and is able to contemplate a happy future together with her.  But when Bouchey surreptitiously reads Danton’s private mail and discovers the truth about Danton’s past, he aggressively tries to break the couple apart, with tragic results. Despite a promising setup, The Night Runner is hampered by a story in which nothing of much interest happens.  The bulk of the film revolves around Danton’s efforts to adjust to normal life, which he does quite well and rather unspectacularly.  Aside from the one stress-induced outburst in Los Angeles, the only hints of Danton’s mental instability are occasional awkward pauses during conversations and some lost-in-thought daydreams, but these gradually diminish as the story develops.  There’s simply not enough tension in the narrative to maintain a reasonable level of engagement or suspense. It’s obvious the film is headed towards a climactic moment when Danton will crack up again, but to get there, we must wade through a rather mundane story that’s essentially about nothing more than Danton falling in love and living a normal, uneventful life. When he does finally become unhinged and turns violent, it’s the result of extreme provocation by Bouchey, and while Danton’s reaction is unquestionably excessive, it’s not surprising and is exactly the type of outburst we’ve been anticipating all along, so any shock value is significantly diminished. And in his moment of violent rage, Danton still has the presence of mind to meticulously cover his tracks so that no one, including the authorities, suspect him of any wrongdoing, sidestepping yet another opportunity to inject tension into the story.  The Night Runner isn’t necessarily a bad film, it’s just not a very good thriller. While the acting and production values are competent, and the premise interesting enough to warrant exploration, the film squanders too many choice opportunities for generating true suspense, and instead, serves up a tepid tale with a predictable story arc.  We give The Night Runner 2 out of 5 fedoras.

Detour (1945)

Released November 14, 1945: DETOUR, starring Tom Neal, Ann Savage, and Edmund MacDonald.  Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer (Bluebeard, Ruthless, Murder Is My Beat).

Detour is a quintessential noir film and a shining example of how good storytelling and a riveting performance can overcome the most severe budget and production limitations.  The film begins with a visibly agitated Tom Neal drinking coffee at a roadside diner. Slipping into flashback, his voiceover describes the turbulent events that led to the present moment.  Neal was a musician in New York City, barely scraping together a living at a club where he and his fiancé (Claudia Drake) performed. In an attempt to further her singing career, Drake moves to Hollywood, leaving Neal behind. After struggling to make it on his own, Neal decides to travel to Los Angeles to be with Drake. But not having much money, his only option is to hitchhike.  He steadily thumbs his way westward without incident, until fate throws him a curveball in Arizona when he hitches a ride with Edmund MacDonald, and his journey suddenly takes an unexpectedly bizarre turn.  Things become even more desperate when he encounters a female hitchhiker (Ann Savage), who ends up making his life a living hell. Detour is a very simple film that tells a very simple, but utterly twisted story, that’s further elevated by the performance of a lifetime from Ann Savage.  In an otherwise unspectacular career of B-movies and low-budget features, Detour would immortalize Savage as one of the legendary femme fatales of the silver screen. Viewers are simply unprepared for the caustically volatile performance she delivers.  Savage first appears on screen looking somewhat disheveled and tired, and is reasonably sociable as Neal’s passenger. But after waking up from a short nap, the fireworks begin, as she delivers her lines like a viper spitting venom and turns the screws on a hapless Neal, who is caught completely off guard and eventually finds himself trapped in a truly hopeless situation. This is film noir delivered with uncompromising ferocity and directness.  The unsettling narrative culminates with one of the most cleverly conceived and unexpected deaths on film.  Detour was selected by the Library of Congress in its first group of 100 American films worthy of special preservation, and is a triumph of low budget film making by poverty row director Edgar G. Ulmer, achieving greatness with a simple, effective story, and an arresting performance by Ann Savage.  Because it fell into the public domain many decades ago, Detour was frequently shown on late night TV, and available on cheap VHS and DVD editions.  Sadly, all of these versions were of poor quality with footage that was worn, damaged, or completely missing.  However in 2019, the Criterion Collection issued a beautifully restored version of Detour, making it possible to once again experience this film in its full noir-laden glory. We give Detour 5 out of 5 fedoras.

Steven Geray

Happy birthday to actor Steven Geray – born November 10, 1904 in Ungvar, Austria-Hungary (now Uzhhorod, Ukraine). Although Steven Geray may not be widely remembered among casual film fans, he was a consistent presence in 1940s American cinema and early television, and a fixture of film noir, appearing in a total of 19 noir films.  Geray’s acting career began in the early 1930s in Hungary, where he appeared in movies and on stage with the Hungarian National Theater.  In the latter half of the decade, Geray had English-speaking roles in a handful of British comedies and musicals, including Dance Band (1935), The Student’s Romance (1935), A Star Fell from Heaven (1936), and Let’s Make a Night of It (1937).  As a member of the Folies Bergere, Geray’s stage act included satirical impersonations of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, much to the disdain of the German and Italian governments.  After he was assaulted for ignoring warnings to cease his act, Geray fled Europe and moved to Hollywood, where he eventually landed a small part in Dark Streets of Cairo (1940).  By 1942, Geray’s American film career hit its stride, and over the next two decades he appeared in nearly 100 movies. Geray’s heavy Hungarian accent made him a natural to play foreigners, but he was able to transcend the common typecasting of only spies and scientists, and played a wide variety of characters throughout his career. Geray was always cast in supporting parts, except in So Dark the Night (1946), a noir film in which he was top billed in the role of a French detective. His substantial film noir resume includes: The Shanghai Gesture (1941) (uncredited) with Gene Tierney, The Mask of Dimitrios (1944) with Peter Lorre, Cornered (1945) with Dick Powell, Spellbound (1945) with Gregory Peck, Deadline at Dawn (1946) with Susan Hayward, Gilda (1946) with Rita Hayworth, So Dark the Night (1946) with Micheline Cheirel, Blind Spot (1947) with Constance Dowling, The Unfaithful (1947) with Ann Sheridan, The Dark Past (1948) with William Holden, I Love Trouble (1948) with Franchot Tone, In a Lonely Place (1950) with Humphrey Bogart, A Lady Without Passport (1950) with Hedy Lamarr, Woman on the Run (1950) with Ann Sheridan, The House on Telegraph Hill (1951) with Richard Basehart, Night Without Sleep (1952) with Linda Darnell, Affair in Trinidad (1952) with Rita Hayworth, A Bullet for Joey (1955) with Edward G. Robinson, and New York Confidential (1955) with Broderick Crawford. In addition to film noir, Geray appeared in several notable films, including: Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief (1955), the Oscar-winning All About Eve (1950), and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) with Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell. On television, Geray made numerous guest appearances on such shows as Lassie, The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, Wagon Train, Perry Mason, The Untouchables, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, I Dream of Jeannie, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.  In the late 1960s, Geray directed local theater in Estes Park, Colorado, where he also owned and ran a bar. Geray died in 1973 at age 69.

His Kind of Woman (1951)

Premiered August 21, 1951: HIS KIND OF WOMAN, starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Russell, and Vincent Price.  Directed by John Farrow (The Big Clock, Night Has a Thousand Eyes, A Bullet Is Waiting) and Richard Fleischer (uncredited) (The Narrow Margin, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Soylent Green).

Robert Mitchum is a down-on-his-luck gambler in Los Angeles, who is offered a large sum of money by a group of shady characters to travel to a lavish resort in Mexico and await further instructions.  The “offer” is presented in such a way that Mitchum has no choice but to accept. Once at the resort, he spends his time in the company of various interesting characters that include Jane Russell, Jim Backus, Vincent Price, and Charles McGraw. Most of his attention is devoted to mild flirtations with Russell, however she happens to be romantically involved with Price, who plays an Errol Flynn-type movie star strangely obsessed with hunting.  After several days, Mitchum finally learns why he’s there: an exiled mob boss (Raymond Burr) wants to re-enter the US and plans to use Mitchum’s identity.  When Burr and his thugs finally arrive on their luxurious yacht, Mitchum refuses to cooperate and the situation turns violent. His Kind of Woman is an odd film that can’t quite decide what it wants to be.  The mob-related storyline is unmistakably noir, but only occupies about a third of the film. Most of the story is devoted to Mitchum’s whimsical encounters at the resort. During the film’s climax, when the mob plot becomes viscerally brutal, it’s counterbalanced by a rescue attempt that’s played for pure comedy and slapstick. To understand how this stylistic hodge-podge came to be, we must delve into the chaotic backstory of how this film was made. When director John Farrow delivered the finished film in late 1950, RKO boss Howard Hughes wasn’t happy with it and demanded extensive rewrites, adding an entirely new and costly ending, and replacing Farrow with director Richard Fleischer. Reportedly, Hughes wanted more action, more slapstick, more violence, and more Jane Russell, and was personally involved in the rewrites, that took several months to complete.  After Fleischer finished shooting all the new and retooled scenes, Hughes then decided he didn’t like Lee Van Cleef as the mob boss, and replaced him with Raymond Burr, requiring all the mob scenes to be reshot.  The end result is a peculiar mash up of noir, comedy, adventure, and romance, that seems like a recipe for disaster, but somehow the film manages to hang together (just barely) to deliver a moderately entertaining experience.  Even though the mob plot is effectively put on pause for most of the film, Mitchum’s encounters at the resort are brief and infused with sly humor, providing a rapid fire succession of amusing exchanges that keep the momentum afloat.  In a clever stroke of tongue in cheek humor, Mitchum’s character doesn’t drink alcohol, which is played for a subtle gag every time drinks are served in the film, which is often. Of course, shunning alcohol is not the noir way and certainly was not Mitchum’s way. He reportedly showed up thoroughly inebriated for his climactic scenes on Burr’s yacht. The film is helped along by some sharp and snappy dialog, especially when Mitchum and Russell trade witty one-liners and comebacks.  They were close friends off screen, and their ease and comfort with one another translates into a wonderful on-screen rapport.  In fact, after seeing the first cut of the film, Hughes immediately signed them to star together again in Macao (1952).  In his role of the swashbuckling movie idol, Vincent Price clearly has a good time poking fun at the pretentiousness of movie stardom. His satirical portrayal is in many ways reminiscent of Peter O’Toole’s performance in My Favorite Year (1982), albeit a bit more on the silly side. What really makes His Kind of Woman unusual is that it leans so heavily into both its noir and comedic identities, as opposed to the more commonly encountered noir film that might have a brief moment of comic relief, or a pure comedy that satirizes noir tropes.  The scenes with Mitchum and Burr are about as brutal as they come in 1950s cinema. Mitchum endures a severe beating, is viciously lashed with a belt buckle, and prepped for an excruciatingly slow death. Meanwhile back at the resort, Price prances around in a cape, comically spouting Shakespearian lines as he tries to rally a rescue party of misfits to save Mitchum.  The juxtaposition of such incongruous styles can work if we’re invested enough in the characters and story, and His Kind of Woman mostly pulls it off.  However, if you come to this film expecting a full dose of dark gritty noir, you’ll be rather disappointed.  We give His Kind of Woman 3 out of 5 fedoras.

The Woman in the Window (1944)

Premiered October 25, 1944: THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW, starring Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, Raymond Massey, and Dan Duryea.  Directed by Fritz Lang (Metropolis, Moontide, Ministry of Fear).

Edward G. Robinson plays a middle-aged college professor, living a quiet and stable family life, who finds himself drawn to a painting of a woman that’s on display in a storefront window.  One evening, while standing on the sidewalk admiring the portrait, Robinson is greeted by the actual woman depicted in the painting (Joan Bennett). They talk, and she ends up inviting him for a drink in her apartment. Against his better judgment, Robinson accepts. Once they arrive at Bennett’s apartment, it doesn’t take long for trouble to show up in the form of a jealous suitor (Raymond Massey) who immediately attacks Robinson in a fit of rage and tries to strangle him.  Desperately fighting for his life, Robinson stabs and kills Massey with a pair of scissors that Bennett slips him during the struggle. Faced with a dead body on their hands, the shaken pair are reluctant to involve the police because they feel their story won’t be believed, so they quickly agree to dispose the body and remove any incriminating evidence from Bennett’s apartment.  However, the only way this cover-up will work is if Robinson and Bennett, who only just met, can trust each other to never reveal their deadly secret, which becomes an increasingly stressful burden as the story plays out.  It’s a great setup and the remainder of the film makes the most of it.  Under Fritz Lang’s skilled direction, the narrative moves along at a calculated pace, alternating between tense edge-of-your-seat sequences in which we’re certain Robinson is going to get arrested, and calmer moments that give us a chance to catch our breath and regroup.  This up-and-down pacing keeps us firmly invested and is one of the key reasons the film succeeds. The suspenseful scenes in which Robinson and Bennett are on the verge of being discovered for their crime are some of the best in the film, beginning with Robinson’s attempt to sneak the body out of the apartment undetected, followed by several encounters with police, another attempted killing, and a tense visit to the site where the body was originally dumped. Robinson is often associated with tough guy roles, but here he’s appropriately convincing as a mild-mannered college professor who is thoroughly unprepared for the dire situation into which he’s been thrust. Bennett plays her character at the edges – alternating between sultry confidence and frenzied panic.  She’s not exactly a femme fatale, but we’re never completely certain if she’s using Robinson or is truly a victim herself. Dan Duryea rounds out the stellar cast with another outstanding signature performance as a slimy creep who further complicates Bennett and Robinson’s predicament. If this film has a flaw, it’s the cheap gimmicky ending that steers disappointingly clear of a darker, more grounded outcome, somewhat tarnishing the film’s otherwise impeccable noir pedigree.  But even so, The Woman in the Window is a superb film with strong performances and a gripping story that draws you in and doesn’t let go.  We give The Woman in the Window 4.5 out 5 fedoras.