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Reviews
Doublecross (1956)
Does this film know what it is?
Anton Diffring and Allan Cuthbertsone play spies who steal documents that need to be smuggled out of the country. Anton's wife, played by Delphi Lawrence, goes along with them to a sleepy Cornish fishing village where Donald Houston, the local salmon rustler and well-known bell ringer, is being hounded by a frustrated jobsworth of a customs official played by William Hartnell.
The spies pay Houston to steel a boat and get them over to France. Only Houston overhears their plans and steers them up the English coast and dumps them in said small cove. Delphi warns Houston that her trigger happy husband intends to kill him. So Houston wrestles with Anton long enough to get back to the boat where Delphi has stayed. Anton grabs Cuthbertson's gun and just manages to shoot at the boat and hit the fuel tank. As the boat bears home, Houston and Delphi not only put the sails up but also fall in love. (Is that a metaphor...?)
As everyone, including the Chief Constable and a detective from London, but bar Houston's family, wonder where he is, he returns to put the record straight and defend Delphi. Now a hero in the eyes of the law, the police frustrate Hartnell even more by covering up for Houston's poaching as a minor thing.
This is a pleasant enough film that doesn't quite hit the mark, though. There is no real tension as this is a 1950s film with, at times, 1930s acting and the two don't mix. Delphi reminds me a lot of the mysterious Miss Smith at the beginning of Hitchcock's version of The 39 Steps, especially with her mock Hungarian accent. Her interaction with Anton seems quite old-fashioned and theatrical at times. In fact, Delphi Lawrence is probably the problem here. Although a perfectly good actress herself, she seems to be too mature and sophisticated for Houston's character to fall truly in love with and for her to reciprocate, however much she no longer loves her husband.
There are some excruciatingly embarrassing speeded up scenes of the boat to try and inject some action, but an inconsistency between rough seas and calm waters. There are the running gags of the salmon poaching and bellringing to inject some comic relief but this combines with the lack of authoritative acting from those playing the police, especially in comparison with the bigger name leads, who, however, aren't themselves sharp enough to be action players and a rather embarrassed looking young Kenneth Cope as the coast guard to make the film appear not to know what it is exactly.
Man on the Run (1949)
Not film noir or Brit noir, more film grey. But good nevertheless!
Recently demobbed Kenneth More has just enough screen time to stumble across deserter Derek Farr now posing as the barman at a pub in a sleepy coastal village. (Don't worry, there's no salmon poaching, bell ringing or escaping spies and stolen documents involved in this film...) More threatens to blackmail Farr, who flees to London. Jumping forward 4 weeks, Farr is behind on his rent and decides to sell his service revolver. Unfortunately, just as he pulls the (empty) gun to sell it at the jeweller's, two gunmen (one with an Australian accent and without the tops to his middle two fingers on his left hand) burst in on a raid. The jeweller sets off the alarm which hails a policeman who gets killed by one of the robbers. Farr flees the scene and goes on the run.
Later that day, Farr is in a pub and gets involved in a fight after being falsely accused of pickpocketing. Unfortunately, the gun is seen, so Farr escapes and forces himself on a woman who lives round the corner. She, played by Joan Hopkins, hears Farr's story. He served 4 years and deserted because the army wouldn't extend his compassionate leave as his family fell apart. Feeling sorry for Farr and, missing her own late husband, Joan decides to help him. She tries to get rid of Farr's gun but, instead of dropping it in the river, it lands on a barge for the bargee to take into the police. A policeman stops her and asks to see her identity card thinking she is trying to commit suicide.
Joan smuggles Farr out to her friend's B&B in Suffolk and they spend time together falling in love. The police are soon on to Joan when they put the gun and the sighting of her on the bridge together. Back in London and just before they call her in, she spots a man answering the description of the tall, thin guy with the missing fingers and the Australian accent. She follows him to a flat and manages to get the information to Farr who goes out there to confront them. They, deserters too, manage to steal a car and get Farr out to a pub on the river to get rid of him just as Joan is taken in for questioning where she eventually tells all. Missing the men at the flat, the police manage to trace the stolen car to the pub where there is a shootout. The robbers are arrested.
Farr is court marshalled for desertion and is sentenced to a year in prison. Joan promises to wait for him.
With quite a similar premise to Troubleshooters, this film is allowed to breathe a bit more, although there are still a few leaps of faith as far as the storyline is concerned. Farr's reason for desertion is, of course, more honourable, but it does seem to be a film to highlight the plight of apparently 20,000 deserters after WWII. Again, the police help out our antihero in the end.
Despite Kenneth More's fleeting appearance and a very young Lawrence Harvey trying to be smouldering as a police constable, the redeeming feature of Farr and Joan as the leads is that they still steal the film despite their ordinainess. They could indeed be you or I. The moral of the film is redemption. Not only that, but that each person's story is different and individual, and that, even with a little help from friends, it is ultimately up to us to get ourselves out of trouble and to do the right thing.
Seven Doors to Death (1944)
Right, let's get this one over with...
A shot rings out in a darkened apartment; a woman screams and flees, tricking architect Jimmy McMillan into giving her a ride. She crashes the car and when Jimmy recovers consciousness, the woman has fled again. Jimmy returns to the apartment (How easy was that?) and finds a body; only, when he reports it to the police, they find a different body! He and the woman in question (Mary Rawlins, niece of the late owner of the apartment) (How easily the police bring her in after she has fled...) become suspects, or is that assistants to the police? No one seems to mind. Jimmy wants Mary to pay for the damage to his car, but on a sixpence and over a toaster with no visible means of power (Did they have battery operated toasters in 1940s America?) they completely forget their differences and become allies. For light romantic banter read ham acting. For some reason, they know to hunt for the real killer behind the seven doors of a blind alley housing eccentric suspects and a dark, intricate, spooky cellar.
It was at that point, already confused at the leaps and jumps in the script, that I turned off. I did warn you...
Personal Affair (1953)
Highly recommended but the jury is still out...
Glynis Johns plays Barbara, a 17-year-old schoolgirl who has a crush on her popular Latin teacher, played by Leo Genn. When he gives Barbara extra tuition at his home, his wife, played by Gene Tierney, confronts Barbara about her crush. (Is the wife, a lonely, friendless, insecure American woman, jealous of the girl?) Confused, Barbara rushes home. When the teacher finds out what has happened, he phones Barbara and agrees to meet her to explain in all innocence. This proves to be the last time Barbara is seen alive as she goes missing.
This causes everyone to look at themselves in a kind of An Inspector Calls way. The teacher, at first shunned, is forced by the Head Master to resign. His wife gets more neurotic, especially when a strange man starts to make threatening calls. Barbara's parents are in despair, especially her mother, played by Megs Jenkins. They aren't helped by Barbara's strange, frustrated, chain smoking and accusatory maiden Aunt, played by Pamela Brown who is the spitting image of Anna Massey!
In the end, after 3 days of rumour mongering and dredging the river, Barbara returns almost like a ghost, having fled to an old school friend in London to sort her mind out. The teacher, having been brought in for questioning, is released, but his wife, now thinking the worst, doesn't answer the phone to be told about her husband's release as she thinks it's the hoax caller. Instead, she runs to the church and then to the bridge. About to throw herself over the edge, she is saved by her husband's arrival. They laugh and embrace, and everything is right with the world. The End...
My trouble with the film is mainly the dialogue, which is so stilted, and even almost Shakespearean in places, as to be unnatural. The only natural performance comes from Megs Jenkins as the mother, who slowly loses control of things on a mix of worry and prescription sleeping pills.
The other thing is that everybody is so old for their parts, especially the two main men - Leo Genn as the teacher and Walter Fitzgerald as the father. Genn is dashing and kind, but isn't young enough for any 17-year-old to have a crush on. Fitzgerald doesn't seem of this world and is the most Shakespearean of them all. The conversation between the teacher and the father doesn't make sense, with the father turning on a sixpence, and believing and understanding the teacher on grounds that would lead anyone else to hate the teacher even more.
The worst, though, is Glynis Johns as Barbara who was touching 30 when she played this 17-year-old. The comparison with the teacher's wife at the beginning works as Glynis Johns is good enough an actress to carry it off. The problem comes at the end when the father has a heart-to-heart talk with his wayward daughter. Most 17-year-olds wouldn't have the foggiest idea what he is on about. As if Barbara has gone through some rapidly ageing Epiphany, she is forced to accept what her father says like a 30-year-old!
What at times could have been a good film, even a Brit noir, seems to lose its way. The effect which gave us the montage of everyone that represents their inner thoughts could have been repeated at the end as a recap while the teacher's wife feels 'trapped' by the shadows round the church's west door. The film never loses its 'tweeness' and insight into Britain in the 1950s. This is emphasised by Thora Hird's performance as the teacher's housekeeper...
A Scream in the Dark (1943)
This film falls just short of being truly awful...
An investigative journalist gets sacked and takes up offices as a private detective. His first case sees three men turning up, one after the other, claiming to be the husband of one woman who turns out to be an imposter anyway and part of a fraud scheme. Most of the husbands end up dead. In fact, even the one 'husband' in on the fraud ends up dead in the most improbable of fight scenes.
The trouble with the film is that it shifts from being a detective story to a Marx Brothers' film to Abbott and Costello. The detective's girlfriend does more serious work than he does. The ex-girlfriend of the boyfriend of the fraudulent 'wife' gets completely forgotten after she is killed. This, in itself, might not matter, except that every other corpse involved in the film ends up in the same morgue - run by an actor doing a comedic impersonation of Humphrey Bogart, and missing - even the decapitated real wife!
Strangely enough, the detective's girlfriend is just handed information with no questions asked, in the hotel and at the police station, with the real police detective happily standing 2 feet behind her, saying nothing and accepting her orders!
The whole film clunks from one gag to another, otherwise and deserves to be forgotten.
Scarlet Thread (1951)
Could have been a good film if handled and filmed better.
Lawrence Harvey plays a jumpy, would-be womanising, failed pickpocket, Freddy, who falls in with a jewel thief played by Sydney Tafler. Their first joint assignment takes them out of London, and takes Freddy out of the reluctant and unimpressed arms of Dora Bryan, and to Cambridge. There they bungle the robbery when someone gets in the way of them and the getaway car (driven by Harry Fowler). In his panic, Freddy pulls his gun and shoots the person in the way. Harry Fowler drives off with the body dangling out of the door.
The two crooks are chased and take refuge in a college house where Josephine (played by Kathleen Byron), who has just said goodbye to her ageing lecturer of a father, is bored with life. These two strange men seem interesting.
Both of them fall in love with her and then argue amongst themselves. But the game is up when the getaway car, which Harry Fowler has abandoned, is found and the body of the bystander who got shot for being in the way is identified as Josephine's father.
Although an original screenplay, the film reads like a stage play with the prelude in London tagged on. The outside location shots in London seem particularly poorly filmed and the sudden jump to Cambridge is, well, sudden. Much of the dialogue is muffled and much of the editing is not handled very well. Curiously, a number of actors seem to step over something that isn't there and Tafler's breast pocket has a mind of it's own, even changing sides on his jacket!
The main problem with the film is that it is too short to breathe or to be in a position to build up tension. In fact, the ending is over so quickly that no one is given any time to laugh.
One thing I've never mentioned may seem trivial, but how many British houses in the 50s and 60s had rooms with arches, let alone indoor steps, for no apparent reason? Was this a tradition or a trademark amongst set designers and builders?
Decision Before Dawn (1951)
A brilliant film despite a rambling storyline
This is, allegedly, one of the most important war films ever, because a) it is based on a true story and b) it is set in the then still existing ruins of the actual German cities it is set in. The film was nominated for Best Screen Play Oscar.
Richard Basehart plays a communications officer on his way to an intelligence unit based in a French orphanage run by nuns close to the German border in the last few months of the Second World War. On the way, he and his driver are subject to an unsuccessful ambush by two German soldiers who are taken prisoner and escorted to the unit where German prisoners are trained to become double agents. One of the soldiers is Oskar Werner in his first English-language film.
Soon Basehart is assigned a mission as radio operator alongside a cynical German soldier and ex-thief played by Hans Christian... no, Blech, codenamed Tiger, who knows Mannheim where they are to be based. At the same, Werner, codenamed Happy, is assigned to make his way from Munich to Mannheim to find the whereabouts of a platoon. In the course of his travels (which he must complete in 5 days) in military convoys, braving Allied air raids, Happy encounters Germans with differing attitudes towards the war. He is betrayed to an undercover Gestapo office whom Happy kills during a strike and avoids the advances of Hildegard Neff. As he is posing as a medic, he is chosen to look after a Nazi officer who is either ill or a drug addict and who, by coincidence, has the information Happy needs. In the middle of the night, he resists giving the officer an overdose and leaves him in good health. He narrowly avoids being identified by an old family friend he happens to bump into on a tram as he is travelling under an assumed name and forged papers. When he discovers that he is on a blacklist of spies under that assumed name he quickly gets rid of his papers and goes on the run.
Finally reaching Mannheim, he finds the bombed-out safe house where Basehart and Tiger are hauled up. The radio has been damaged and does not work. Tiger suddenly remembers that his siter-in-law lives nearby but his nephew narrowly fails to shop the three. Their only option is to swim across the Rhine. Tiger gives himself up at the first opportunity and Happy is captured. This leaves Basehart to return to the unit, convey the whereabouts of the platoon and let the Americans win the war.
My trouble with the film is not just the rambling nature of the storyline, confusingly giving equal emphasis to each episode (and thereby downplaying the most significant scene both for the story and for another reason), it is the fact that not only is Basehart given top billing when he isn't present in the film for over half the time, but Gary Merrill (Bette Davis's real life husband) gets second billing as the intelligence unit's chief. The real star of the film is undoubtedly Oskar Werner, but presumably as he isn't allowed to convey the information he has gained because he is the wrong nationality and it has to be an American who wins the War, neither is he allowed top billing as a relatively unknown actor, irrespective of the fact that the camera loves his doleful eyes and thoughtful expressions. His voice is quiet and precise all the way through.
Doctor Syn (1937)
This film creaks somewhat
Unfortunately, Margaret Lockwood isn't involved in this film, one of her first, half as much as she should be. It is a vehicle for classical actor George Arliss to give his rather angular looks to camera. This was Arliss's final film and one of Gaumont's final films too!
Rather like Jamaica Inn, this is a story of smuggling in the 18th Century but set in Romney Marshes rather than Cornwall. It starts though with a prelude of a man, his tongue cut out and his ears cut off, being abandoned on a desert island by a pirate and his men.
We cut to Dymchurch where Margaret Lockwood, the local barmaid, is being courted by both the reliable but rather elderly schoolmaster (whom she doesn't love) and the rather wayward but dashing son of the squire (whom she does love). However, Dr Syn's sermon is cut short by a signal that the navy is arriving to check out rumours of smuggling. Of course, almost everyone is in on the smuggling, except for the doctor who believes the stories of the marsh spirits that ride at night - they are, of course, the smugglers in disguise.
Among the navy crew is the Mulatto that the pirate left for dead. The pirate who is buried in Dymchurch cemetery. Like a sniffer dog, the Mulatto uses his heightened senses to confirm that something is up and after a couple of wild goose chases, Dr Syn realises that the game is up. The pirate's tomb is found to be empty for a start as Dr Syn is, in fact, the pirate in disguise and the leader of the smugglers! Not only that, but he turns out to be Margaret Lockwood's father!
When the schoolmaster is killed, Dr Syn's parting gift to his daughter is a special dispensation for her to marry the squire's son.
This film creaks somewhat and does Arliss's distinguished career no justice as he himself is at least 20 years too old for the part. The only sparks for me are the relationship between Margaret Lockwood and John Loder as the square's son, and the masks in their frightening simplicity of the 'marsh spirits'. The little comic scenes seem to jar somewhat. The Disney version - Scarecrow of Romney Marsh - with Patrick McGoohan apparently handled the action better.
A Twist of Sand (1968)
All for nothing...
Unfortunately this film wasn't helped by the fact that the sound was out of synch for the second half. It didn't help either that it jumped about quite a bit.
We start with Richard Johnson and Roy Dotrice narrowly evading customs officials in Malta by throwing their contraband rifles and ammunition, meant for Cyprus, over board. All this during the opening credits.
Johnson feels reminded of his most dangerous mission during the war when he had to command a submarine through dangerous reefs and rocks in what is now Namibia to reach a secret newly designed German U-Boot, sink it without trace and ensure no one survived. He botches the mission by accidentally letting off a flare and we learn that he personally shoots anyone jumping overboard to escape and also, possibly, the native folk who have come out onto the shore to observe. (Quite how he did that with one pistol and in about 30 seconds is left to our imagination...) Roy Dotrice (who spends a lot of time with his shirt off) was a member of the crew.
All of a sudden (back in 1968) Jeremy Kemp, another ex-member of the crew, jumps on board the torpedo boat, along with his sidekick, a non-verbal German played by Peter Vaughan. Quite whether Kemp's accent is British or South African is left to the imagination. At least he can't be playing his usual German (can he?). It is also a mystery that, whilst everyone is sweating like mad in the Maltese heat with either their shirt off or with most of their buttons undone, Kemp turns up in a black high-necked sweater and a donkey jacket!
(The two scenes - the flashback to the war and Jeremy Kemp turning up should, in my opinion, have been the other way round.)
For no apparent reason and to Johnson's annoyance, Honor Blackman turns up the next morning. Further to doing a good job later in the film of falling over and having evidently smuggled a whole trousseau on board, she does actually have something to do with the storyline. Kemp and her husband were involved in smuggling diamonds but Blackman is the only one to know exactly where the biggest stash of diamonds is hidden as her husband has died. She will only say that they are inland from the bay where Johnson sank the German U-Boot and, of course, if he steered through the reefs and rocks then, he can do it again.
No sooner has Johnson agreed than they are off the coast of South West Africa. There is a completely useless scene along the way at a port where they call to pick up supplies. A Diamond Security Police Inspector threatens to arrest them on the way back if they are smuggling diamonds (SDPOILER ALERT) but, of course, we never see the return trip! Johnson manages to steer the boat through the rocks but does so in such a violent way that a) he throws everyone about, b) loses the lifeboat and c) makes you wonder how the hell he managed to get a submarine through there during the War in the first place! (The boat is very obviously a model as the 'person' at the wheel a) never moves and has no facial features and b) is wearing a white shirt when Johnson at the helm is wearing a blue shirt!)
Lo and behold, they moor up right next to the rusting German U-Boot's tower and it is confirmed that Peter Vaughan's character was the only survivor of the attack. Honor Blackman now reveals that the diamonds are hidden in an old ship wreck 3 miles inland. So they all set off. With no visible bottles of water...!
When they reach the ship wreck it is now half buried in sand, the half where the diamonds are, and so our adventurous group decide to work their way along inside. Roy Dotrice actually finds the diamonds but Jeremy Kemp shows his true colours by snatching them off him and causing an old iron cannon to fall on him and kill him. He inadvertently also injures Peter Vaughan. The group returns the best way they can. Johnson, out of remorse, helps Vaughan and they all narrowly escape not only a sandstorm but also any accusations of plagiarism from the writers of Ice Cold in Alex!
Back at the bay we wonder how they got off the boat in the first place when they lost the wooden lifeboat getting there, only to see an inflatable rubber dinghy for the first time. When Kemp tries to shoot Johnson, Blackman throws the bag containing the diamonds at him but the bag ends up in the sea, lost forever. Vaughan is by now beside himself with guilt at being the only survivor of the sunken U-Boot but, in his attempt to calm him down, Kemp runs into Vaughan's flick knife and Vaughan collapses on the rocks. All of a sudden, Johnson and Blackman make their escape in the boat. The trip and, quite frankly, the film have all been for nothing...
Dead Reckoning (1946)
A bout as noir as you can get...
This film noir is about as noir as you can get. Well, short of To Have and To Have Not and Double Indemnity. Throw in an accusation of being The Maltese Falcon in disguise with more than a hint of dialogue rejects from Casablanca and you have Dead Reckoning.
Bogart plays ex-paratrouper Rìp Murdock. (Yes, a leading man called Murdock!) He has been called to Washington with his best buddy but it is only on the train that he finds out that his buddy has been living under a false name. When the buddy finds out he's up for a Congressional Medal of Honour, he does a runner and Murdock is given permission to find out why.
Turning up in his buddy's home town down in the tropics, Murdock finds he's expected but before they can meet the buddy is killed in a car crash. Thinking something is up, Murdock finds his buddy was featured in the newspapers a while back under his real name for the murder of a woman's husband. That woman is an ex-nightclub singer, played by Lizabeth Scott, variously called Coral Chandler (yes, Chandler), Dusty or Mike! At the nightclub Murdock encounters the Cinderella with the husky voice but also a waiter who was supposed to have been a witness to the murder, who in turn is scared of his boss and the nightclub heavy and has a letter for Murdock from his buddy. The boss and the heavy don't like Murdock snooping and so they knock him out and deliver him back to his hotel where he wakes up with the waiter dead in the next bed and the letter missing. Murdock dumps the body back on the nightclub boss.
Murdock tries to engage a local safe cracker, whose son 'collects' World War Two ammunition, to steal the letter off the nightclub boss but he won't do it. Murdock has to go it alone and, of course, gets duffed up.
Then Coral or Dusty or Mike tells him that the nightclub boss has the gun from the murder and, even though he is beginning not to believe her, Murdock goes in again. Only, when he leaves, Coral or Dusty or Mike shoots the nightclub boss thinking it's Murdock coming out of the nightclub first. Now he really doesn't trust her and so he stages his own car accident.
At the hospital, Murdock phones his report in and then goes in to see a very serene Coral or Dus... (you get me) pass away.
This isn't the best, but Bogart makes the most of the dialogue if not the whole movie. Scott pretty soon gives up trying to understand the nuances of her dialogue and simply smolders as probably the next most fatal of femmes fatales short of Barbara Stanwyck. Scott, though, doesn't have Stanwyck's depth. The nightclub boss is... the nightclub boss and his henchman is just plain weird, especially when he turns his leap of death from the burning nightclub into a scene from Abbott and Costello. The vast majority of the budget must have gone on Bogart, although, to give the film its due, there is a pleasing amount of shadows and menacing camera angles.
The weirdest thing, apart from the dead body of the waiter never being mentioned again after is dumped on the nightclub boss, is the make-up. The morning after Bogart really gets duffed up with blood and wounds all over his face, he only has to have a shave and there isn't a scar in sight! And the morning after the terrific car accident at high speed at the end of the film, with no one wearing seatbelts, Bogart is jumping around like a 5-year-old and Scott, who admittedly is supposed to be dying and is bandaged up a bit, doesn't have a single mark on her!
Trent's Last Case (1952)
If this was Trent's last case, I wonder if his earlier cases were any better...?
Retired artist and gentleman investigative journalist (or something like that) Trent, played by Michael Wilding, is sent to investigate the death of a wealthy man, eventually played by Orson Welles. He gets past other reporters and the police by posing as the widow's brother. He finds an old friend who turns out to be the widow's uncle. He is turned away at the door by one of the dead man's secretaries, the one who turns out to be the widow's lover. The widow turns out to be Margaret Lockwood.
At the inquest, the person who found the body turns out to be the gardener's boy played by Kenneth Williams with the campest false Welsh accent. Trent finds himself falling for Margaret Lockwood's character, conveniently also called Margaret. The various secretaries are at loggerheads and the jury decide on suicide.
The story is that Orson Welles asks his secretary to take a package to a hotel in Dover and ask for someone called George Harrison. He travels with the secretary until they are level with the 9th hole of the local golf course when he decides to walk back home. The uncle later confirms that, whilst out walking himself, he sees Welles. Margaret hears him come back home. The butler sees him making a phone call after bringing up his whisky nightcap. Yet he is found dead the next morning behind the potting shed, fully clothed, even though his false teeth are in his bedroom. Everyone makes out Welles was agitated of late. Oh, and Trent finds he's falling in love with Margaret, even though she makes it plain she doesn't want his help.
Trent comes to the conclusion that it is the secretary what done it, but rather than file his report, he gives it to Margaret and goes into hiding.
When the newspaper hound him for the report after 6 weeks, Trent confronts the secretary who explains that the trip to Dover was a set up after Welles had seen him in a clinch with Margaret. Advising the secretary to take his gun with him, Welles takes it back off him as he goes to return home sending the secretary off to Dover. Smelling a rat, the secretary pulls over and opens the package, only to find money and diamonds. Fearing he's being framed for a robbery out of revenge for being found with Margaret, he sets off back to the house, only to find Welles dead at the side of the road, apparently having committed suicide. The secretary sets up the elaborate suicide story to give himself an alibi but, when he reaches Dover there is, of course, no George Harrison.
Trent returns to Margaret's house to tell her and her uncle the good news, only for the uncle to admit it was HE who killed Welles with the secretary's gun by accident in an argument. Trent tells the uncle to go to the local, but before we can find out whether Trent means the local pub or a code word for the local police station, Michael Wilding and Margaret Lockwood laugh, kiss and the film ends!
This film trundles along, although it seems rather drawn out. Thankfully, Welles only has third billing as he doesn't appear until the flashbacks nearly an hour into the film. He should, however, have sacked the makeup artist as his makeup is far too heavy. You can even see the join on the bridge of his ridiculously false nose. He also does the tiresome thing in films where he lights a cigar and throws the match on the floor. He is sat in his own drawing room! Not only that, this is just after he has thrown a half-smoked cigar onto the same drawing room floor! A scene at a Covent Garden concert has Margaret Lockwood dolled up like Queen Victoria with, I am positive, sparkles on her face.
Talking of Margaret Lockwood's face, Trent does a portrait of her whilst he's in hiding from a sketch he made quite illegally at the inquest (artists have to do trial sketches from memory). He asks his butler (yes!) if it's a good likeness (even though the poor guy has probably only seen her photograph in the newspaper). The butler says yes, even though her famous and, with this rather caggy-handed makeup artist, rather prominent beauty spot very clearly missing.
Wilding and Lockwood actually make quite a handsome couple. It is Welles who is weird in his rather failed attempt to turn this into a film noir...
The Flying Squad (1940)
I gave it a 3, but it deserves far less
This was truly awful. Made in 1940, it is not just stuck in the 30s, it might as well have been made then. The acting is wooden, the script is negligible, the staging is as wooden as the acting and, again, the makeup is heavy - the police detective might as well have been a drag artist and Basil Radford (a grass between the smuggling gang and the police) turns up almost in blackface at the beginning! (We didn't last long enough to witness Radford's apparently famously witty final line.)
The story is of a smuggling gang headed up (rather unconvincingly) by a gentleman gangster/thief/whatever played by Jack Hawkins. Even he and a cameo part from Kathleen Harrison cannot save this film.
Typical of Edgar Wallace, there is a parachuted-in American, but why does it have to be the sister of the gang member Hawkins got rid of for threatening to go to the police, a character who is very clearly English? When Hawkins spins her a yarn that it was the police who killed her brother (and she believes him!) the final straw came when she a) decides to join the smuggling gang to avenge her brother's death without a second thought and b) has a car accident on her first job, only for the over made-up detective who has been tailing her to fall in love with her! Jeez...!
The Big Sleep (1946)
A flawed classic, but who cares?
To be honest, it would take a month of Sundays to unravel the plotline to The Big Sleep and that, apparently, after parts of the director's cut were significantly re-scripted and shot to take advantage of the public's fascination with Bogie and Bacall. (And am I glad they did that.) At one stage, the plot had got so complicated that Chandler was asked to clarify a point. Chandler had to admit he didn't know either!
Basically, an elderly General calls in Humphrey Bogart, playing Raymond Chandler's famous private detective Philip Marlowe in the character's first cinematic outing, to stop his younger daughter, Carmen, from being blackmailed yet again for gambling debts. He is stopped by the General's elder daughter Vivian, played very maturely by Lauren Bacall considering she was only 20/21, before he can leave, believing her father has hired him for something else. There is already a spark of "Will they, won't they?"
Marlowe stakes out the blackmailer's bookshop and follows him to his home. Staking the home out, he sees Carmen arrive and later hears a gunshot and a woman's scream and sees two cars speed away. Inside the house he finds Carmen out of her brain on drugs and/or alcohol and the bookshop owner dead on the floor. A secret camera is revealed, minus its film.
The storyline starts to get complicated when Marlowe's police informer tells him that the General's chauffer is about to be fished out of the river, evidently murdered before he drove into the water...
Having solved the problem of Carmen and having received a handsome cheque from the General in return, Marlowe discovers that Vivian has problems of her own; she is being blackmailed by the owner of the casino she goes to! Vivian also begins to pop up everywhere, rendering some of the storyline meaningless, contradictory and impossible to follow.
A number of re-writes meant that the cinema theatre version wasn't released until 1946, rendering wartime references, but no direct mention of the war, confusing too. This was to bolster the onscreen relationship of Bogart and Bacall (and, by now, offscreen relationship as they had married in May 1945). A 1997 release of the original 1945 version of the film confirmed that this had been a case where "studio interference" was exactly the right thing.
Bogart and Bacall just sizzle together. Whereas the interaction between Marlowe's character and Carmen early on in the film lead to typical Bogart/Marlowe throwaway lines such as the brilliant "She tried to sit in my lap while I was standing up", Bogart and Bacall's verbal warfare, sometimes delivered at an overlapping, frantic pace, and often inuendo-filled dialogue simply draws you into their relationship. Bogart had encouraged Bacall to steal scenes in To Have and To Have Not and many of the scenes in this film had Carmen's involvement shaved down. However, when you slink about in subtle shoulderpads, scratch a crossed leg or two, deliver "The Look" and the sultry, smoky voice, and give the general appearance of being as much an antihero to the general film studio 'glamour factory' as Katherine Hepburn (making them firm friends by the time of the filming of Bogart and Hepburn's African Queen), frankly, my dear, who gives a damn?!
Brilliant scenes such as when Vivian sashays into Marlowe's office speak for themselves:
- So you do get up? I was beginning to think perhaps you worked in bed like Marcel Proust.
- Who's he?
- You wouldn't know him. A French writer.
- Come into my boudoir...
-Do you want to tell me now?
- Tell you what?
- What it is you're trying to find out. You know, it's a funny thing. You're trying to find out what your father hired me to find out. And I'm trying to find out why you want to find out.
- You could go on forever, couldn't you?
- Anyway, it'll give us something to talk about next time we meet.
And the ultimate in inuendo in the café: -Speaking of horses, I like to play them myself. But I like to see them work out a little first, see if they're front runners or come from behind, find out what their hole card is, what makes them run.
- Find out mine?
- I think so.
- I'd say you don't like to be rated. You like to get out in front, open up a little lead, take a little breather in the backstretch, and then come home free.
- You don't like to be rated yourself.
- I haven't met anyone yet that can do it. Any suggestions?
- Well, I can't tell till I've seen you over a distance of ground. You've got a touch of class, but I don't know how far you can go.
- A lot depends on who's in the saddle.
But my ultimate favourite scene in this film isn't any dialogue, it's Bacall singing at the casino. Even though she isn't supported by a famous musician/pianist like Hoagy Carmichael as she was in To Have and To Have Not or Dooley Wilson as Sam in Bogart's Casablanca, she is allegedly supported by the Williams Brothers, including a young Andy Williams who must have had his back to the camera. Bacall delivers such an upbeat version of And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine that you almost completely forget the dark undertones of the lyrics: "He socked her in the choppers" and "She's a real sad tomato, she's a busted valentine." It tells the story of a two-timing guy with a string of girlfriends. I don't think it refers to Vivian's jealousy at Marlowe being called in to solve her younger sister's problems, as that has just been resolved and wouldn't advance the plot. It may refer to Vivian's character as we are about to learn that she is being blackmailed for gambling debts as much as her younger sister. It may even refer ironically to Bogart and Bacall in real life and their open and adult relationship, having just got married and there being a 25 year age gap between them, and going on to remain married until Bogart's death at the end of the 50s - all this as Vivien looks on at Marlowe eying up the cigarette girls and cheerily waving to him and evidently wishing him good luck in that department. Or maybe it was a pleasant interlude - which it is - with a popular jazzy number of the time.
Oh, and another thing. Call it the Rosie the Riveter effect, but every time Bogart turns around, there's another devastating woman. In addition to Carmen and Vivian, he comes across not one but two arch bookstore shop assistants (one who doesn't want anything to do with him and the other who positively throws herself at him), a cab-driving dame who tells him she's his gal and to call her in the evenings because she works days, flirty cocktail waitresses and the said cigarette girls. There are more B-list ingenues than you can shake a stick at and who appear to have got work in this manly film noir than in any of a dozen women's pictures from the same year.
What is about ugly male film stars, too? Bogart, Clark Gable and Fred Astaire were all at the back of the queue when it came to dishing out the looks, but they still interest us. Even glamourous yet plain actresses like Bacall, Katherine Hepburn and Bette Davis could also outshine the likes of Marylin Monroe and Audrey Hepburn and make the camera like them for their depth of character to intrigue and fascinate us.
I enjoyed seeing this film again, even if it did end up for the 'Bogart and Bacall' effect rather than the storyline. But, having read the background to the film, maybe that ended up as the full intention of the film, anyway. I could go on about who Mr Routledge was (Bacall's character is Mrs Routledge) but we learn even less about him than we do about the General's 'protégé' Sean Regan whom Carmen is supposed to have murdered. I also missed the bit where Marlowe ends up gaining a key to the murdered bookshop owner's house. But, hey, that might just be a reason to watch the film again.
Walk a Tightrope (1963)
Oh dear. Such a good storyline, shame about the film...
A woman thinks she is being followed by a hit-man. She wanders the streets in desperation only to land by chance at a café over the road from a pub where her husband and his business partner are about to entertain a client. Inside the café, the woman faints and, watched by another shadowy figure, is taken into the manager's office and out through the back door. The woman, the husband and the business partner return home by taxi but not long afterwards the hit-man forces his way in, kills the husband and claims the wife hired him, which she denies, and so wants his money for the job.
To cut a long story short (again, this film is barely longer than an hour), the woman (and the hit-man) are American. The other shadowy figure is also American as he turns up to see her after everything has blown over, only to reveal himself as the woman's first husband, who she is still technically married to. He has been blackmailing her to keep schtum about her bigamy. The woman DID hire the hit-man, but to kill her first, American husband. The chance meeting at the café where the woman fainted meant that the hit-man got the wrong husband...
You see? A clever little story. The only thing is that the film is awful. Both main leads and parachuted-in American Dan Duryea as the hitman and Canadian Patricia Owens as the woman are truly awful and complete misfits for the rest of the cast, if not cimematic history. Duryea, even though he was 55 at the time of the filming - looks at least 10 years older. (He actually died of cancer 4 years later.) He was known for this kind of part but found slim pickings in his later years. Owens, who apparently did a good line in distraught wives, displayed very little acting ability in this film. While she plays 'the quiet woman' for obvious reasons, she displays no depth of character at all, not even in the reveal at the end. The first husband is played by David Bauer who was born in Chicago and fled the anti-Communist hysteria of the US in the 50s. Usually reliable, he only gives a convincing portrayal of someone who, in roughly 10 years, has completely forgotten how to play an American. Even his ridiculously false five o'clock shadow doesn't save him from having no edge whatsoever. You can't really blame him, though, as he only has the last five minutes of the film to establish his character, and he is up against Owens' complete inability to connect.
The film otherwise is a weird mishmash of American and British that ruins the edgy storyline. The start with Duryea stalking Owens is pure American, spoilt by the fact that it is carried out on the hardly mean streets of suburban London. Production values (and budgets) are low. The court room scene where Duryea is committed to trial is evidently written by someone who has either no idea of how the British law and order system works or wasn't paid enough to do any research. Duryea, who has elected to defend himself because the film's budget couldn't run to another actor, is allowed to make a lengthy statement from the dock in which he spills all the beans from his side. Anything else lengthy in the court scene is provided by shots of the hit-man's very simple girlfriend weeping. Maybe it's to cover up the fact that Owens isn't even on the courtroom set most of the time. Most of the rest of the film is taken up with Owens being moody and contrary which, looking back, should make us suspicious of her actions... but doesn't. There is a compete lack of suspense which is only to be expected from the claim that the film is said to have been shot in ten days, edited in six!
The lack of suspense means we don't understand why Owens chooses to walk the streets of London stalked by the hit-man instead of finding somewhere familiar and safe. And the most ridiculous scene is where she returns home after the courtroom scene only for us to see the tape outline of her late husband's body still on the hall floor!
Director Frank Nesbitt only made two other films (one of those being 'Dulcima', which has always left me with a funny feeling, too) and, I'm afraid, it shows...