Mon 2 Feb 2015
A Movie Review by Walter Albert: PHANTOM LADY (1944).
Posted by Steve under Mystery movies , Reviews[5] Comments
PHANTOM LADY. Universal Pictures, 1944. Franchot Tone, Ella Raines, Alan Curtis, Aurora Miranda, Thomas Gomez, Fay Helm, Elisha Cook Jr. Based on the novel by Cornell Woolrich. Director: Robert Siodmak.
[Phantom Lady, based on the novel by Cornell Woolrich] is a handsomely staged but wildly improbable tale of an architect (Curtis) who is wrongly convicted of his wife’s murder and of his Girl Friday’s attempt to track down the real murderer.
Curtis is, as usual, bland, and G .F. Raines overacts (something of a feat for someone with very modest acting talents), but Tone has some good scenes as a charmer with a flaw and Elisha Cook’s murder is well-staged. At its best, Woolrich’s world in which shadows seem to pulsate with threats and menace is splendidly captured in this uneven film with its uneasy blend of glibness and implicit peril. Woolrich can’t be beat for texture and atmosphere, and Siodmak and his team have managed to get some of that on film.
February 2nd, 2015 at 2:45 pm
Thomas Gomez is good as the sympathetic cop, and Elisha Cook Jr. has that memorable scene on the drums
I like this better than you, though I agree it has to overcome Curtis and Raines It catches the nightmare structure and quality of the novel quite well and I often visually stunning.
And it is Cornell Woolrich. You have to expect the acting to be at least as purple as the prose.
February 2nd, 2015 at 3:03 pm
Woolrich’s novel was one of my favorite books when I was in my teens. I have not read it since. I think I am afraid that it will not hold up today, even though I know it will.
I did not see the movie until a couple of years ago, and I thought the photography and setting were often stunning. I was disappointed with the ending, but only because the first two thirds of the movie was so superbly done.
I also believe that Ella Raines acting talent is considerably more than Walter’s opinion of her, but almost anyone could have played Curtis’s role, which is rather minor, all things considered.
February 2nd, 2015 at 3:21 pm
Agreed, Steve regarding Ella Raines and the acting business. She was good, although admittedly, not a favorite of mine. As for Alan Curtis, here we diverge as I thought him excellent, not just in Phantom Lady, but in anything he did. My understanding is that had his health and drinking been under control, a much more significant career might have been happened.
February 2nd, 2015 at 5:09 pm
I agree with Steve & Barry about Ella, but I LOVED Walter’s comment!
The drum scene here and the short dance sequence in CRISS CROSS make me wish Siodmak had directed at least one out & out Musical. With his fluid camera work and eye for composition he could have done a memorable job.
February 2nd, 2015 at 6:29 pm
Raines plays the role as written, which is a bit over the top. I can’t fault her for that. Curtis really isn’t in it that much, the only problem is there is so little developed about him in the film some of the suspense about saving him is lessened.
Truffaut’s CONFIDENTIALLY YOURS makes an interesting comparison to this.
The book holds up well, Steve. Some of Woolrich’s lesser works don’t, but all the William Irish novels and the George Hopley are still are effective. Even the melodrama and soap of I MARRIED A DEAD MAN and WALTZ INTO DARKNESS hold up well, but then I always wondered if Woolrich wasn’t practicing witchcraft with his stories because of the level of involvement he created for the reader. I don’t think I ever took longer than three sittings to finish a Woolrich.
I finally reached the point I wouldn’t start one unless I had the time to read straight through.
I don’t think I have ever read a suspense, horror, or supernatural tale that got to me in quite the same way as his NIGHT HAS 1,000 EYES did when I first read it. Some very good books come close, but as well as Helen McCloy handles the Janus solution in THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY or Carr in BURNING COURT neither of them manages quite the frisson at the end of NIGHT. Rereading NIGHT I always think of the last line of his short story “Papa Benjamin.”
“I don’t want to go home in the dark.”
That’s how I always feel reading Woolrich, and only DRACULA and Shirley Jackson’s THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILLS have ever done that for me.