Thu 29 Nov 2018
Mystery Movie Review: LURED (1947).
Posted by Steve under Films: Drama/Romance , Reviews[5] Comments
LURED. United Artists, 1947. George Sanders, Lucille Ball, Charles Coburn, Boris Karloff, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Joseph Calleia, Alan Mowbray, George Zucco, Robert Coote, Alan Napier, Tanis Chandler.
Screenplay by Leo Rosten, based on Robert Siodmak’s 1939 French film Pieges (titled Personal Column in the United States). Screenplay of the earlier film by Jacques Companéez and Ernst Neubach. Director: Douglas Sirk.
The title is appropriate. I was lured into watching this film under false pretenses. From the title and what I knew about the story line it was my general impression that this was a film noir movie. Ah, very much not so. I began to suspect something was wrong when I saw the director’s credit. I tried to reassure myself by saying that while I don’t know much about his career, the extravigant Hollywood melodramas Douglas Sirk is best known for didn’t come along until the 1950s.
True enough that Lured is a black-and-white crime film centered on a serial killer responsible for the disappearances and deaths of a number of young women in London, each preceded by a poem sent to Scotland Yard based on the work of Charles Baudelaire. Lucille Ball is an American chorus girl stranded in England. Working at would be called a “dime a dance” hall in the US, one of her co-workers and a close friend goes missing.
So far, so good. This is the part of the movie in which the noirish aspects are the greatest, and in 1947 Lucille Ball had the perfect face for films noir. (To my mind, however, she didn’t have the earthiness of an Audrey Totter, Marie Windsor or Gloria Grahame, but she was quite a beauty, no doubt about it.)
But in any case, off she goes to Scotland Yard, where a totally miscast Charles Coburn as a very non-British inspector persuades her to work for him and act as bait to catch the killer. Besides being a very questionable proposition on the face of it, he hands her a gun for her to protect herself if need be.
It didn’t make any sense to me, then or now as I’m typing this. Worse though, is the change of direction the story takes soon after, as Ball’s character meets and definitely attracts the attention of a nightclub owner played by George Sanders.
And all of a suden the story turns into a sappy romance between two would-be lovers who have no chemistry together. Opinions may vary on this, but I can only report on what I saw.
Which in the end, was neither solid enough to recommend as a mystery (the villain is obvious way too soon) or as a romance, the latter jerry-rigged out of nothing at all.
November 29th, 2018 at 10:49 pm
David Vineyard’s opinion of this film differs considerably from mine. You can read his review here:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=25352
November 29th, 2018 at 11:01 pm
Steve, I commented positively on David’s review. This thing is a lot of fun, and I like it far better than any of Sirk’s so-called masterpieces, Tarnished Angels excepted.
November 30th, 2018 at 9:05 am
I was disappointed myself, Steve. Seemed wildly improbable, overblown and obvious. But don’t miss Sirk’s SLEEP, MY LOVE.
November 30th, 2018 at 5:38 pm
First there is a terrific comic turn in this by George Zucco unlike any role he plays in any other film and he is very good. Second, this was never supposed to be noir, like Sirk’s SCANDAL IN PARIS and SUMMER STORM it is a lush romantic tale meant for much different audiences. Some have claimed and sold it as noir over the years, but it is the same lot that call any black and white crime film made in this era noir. This is a comedy mystery, meant to be droll rather than dark, charming rather than disturbing. If nothing else the structure of the film as Lucy stumbles into one comic but threatening blind alley after another while pursuing the killer.
It is certainly never intended to be taken seriously as either mystery or suspense or it wouldn’t be structured as a series of picaresque adventures more like Hitchcock’s 39 STEPS than NOTORIOUS.
I would argue suspense isn’t the point either, the point is fashion, glamour, romance, and the kind of thing Lubitsch did more than Hitchcock. I do think the mistake about noir comes from too many who think any film with a touch of the German Expressionist style, as this evidences, is noir.
It succeeds as what Sirk meant it to be, but I see no evidence he intended this to be the least noirish instead of a dark comedy pitting the glamorous and comedic Ball against a series of grotesque misadventures and romance.
This fits in very much with Sirk’s SUMMER STORM (which has some claim to noirish) and SCANDAL IN PARIS as rather dark romantic comedy thrillers, but selling it as noir is a misunderstanding of both Sirk and this film.
November 30th, 2018 at 5:48 pm
Well said, David. I agree in toto. I wish I’d read the reviews more carefully ahead of time, including yours. I might have been more forgiving of what I found to be plot flaws if hadn’t been thinking I was watching a suspense thriller, much less not the noir movie it was suggested to me that it was.
George Sanders gets the top billing, but this is Lucille Ball’s movie all the way. You can tell, perhaps, by noting that she’s in every one of the images I added to the review. I noticed this myself after it was posted, not deliberately.