REVIEWED BY DAN STUMPF:         


THE PRETENDER. Republic, 1947. Albert Dekker, Catherine Craig, Charles Drake, Alan Carney, Linda Stirling and Tom Kennedy. Written by Don Martin and Doris Miller. Photography by John Alton. Produced & directed by W. Lee Wilder.

   I read someplace that film noir was a genre in which even lesser talents could shine, a premise borne out convincingly by this film, because if ever there were a definitive Lesser Talent, it was surely Billy Wilder’s brother: William “W. Lee” Wilder.

   In fact, The Pretender isn’t bad at all, and in places it’s surprisingly good, coming from the auteur of Killers from Space and The Man Without a Body.

   Albert Dekker’s usual noir persona was as the Criminal Boss a little too intelligent for his own good, to be brought down by his less-mentally-encumbered underlings in films like Suspense, The Killers, and Kiss Me Deadly. Here he’s an investment broker who’s been pilfering from a client (Catherine Craig) and plots to cover the theft by marrying her.

   But it seems Ms Craig has marital plans of her own, and is about to be engaged to Charles Drake. Dekker doesn’t know the identity of her prospective fiancé, but figures if he can put whoever it is out of action, he can catch Craig on the rebound. And he knows a guy (Alan Carney, just split from his godawful comedy-team-up with Wally Brown at RKO) who knows a guy who can eliminate the inconvenient beau—if Dekker can tell him who it is.

   Here’s where Don Martin’s script gets tricky. Dekker arranges for Carney’s hit man to rub out the rival when his name and picture show up in the Society Column. Whereupon fickle Ms Craig has a change of heart and elopes with Dekker—who finds his name and picture in the papers!

   I’ve mentioned Screenwriter Don Martin before, in connection with the movie Arrow in the Dust (which, come to think of it, also deals with mistaken identity) and he does a fine job here of fleshing out the characters, laying the groundwork for plot twists, and papering over the implausibilities.

   When it comes to establishing mood, though, I must tip the hat to cinematographer John Alton, whose work includes The Big Combo, Reign of Terror, He Walked by Night, and big-budget things like Elmer Gantry and The Brothers Karamozov. Alton fills the screen with striking compositions, looming shadows and those just-slightly-strange lighting effects that can cast an eerie atmosphere over an otherwise mundane moment.

   This off-beat approach extends to the casting, with Dekker going from stodgy to desperate quite convincingly. Charles Drake projects his usual bluff nothingness, and he does it well, Christine Craig is really quite good as the middle-aged socialite bent on marriage, but the big surprise is Alan Carney, as the sleazy middle-man for murder. There’s just something about his performance here that makes you wonder how a fat man like him crawled out from under a rock. Add Serial Queen Linda Stirling in a showy part as a vengeful moll, and you have a colorful ensemble indeed.

   It’s a combination even a flat-footed director like Wilder can’t mess up, and The Pretender comes off as an enjoyable and even memorable noir worthy of your attention.