THE NINTH GUEST. Columbia Pictures, 1934. Donald Cook, Genevieve Tobin, Hardie, Edward Ellis, Edwin Maxwell, Vince Barnett, Helen Flint, Samuel S. Hinds, Nella Walker. Based on the novel The Invisible Host, by Gwen Bristow & Bruce Manning; previously produced as a play, The Ninth Guest, by Owen Davis, who is also given credit as one of two co-screenwriters. Director: Roy William Neill.

   Regular readers of this blog will recall that The Invisible Host, the book by Bristow and Manning this movie was nominally based upon, has been reviewed here twice before, once by David Vineyard, the second time by Jim McCahery.

   So I needn’t go into as much detail about the film as I might have otherwise. Suffice it to say, I trust, that eight socialites of New Orleans are tricked into attending a murder party. Trapped in an apartment high above ground level, their host, a voice only on the promises them they will all be dead by morning, unless they manage to outwit him.

   And straightforwardly, he begins doing just that, preying on their weaknesses, finding the flaws in their characters and allowing them, in many cases, to bring their own doom down around them.

   It’s difficult to say how closely the movie follows the book, even with two reviews, The opening scenes in the deadly apartment are the same, that much is clear, but I think I’d rather read the book myself, as I suspect some trimming may have been done, or the details changed, in order to fit it into its 65 minutes of running time.

   In that sense, it may easily follow the play more closely than the book, but film itself, with some qualifications, is certainly worth watching. The apartment is filled with dark rooms and dark corners and dark stairs, and the director and the head cameraman certainly make the most of it.

   In all honesty, when you think about it, once the movie’s over, you have to realize how unlikely the whole scenario has been, and how almost impossible it would have been, from the murderer’s point of view, to have pulled it off as successfully as he did. Another problem, from the viewer’s point of view, this time, is that as the number of survivors begins to decrease, it becomes easier and easier to decide who the killer might be.

   Assuming, of course, that the killer is one of the eight, and just so that I don’t give everything away, that I will refrain from confirming. You might want to watch the movie yourself, and with the qualifications I previously mentioned, I most certainly recommend that you do.

STEVE FISHER – I Wake Up Screaming. Dodd Mead & Co., hardcover, 1941. Paperback reprints: Handi-Book #27, 1944. Popular Library #129, no date stated [1947-48]. Bestseller Mystery B204, digest-sized, 1957. Bantam Books A2145, 1960. Black Lizard, 1988. Vintage, 1991.

    ● Film: 20th Century-Fox, 1941. Working title: Hot Spot. Betty Grable, Victor Mature, Carole Landis, Laird Cregar, William Gargan, Alan Mowbray. Director: H. Bruce Humberstone.

    ● Film: 20th Century-Fox, 1953, as Vicki. Jeanne Crain, Jean Peters, Elliott Reid, Richard Boone. Director: Harry Horner.

   Steve Fisher’s 1941 novel I Wake Up Screaming is undoubtedly the greatest title ever written in the English language. The novel itself ain’t bad, either, with a clever puzzle wrapped in a pleasingly corrosive portrait of the Hollywood Studio system in the 1940s.

   Fisher’s take on studio politics and personalities is as fascinating as the mystery itself, centered around a newly-arrived writer at a major studio and the murder of a would-be starlet poised to hit the big time.

   For mystery fans, Screaming also features a verbal portrait of Cornell Woolrich: “Ed Cornell” a frail, consumptive cop who haunts the story like some wispy wraith — or a damn pest — and solves the case in a very unexpected fashion.

   The dying detective makes a fine counterpoint to the hustling denizens of the rest of the book, strangely menacing, yet oddly poignant, and for author Steve Fisher, who finished out his career writing bad western movies, it’s a surprising achievement.

   When Fox filmed this the same year, they moved the locale from Hollywood to Broadway, changed the hack to a flack, and cast big, beefy Laird Cregar — who looks about as wispy as a charging bull — as the detective.

   Aside from that, though, the film sticks pretty close to the book, fleshed out with some fine players. Betty Grable and Carole Landis are merely adequate, and this early in his career, Victor Mature’s tough guy act seems faintly effeminate, but Alan Mowbray is delightful as a hammy thespian, and Laird Cregar … well, it’s not the character as Fisher wrote it, but his Ed Cornell is a hulking, haunting presence that lingers in the mind.

   Screaming duly came up for a remake in 1953, as Vicki, and Fox cut the budget back to the bone, with skimpy sets, sparse extras, and a general air of penurious haste.

   Harry Horner, who created the sets on ambitious films like The Heiress and The Hustler got the directorial reins here and did a competent if unmemorable job; the film has a blunt look, forceful at times, but mostly rather bland, with a cast less charming than Screaming‘s but more interesting:

   Jeanne Crain and Jean Peters are better actresses in the same roles as Grable and Landis, but Horner doesn’t realize their potential. Elliott Reid wears the Victor Mature part like a wet raincoat, and Alex D’Arcy pretty much just stands there showing off his veneer as the hammy actor, with none of the charm Alan Mowbray showed us.

   As the detective, Richard Boone looks a bit more like Woolrich, and he manages to project a hint of the twisted, obsessive character, but again, Horner doesn’t exploit his potential. What we get is a film that shows some promise but never keeps it.

   An interesting side-light: Both Vicki and Fiend Who Walked the West (reviewed here ) feature off-beat turns by actors who later became major Hollywood producers: Aaron Spelling turns up in Vicki, and his name is probably familiar to anyone who watched TV in the 1970s. Robert Evans, who got the Richard Widmark role in Fiend, later produced films like Chinatown and Urban Cowboy.

   As actors, they’re not really very good, but strangely watchable.

Note:   I Wake Up Screaming, the novel, was previously reviewed on this blog by Marv Lachman. Look for it here.

LINDA. Made for cable-TV, USA Network, 08 October 1993. Virginia Madsen, Richard Thomas, Ted McGinley, Laura Harrington. Based on the novella by John D. MacDonald. Director: Nathaniel Gutman.

   A summer vacation at the beach becomes a deadly affair when the wife of one couple kills the wife of the another, and in the process neatly frames her own husband for the deed.

   It starts slowly, goes into a period of intense action, interrupted only by massive amounts of commercials, then settles down for the obvious but highly anticipated conclusion to develop.

   USA is making great strides in making yesterday’s B-movies today, but this one has several strikes against it:

   (1) After the first two stars named above, the acting is absolutely horrible.

   (2) The behavior of the police, the D.A.’s office, and the accused husband’s lawyer are all equally unbelievable.

   (3) After the tale is told, there are still somehow several minutes to fill, and believe me, there is nothing even Richard Thomas could do at that point that could get anyone as choked up about it as we’re supposed to.

   The one thing the movie did have going for it was that it was based on a story by John D. MacDonald, so I went up to my upstairs closet and dug out the book it came from. It’s the second half of a paperback entitled Border Town Girl (Popular Library #750, June 1956), which is where it first appeared.

   It’s only 70 pages long, and it took me less than an hour to read it. And I was right. The things I didn’t care for in the movie were things that weren’t in the book:

   No bad acting. No shipshod police work. No lousy cornball ending.

   It’s still a bit unchewable as a story, but JDM almost made me believe it. And if I hadn’t have seen the movie first, maybe I would have.

   [UPDATE] 06-13-10. There was an earlier TV movie based on the story “Linda,” one I did not know about when I wrote this review. It was on ABC, 03 November 1973, as the Suspense Movie of the Week. It starred Stella Stevens, Ed Nelson, John McIntire, and John Saxon, with Jack Smight as the director. On the basis of the actors alone, there’s a chance I might have enjoyed it more than I did the one on USA.

   I’ll have to see if I can track either one down, or hopefully both. I may have a VHS copy of the later one, but based on my comment about the commercials, there is a possibility that I watched it live. On the other hand, you still notice how many and how often, even when you’re fast-forwarding through them.

SHERLOCK HOLMES. Warner Brothers, 2009. Robert Downey Jr. (Sherlock Holmes), Jude Law (Dr. John Watson), Rachel McAdams (Irene Adler), Mark Strong (Lord Blackwood), Eddie Marsan (Inspector Lestrade), Robert Maillet (Dredger), Geraldine James (Mrs. Hudson), Kelly Reilly (Mary Morstan). Based on the characters created by Arthur Conan Doyle. Director: Guy Ritchie.

   I go to the cinema very rarely as my tastes don’t really run to explosions and the special effects that all crime films seem to have nowadays, but, as a Sherlock Holmes aficionado, this is one I couldn’t miss.

   There has been a lot of discussion before this film was released about the suitability of, especially, Robert Downey Jr as Holmes, Guy Ritchie as director, and the depiction of Holmes as a scruffy waster who indulges in fistfights. Reviews here were mixed but I went with what I hoped was an open mind and I can now reveal that I thoroughly enjoyed the film in almost all respects.

   Sure Downey’s Holmes is out of sync with most other interpretations but it can be argued that most of them are at least as far from Doyle’s original as his is. He is physical, involved in fist fights both during the investigation and for pleasure, but then Holmes we are told by Watson “was undoubtedly one of the finest boxers of his weight that I have ever seen” (“The Yellow Face”) though also that “he looked upon aimless bodily exercise as a waste of energy” (sic).

   However in The Sign of Four Holmes comes across McMurdo and introduces himself as “the amateur who fought three rounds with you… four years back,” so he did fight for reasons other that practicality.

   There are other nods towards the Doyle canon, for example when Holmes and Watson join in deductions from a watch that echo those made by Holmes about Watson’s brother’s watch (also in The Sign of Four), an event that will have occurred shortly before those of this film.

   There is also at least one nod towards the Basil Rathbone films as Downey twangs the violin at a jar of flies to control their flight patterns as Rathbone had done in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

   The humour, too, was very good, especially in the repartee between Holmes and Watson and both Downey as Holmes and Jude Law as Watson were excellent.

   The plot was a little outlandish with lots of large scales fights and special effects (as to be expected in a modem day film) and the scale of the villain’s ambitions (world domination) was rather extreme.

   Sets, especially those showing London landmarks were well done, but I was unable to understand that when Holmes was pursuing Irene Adler through cellars at the Houses of Parliament they should end up not only on the then under-construction Tower Bridge but on the upper level of it.

   Still, over all this was an enjoyable romp and I hope that the hinted at sequel with Professor Moriarty comes about.

THE MAD MISS MANTON. RKO Radio Pictures, 1938. Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Sam Levine, Frances Mercer, Stanley Ridges, Whitney Bourne, Ann Lester, Catherine O’Quinn, Linda Terry, Hattie McDaniel, James Burke, Paul Guilfoyle, Penny Singleton, Grady Sutton. Screenplay by Philip G. Epstein, based on a story by Wilson Collison. Directed by Leigh Jason.

   Melsa Manton (Barbara Stanwyck) is one in a long line of screwball heiresses who marched blithely though films of the nineteen-thirties and manage to hang on in one guise or another in films today.

   Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night (1934) started the vogue (before that rich heiresses had tended to be more predatory than zany), and here the genre gets a kick from another film that debuted the same year as It Happened One Night, The Thin Man.

   By 1938 RKO had already given us the definitive screwball heiress comedy in Katherine Hepburn in Howard Hawks Bringing Up Baby. The Mad Miss Manton isn’t quite in that class, but it is a fine mix of screwball comedy and comedy mystery played by an outstanding cast and with the kind of bright brittle and sparkling wit we can only regret real life heiresses and their entourage seldom display (hard to imagine Paris Hilton as Melsa Manton).

   As the film opens Melsa has left a costume party early and arrives home still in her Bo Peep costume to walk her six yapping Pomeranians before bedtime, but when she spies a man leaving the deserted Lane mansion and the dogs start acting strange she goes inside and finds a body, so she summons the police.

   Arriving on scene to find himself confronted by Bo Peep is Lt. Brent, Sam Levine, a character actor who made a career of sane exasperated cops plagued by the likes of Melsa Manton and Nick and Nora Charles. He’s dubious to begin with, and when no body can be found and he learns who Melsa is:

   It’s that kind of logic that gives cops ulcers. Which is why Lt. Brent is always sending someone out for a bicarbonate of soda.

   To add insult to injury, newspaper editor Peter Ames (Henry Fonda) has begun a crusade against Melsa in his column in his newspaper, the latest installment of which brings Melsa storming in to sue him and slug him — and get slugged in return.

   But as these things go, first they fight and then they romance, and one look at Melsa in the flesh is enough for Peter Ames, especially since he now has to convince her not to sue the paper for a million dollars just in case a corpse does show up and her wild tale proves true.

   Meanwhile Melsa summons her posse of rich girl friends, a bevy of silver fox clad beauties all as mad as Miss Manton for a war conference in her apartment to the bemusement of her maid, Hilda (Hattie McDaniel), especially when the killer returns the cloak Melsa lost at the murder scene with a knife and a threat penned to it.

   Racist, probably, and certainly stereotyped, but somehow I always found Miss McDaniel, Mantan Moreland, Stepin Fechit, and Willie Best the only sane voice of reason in this sort of film, or as Hattie’s Hilda adds: “You white folks don’ know what’s good for you.”

   Good advice, but you can be sure Melsa and her pals aren’t going to listen to it anymore than Brent or Peter will listen to her when she and her pals find playboy Ronnie Belden in his own refrigerator with a knife in his chest. When Brent tells her to keep the body on ice, believing she and her friends are up to their old tricks, they take the body and plant it in the lobby of Peter’s newspaper.

   That’ll teach him.

   So Brent rounds the girls up and arrests them, only Peter calls Melsa’s father:

   But with a real body involved, Brent and Peter both have to take Melsa and her friends more seriously, but can’t convince them this isn’t a game. But Peter is drawn in and even ends up hiring a safecracker to help him investigate when the girls show up as he is about to check out a suspects office:

   And so it goes, bright and brittle dialogue, a pretty good mystery, and a well done solution that ends with a royal melee in which the ladies are as much a hindrance as a help.

   Brent stops the killer and a bullet, but as Peter and Melsa bend over him to bring him to their eyes meet and:

   Murder to one side, there isn’t a serious bone in the film’s body, but it is a fast moving, bright and smart entry in the screwball heiress stakes and never pauses long enough to let you complain.

   Philip G. Epstein co-wrote Casablanca and his other screen credits include Mr. Skeffington, The Man Who Came to Dinner, The Strawberry Blonde, and Arsenic and Old Lace.

   The original screen story is from Wilson Collison, who among other things created Maisie, the heroine of the long running Ann Sothern film series, in his novel Dark Dame (1935). Leigh Jason directed many films and later television including Richard Diamond with David Jansen.

   Fast paced and wickedly clever, with a cast of stars all shining and hitting their marks, you may find yourself enjoying this much more than it merits, but by any standard it is an entertaining outing that is a model of the form.

   Watching directors struggle and fail today to produce this kind of clever film you have to wonder at the casual magic these films once produced. Like a good dessert champagne, this tickles your palates and lightens your mood, which is exactly what it was intended for.

● ONCE UPON A CRIME. MGM, 1992. John Candy, James Belushi, Cybil Shepherd, Sean Young, Richard Lewis, George Hamilton. Director: Eugene Levy.

   The lives of several Americans traveling in Europe converge in Monaco, with several or all of them eventually suspected of murder. A comedy, as if you couldn’t tell from the cast.

   I was reminded of some of Inspector Clouseau’s earlier cases; Judy called it French farce. I agree, but I’d recommend this only if you can stand Richard Lewis.

● GOTHAM. Showtime, 1988; made for cable-TV. Tommy Lee Jones, Virginia Madsen, Denise Stephenson, Frederic Forrest. Screenwriter/director: Lloyd Fonvielle.

   A down-on-the-heels PI named Eddie Mallard is hired by a man who wants his wife to stop following him around. The problem is that she has been dead for several years. A large box of jewels is also involved.

   Is this a ghost story or a mystery? I’m not quite sure, and no one in the movie was either, or so it seemed to me. Jones makes a great private detective, but I lost interest about halfway through.

● SHINING THROUGH. 20th Century Fox, 1992. Melanie Griffith, Michael Douglas, Liam Neeson, Joely Richardson, John Gielgud. Based on the novel by Susan Isaacs. Director: David Seltzer.

   A Brooklyn secretary, half-Irish, half-Jewish, somehow becomes a spy at the outbreak of World War II. More than that, since she knows German, she soon finds herself in Berlin trying to track down the factory making U-2 missiles.

   While the first hour or so shows some promise, the second half is hardly more than one preposterous escapade after another.

● DECEIVED. Touchstone/Buena Vista, 1991. Goldie Hawn, John Heard, Ashley Peldon, Robin Bartlett, Tom Irwin. Director: Damian Harris.

   After five years of being happily married, a woman’s life is shattered when she discovers that her husband, now dead in an automobile accident, had been living a lie, under someone else’s name.

   First a detective story, then a thriller, the story doesn’t quite seem to know where it’s headed, but it still packs a pretty good wallop. Goldie Hawn, in a straight role, is fine. (Lots of smudged mascara.)

COMMENT: There are two movie guides that I usually take a look at after seeing a movie. (Sometimes before.) The first, by Leonard Maltin, says, “Hawn’s attempt to play it straight is too derivative (to say nothing of incredible) to carry much clout.” The other, by Steven H. Scheuer, says, “Well-acted, especially by Hawn who’s rock solid…”

   What does Maltin say about Melanie Griffith, in Shining Through? “Empathic performance by Griffith make(s) this palatable…” As for Scheuer: “Griffith is thoroughly unbelievable…”

   These guys (or whoever’s writing for them) are obviously not seeing the same movies. (Are they on the same planet?)

[UPDATE] 06-06-10. According to my records, I actually wrote these reviews in September of 1993. Do I remember watching any of four? No, only the briefest of scenes come back to me from any of them.

   I’m sure I still have these on video cassette, taped from the various premium movie channels we’d signed up for at the time. I’d be most anxious to give Gotham another try, if I could find it. It sounds like my kind of movie.

   Maltin, of course, is still around. Scheuer stopped doing his movie guide in 1993, but he started in 1958, long before Maltin was old enough to vote. (He was eight at the time.) What the varying opinions demonstrate is that it never hurts to have two points of view on a movie. When two such devoted film critics as Siskel and Ebert can have diametrically opposed takes on one — many times over — it’s obvious that there can be no such thing as 100% agreement on how good (or bad) a movie is.

    This particular list of motion pictures was prompted by Walter Albert’s recent review of De Luxe Annie (1915), in which all of the heroine’s difficulties stem from being knocked unconscious early on and suffering from amnesia for the rest of the movie, or almost.

    In a comment that he left soon after the review appeared, David Vineyard wondered “where would suspense fiction and movies be without it?”

    “It” referring to the concept of amnesia, as practiced in the movies and crime fiction. Which of course triggered the obvious question from me to David. The rest of this post is his reply. Thanks, David!

             >>>

   Movies with an amnesia theme. This one could get pretty long fast, but I’ll try to restrain myself:

Street of Chance — Burgess Meredith. Based on Cornell Woolrich’s Black Curtain about a man with short term amnesia who thinks he may have committed a murder.

Female Fiends — Lex Barker. A writer and producer who wakes up with no memory and in the middle of a murderous plot; based on Q. Patrick’s Puzzle for Fiends.

Stage Fright — With Jane Wyman. Richard Todd’s character suffers partial amnesia involving the murder the police want him for.

No Man of Her Own — Barbara Stanwyck claims partial amnesia to cover lapses in her memory in pretending to be another woman; based on Woolrich’s I Married a Dead Man.

Mister Buddwing — James Garner. Based on the novel Buddwing by Even Hunter a man with amnesia stumbles from one woman in his life to the next trying to put together who he is.

36 Hours —James Garner again. German doctor Rod Taylor uses drugs to induce amnesia in order to get Garner to reveal the true site of the D-Day landings.

The Third Day — George Peppard. An obnoxious millionaire struggles to remember who is trying to kill him; based on Joseph Hayes’ novel.

Power of the Whistler — Richard Dix. An amnesiac tries to clear himself by regaining his memory.

The Manchurian Candidate — Frank Sinatra. An Army officer tries to combat drug induced memories implanted as part of a Chinese plot from Richard Condon’s novel.

Fear in the Night — Deforest Kelly. Jazz musician gets help from his cop brother-in-law Paul Kelly to recover marijuana induced memory loss and clear his name; based on Cornell Woolrich short ‘Marijuana’ and remade with Kevin McClory and Edward G. Robinson as Nightmare.

Phantom Lady — Alan Curtis man’s drink induced memory loss means his friends have to follow abstract clues from his flawed memory to save him from execution based on Cornell Woolrich novel.

Memento — Man who loses his memory every time he goes to sleep tries to solve the murder of his wife by leaving clues behind to follow each day.

Dark City — Rufus Sewell. A man with amnesia struggles to recall reality in clever noirish sf film based on a graphic novel.

The Matrix — Keanu Reeves. Man begins to see through the illusion he lives in.

Two in the Dark — Walter Abel . Female cabbie helps a man recall his memory as they race to solve a murder, remade with Tom Conway and Ann Rutherford and directed by Anthony Mann as Two O’Clock Courage.

Mirage — Gregory Peck. A city-wide blackout triggers a crisis for a businessman whose life begins to unravel when nothing he remembers is real.

Blindfolded — Rock Hudson. A psychiatrist tries to help agent suffering from trauma induced memory loss but finds himself in a spy plot.

Who? — Elliot Gould. Investigators try to understand what happened to man with robot head; based on Algis Budrys’s novel.

Random Harvest — Ronald Colman. The granddaddy of them all, based on James Hilton’s novel.

Somewhere in the Night — John Hodiak. A private eye returns from the war with memory loss.

The Long Wait — Anthony Quinn. A man returns home with memory loss; based on Mickey Spillane novel.

Singapore — Fred MacMurray. A woman loses her memory and can’t remember the man who loved her. Remade as Istanbul with Errol Flynn.

As You Desire Me — Greta Garbo. A woman with amnesia returns to husband she doesn’t remember, from the Pirandello play.

Spellbound — Gregory Peck. Am amnesiac poses as a psychiatrist but becomes the patient; based on Francis Beeding’s The House of Dr. Edwards.

The Woman With No Name — Phyllis Calvert. A woman sufferis from amnesia.

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes — Robert Stephens. A woman claims to have lost her memory and seeks help from Sherlock Holmes.

The Seven Percent Solution — Nicol Williamson. Sigmund Freud helps Sherlock Holmes recover repressed childhood memories so he can solve a case and cure himself of cocaine addiction.

Love Letters — Joseph Cotton. GI Cotton comes to England to meet Jennifer Jones whom he corresponded with who has lost her memory and may be in danger, with a screenplay by Ayn Rand.

I Love You Again — William Powell. Con man regains his memory and tries to save his new respectable life with wife Myrna Loy from his old pals in this screwball comedy.

Crossroads — William Powell. French diplomat must regain his memory to save himself.

Where Were You When the Lights Went Out? — Doris Day tries to remember what happened the night of the blackout when she had too much to drink.

The Witches — Joan Fontaine. A woman’s loss of memory puts her in danger from a coven of witches.

Carnival of Souls — Candace Hilligloss. A woman wanders around in weird haze.

Portrait of Jennie — Jennifer Jones. A young woman doesn’t know she is a ghost.

The Mummy’s Curse — Lon Chaney Jr. Young woman doesn’t recall she is 3000 years old; basically the plot of Blood on the Mummy’s Tomb and The Awakening; based on Bram Stoker’s Jewel of the Seven Stars.

The Black Angel — Dan Duryea. A man plays detective to help a woman clear her husband with surprising results; based on the Cornell Woolrich novel.

The Haunted Strangler — Boris Karloff. In retrospect mystery writer Boris should never have opened up the twenty year old murder case …

Hangover Square — Laird Cregar. A pianist and composer doesn’t quite remember what he gets up to when the music compels him; based on Patrick Hamilton’s play.

Suddenly Last Summer — Elizabeth Taylor. A psychiatrist tries to help young woman recall traumatic event while battling her over protective mother-in-law.

Landslide — Anthony Edwards. A man suffers selective memory loss after an accident.

The Bourne Identity — Matt Damon. A spy is hunted on all sides and doesn’t recall why.

The October Man — John Mills. A man with mental problems has to clear himself of murder and prove to himself he didn’t do it. Eric Ambler wrote the screenplay.

Knock on Wood — Danny Kaye. A ventriloquist who believes is dummy is talking to him suffers memory loss and personality changes as a result of plot by his analyst to use him in spy plot.

Highly Dangerous — Margaret Lockwood. A scientist on mission for the Secret Service is tortured and afterward thinks she is a famous radio secret agent from a popular children’s show. Screenplay by Eric Ambler.

Bewitched — Phyllis Thaxter. An early variation on multiple personalities as woman committed murder in her other persona.

Three Faces of Eve — Joanne Woodward. A woman doesn’t recall what she does in alternate personalities.

   Others?

GASLIGHT. MGM, 1944. Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer, Joseph Cotton, Dame May Whitty, Angela Lansbury, Terry Moore. Based on the play Angel Street by Patrick Hamilton. Director: George Cukor.

   It’s hardly necessary to go into much detail about the plot of this classic. Bergman is the daughter of a famous actress who was murdered and her jewels disappeared. Now she is married to the haughty and somewhat overly protective Charles Boyer, whose personality is as changeable as the weather — at one moment cloyingly concerned, at another insanely angry over the smallest of things — warm and affectionate at one turn, icy and cruel at another.

   Into the mix is added the wonderful Angela Lansbury in her film debut at only seventeen as a house servant of notable disrespect, and Joseph Cotton as a young man who works at Scotland Yard and suspects something is not right in the supposedly happy household.

   This is actually the second film of the play. It originated in London’s West End and then came to Broadway with Vincent Price in the Boyer role. In 1940 a British version of the play was made with Anton Walbrook, Diana Wynyard, Robert Newton, and Frank Pettingwell. In all fairness, this version is superior to the American version, and I don’t just say that because Diana Wynyard is a cousin. It is less static than the American version, with electrical performances and a fine sense of slowly dawning horror and madness.

   But the familiar version we are discussing here is a fine piece of film making with merits of its own. Bergman, Boyer, and Lansbury are at the top of their form (Bergman won an Oscar, though it may have been a consolation prize for the previous year’s Casablanca and For Whom The Bell Tolls), and Boyer seldom had a role as juicy as this (not even as Napoleon in Conquest with Greta Garbo). It’s hard to believe Lansbury’s assured and saucy performance is being given by a seventeen year old girl.

   Gaslight is a psychological drama that turns on Boyer gradually driving Bergman mad so he can have free access to the house they share where her murdered mother’s fortune in jewels is hidden. The fine irony is that Boyer himself is insane and with each twist of the noose going madder north by northwest than Hamlet on uppers himself, so the finale when he has broken Bergman and she turns on him as Cotton’s Scotland Yard man waits is beautifully staged melodrama.

   Cotton’s role in the film is much expanded from the play where Leo G. Carroll played the role as a much less romantic figure.

   Patrick Hamilton specialized in these overheated psychological dramas. Hangover Square is only a little less potent than Gaslight and an excellent film in itself directed by John Brahm and starring George Sanders and Laird Cregar, with Cregar’s concert pianist going mad by delightfully increasing murderous degrees. Hamilton also penned some all too seldom read novels that prefigure some aspects of Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley novels though in a different vein.

   Gaslight is perhaps too familiar to have the impact it originally did on screen. The plot has become such a staple that the film has lost some of its glow, but it is still a fine piece of melodrama, and Bergman’s gradual descent into madness, and her worm turns scene when she realizes Boyer has been trying to kill her still has power.

   And while much of the attention has rightfully gone to Bergman and Lansbury, Boyer has a field day with his own descent into obsession and madness, though he lost out in the Oscar race to Bing Crosby’s singing priest in Going My Way.

   To give some idea of the impact of both play and film, there are few people even today who would fail to recognize the term ‘gaslighting’ as a metaphor for driving someone mad, even if they have never seen or heard of the film or play. It’s not often a film enters so firmly into the public consciousness.

[UPDATE] 05-11-10.   The 1944 version of Gaslight will be shown on TCM next Friday (May 14) at 10:30 am.

THE BRIBE. MGM, 1949. Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, Charles Laughton, Vincent Price, John Hodiak, John Hoyt, Samuel S. Hinds. Screenplay by Marguerite Roberts, based on a story by Frederick Nebel (Cosmopolitan, September 1947). Director: Robert Z. Leonard.

   This slick, well done film noir with a top notch cast may not be one of the greats of the genre, but it is an intelligent and handsomely done film with a top notch cast in attractive locations, plus a wonderfully sleazy portrayal by Charles Laughton as an opportunistic coward who almost lifts the movie far above itself.

   Robert Taylor is Rigby (“I never knew a crooked road could look so straight.”), a tough emotionally remote and cold hearted Federal agent sent to Central America to track down surplus WW II airplane parts that have gone missing (*) and are showing up places the government would rather they didn’t.

   Rigby’s only clue is the suspect Tugwell ‘Tug’ Hintten (John Hodiak) and his night club chanteuse wife Elizabeth (Ava Gardner), so he moves in on the couple and especially Gardner hoping to get close enough to find Hintten’s contacts.

   But Rigby’s carefully polished armor begins to tarnish and show cracks under the powerful appeal of Elizabeth and the sensual tropical atmosphere.

   He discovers that there is more than one kind of bribe when he realizes that Hintten and the man behind him are using Elizabeth and the promise she offers to distract him and get him to turn his gaze away from their activities.

   Laughton is an expatriate, J. J. Beale, who attaches himself to Rigby like a leech, both gathering and selling information. It’s a superb little performance that stands out in this dark sweaty melodrama.

   Vincent Price is Cardwell, a tourist who may be more involved than he seems. Not a great performance, but at the time Price specialized in these roles and did them with rare skill, and over the years Price played enough variations that you couldn’t always count on how his character would turn out, even when you were certain you knew going in.

   As Rigby grows more attracted to Elizabeth he is caught between his mission, her distrust of him. and the still open question of whether she is a victim or part of the plot. How loyal is she to Tug, her husband, and how far will she go to protect him even if she no longer loves him?

   As Rigby gets closer to Elizabeth, and to betraying his mission for her, circumstances grow more desperate, and Tug begins to unravel under the pressure of his crimes and his dissolving marriage becoming a danger to his partners.

   The finale is a fine set piece set during Carnival, with a suspenseful and well staged shootout among the surging celebrating crowds in elaborate costumes. (Ironically it may remind you of a similar scene in Hodiak’s film Two Smart People set at Mardi Gras.)

   The Bribe is based on one of the few crime stories written by Black Mask alumnus Fred Nebel for the slicks, where he labored with notable success after the pulps died out as a regular along with Doc Savage creator Lester Dent.

   (At the time the ‘slicks,’ as magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post and Colliers were called, actually paid better than selling a novel. Many writers works are largely lost to us since the major part of their output appeared in novella or novelette form in these now forgotten magazines, too long to be collected in most anthologies and too short to be published as a novel. As a result many highly successful writers are all but forgotten today because of the format and the market their work appeared in.)

   I admit I probably like this slick little noir film much better than it deserves. It is only superficial noir, lacking the raw qualities of many of the classics, but the leads are handsome and capable, the script taut and intelligent (though in some ways it is closer to silent melodrama than modern noir), and whenever Charles Laughton’s J.J. Beale is on screen, the film threatens to become something more than a good noirish thriller.

   The Bribe isn’t a noir classic by any means, but it is a capable A-film of its era and with that Laughton performance well worth catching.

Note: Of course Fred Nebel is the legendary author of Sleepers East and the adventures of newsman Kennedy and his cop pal Captain Steve McBride. (For the movies Kennedy became a woman, Torchy Blaine, played by Glenda Farrell, Jane Wyman, and Lola Lane, with Barton MacLane and Paul Kelly among the Steve McBride’s.)

   He also penned the adventures of ruthless private eye tough Dick Donahue and the long running Cardigan series. Though many of his stories have been anthologized, his two novels have long been out of print, and his short fiction has been sadly neglected.

   There is one collection of the Donahue stories (Six Deadly Dames), one of the Cardigan stories (The Adventures of Cardigan), a few pulp story reprints, and sadly no collection of the Kennedy and McBride stories from Black Mask. Luckily his work appears in most noir anthologies and in The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulp Fiction an entire Kennedy and McBride serial from Black Mask is reprinted.

* For some reason this film always reminds me of Charles Leonard’s (M. V. Heberden aka Mary Heberden) Paul Kilgerrin books about a tough ruthless insurance investigator who appeared in Treachery in Trieste, Sinister Squadron, Secret of the Spa, and others.

Editorial Comment: The Bribe is scheduled to be shown next on TCM this coming Wednesday, May 5th, at 4 pm. It is also available from the Warner Archives site.

THE MISSING PERSON. 2009. Michael Shannon, Amy Ryan, Frank Wood, Linda Emond, Paul Sparks, Margaret Colin, John Ventimiglia. Screenwriter & director: Noah Buschel.

   This is a private eye movie, and as you probably all know, if a PI movie is made in the year 2009, there has to be a reason. This one starts out as a spoof, sort of, or so I thought for quite some time.

   You know what I mean, I think. Michael Shannon plays John Rosow, a former New York City cop who now ekes out a living as a PI in Chicago.

   He’s a hard drinker, an incessant smoker, and he does damn fool things like speak tough guy narration over the first few scenes, among others, every so often as the movie goes along.

   Speaking of smoking, though, another incessant bit of business that goes with his lighting up is that every time he does, whoever’s in the scene with him immediately asks him to put it out, and that’s the kind of movie this movie starts out to be.

   He’s hired to look out for a guy whose wife is looking for him, to follow him and see where he’s going and what he does. It turns out that the man, a middle-aged balding fellow (played by Frank Wood) is taking the train to California (and San Diego in particular) with a young Mexican boy.

   And in California a woman played by Margaret Colin picks Rosow up in a bar, and somehow she’s part of the story, which by this time, nearly a third of way through we (the viewer) have next to no idea what’s gong on, except in bits and pieces. If Rosow knows more than we do, he’s putting on a pretty good act.

   Speaking of Margaret Colin, though, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen her in anything worth watching, but even when the movie or TV show she’s in isn’t worth watching, she always is.

   In this movie we see more of her than usual, so that was a plus factor for watching, I admit it, right then and there, and when I watch this movie again, she’ll be one of the primary reasons.

   The story gets out of control more than ever when Rosow confronts two FBI agents in an alley behind his motel right around this same time, a meeting which ends with the pair (male and female) giving him a pair of sunglasses with glow-in-the-dark frames.

   It turns out that these frames have a small but important part of the movie, if not the story itself. But once Rosow is in Mexico, and he learns why the man he has been tailing is doing there, the story does turn serious, having significant post-9/11 implications and more, including the reason he was hired for such an outwardly innocuous job in the first place.

   I’ll say no more about that. You can call this movie “art house” noir, if you like, but behind the faux pretentiousness, there was some thought put into the making of this movie.

   Don’t give up on it, once you start. This may be the best PI movie made in 2009, and you may quote me on that.

PostScript: I meant to work this quote into the review, but now that I’m done, I don’t see any place to put it, other than now. Amy Ryan plays Miss Charley, the staid but polite liaison between Rosow and the lawyer who’s hired him. Says Rosow, “I told her she could be my secretary, once I got a few more assignments. But she said she didn’t mix business with pleasure. I promised her I was no pleasure. Yuk, yuk, yuk.”

   Also, while I have you here and before I let you go, every good PI movie has to have a jazz background, right? And one of the jazz players has to be pretty good with a saxophone. The Missing Person qualifies on both counts. The sax player in question is Joe Lovano:

[UPDATE.] Later the same day. Vince Keenan’s take on this film can be found here on his blog. I saw he’d reviewed it but I didn’t read what he had to say until after I’d written up my own comments. I’m pleased to say that when it comes to noir, like minds think alike, at least this time.