NIGHT AND THE CITY. 20th Century-Fox, 1950. Richard Widmark, Gene Tierney, Googie Withers, Hugh Marlowe, Francis L. Sullivan, Herbert Lom, Stanislaus Zbyszko, Mike Mazurki, Charles Farrell. Screenplay by Jo Eisinger, based on the novel by Gerald Kersh. Director: Jules Dassin.

   From the moment you see Richard Widmark running through dark alleys in the opening scene of Jules Dassin’s 1950 classic, Night And The City, you know he’s totally screwed. If only he knew it.

   But such is the lot of film noir protagonists. Caught up in the backwash of their own bad choices, they can only hope to put off, not avoid, what inevitably awaits them. And they’re always the last to know.

    Night And The City, adapted from the 1938 Gerald Kersh novel of the same name, takes a look at the London demimonde of the era, where Harry Fabian plies his trade as a nightclub hustler. He periodically “borrows” money from his girlfriend to finance his big dreams, not the least of which is setting up a life of ease and plenty without having to work.

   Standing in his way are the sinister fat man, played by Francis L Sullivan, pursuing a personal vendetta against Fabian, and the East End godfather, played by the dark-suited Herbert Lom, whose intense presence fires up the proceedings every time he walks onscreen.

   This is truly one of the greatest films, not only of the noir genre, but of all cinema. Dassin’s direction is flawless, capturing perfectly the seedy filth of London’s underbelly, while telling the riveting story of one man’s misplaced dreams.

   Max Greene, the director of photography, is superb, never allowing the viewer to get comfortable. The expressionist look of the film is all sharp black-and-white contrast and angular shadows, and this, along with his off-center camera angles, produces an unsettling effect throughout. This is never more evident than in a nightclub scene, where a mirrored disco-type ball casts its little gleaming points over the oddly-lit club, bleeding into the office above.

   Toward the end, as Fabian’s reckoning approaches, dawn breaks over London, and suddenly the film takes on a pasty, grayish cast. By then, I felt like I was covered with dirt and needed a shower.

   Meanwhile, the stressful score of Franz Waxman pumps up the adrenaline in all the right places. As Fabian runs deep through the back streets of London, the music pulls you to the edge of your seat.

   But most of all, this is Widmark’s tour de force. Fabian is a complex character, driven by his own twisted ambitions, and beset by deep emotions. When he whines to Gene Tierney, “I just want to be somebody,” he injects a whole new feeling, a real truth, into that tired line that has been uttered by countless lesser actors.

   Widmark makes it all look so easy, so real, that he pulls you with him, deep inside Harry Fabian’s head and heart, as he’s sucked down into the whirlpool. Never again would he be given a role so challenging, showing us how he was so tragically wasted through his long career.

ARSÈNE LUPIN. 2004. Raymond Duris, Kristin Scott Thomas, Pascal Greggory.
Director: Jean-Paul Salomé, Screenplay: Jean-Paul Salomé and Laurent Vachaud, based on the novel La comtesse de Cagliostro (aka The Memoirs of Arsène Lupin) by Maurice Leblanc. In French with subtitles; 131 minutes.

    For those who only know the name Arsène Lupin, a brief introduction is in order. Lupin is a French gentleman burglar/detective created by journalist Maurice Leblanc (1864-1941) in the feuilletons or newspaper serials that dominated French popular fiction from the days of Alexandre Dumas and Eugene Sue well into the 20th Century.

    Lupin debuted in the magazine Le Sais Tout in 1905, and the stories were collected in 1907’s Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Burglar (aka Arsène Lupin in Prison and Arsène Lupin Escapes), following the pattern established by Ponson du Terraill’s picaresque Rocambole two generations earlier.

    Twenty volumes followed with The Billions of Arsène Lupin being the last to be published in Leblanc’s lifetime in 1941. Unlike many of his fellow laborers in the disposable newspaper serials, Lupin carved a place for himself as the premier example of the French detective story, his international fans extending to President Theodore Roosevelt and beyond.

    A genius with a keen sense of justice, panache, and an ego to match, Lupin is one of the most fully imagined characters in the genre, and the star of countless films, books, comics, and even animated adventures. Three American films, many French films and television series, Japanese films and anime, even a Philippine television series have all followed.

    Lupin is a master of disguise and has a small army of identities under which he operates including private detective Jim Barnett, Prince Sernine, Don Luis Perena, M. Lenormand (who rises to no less than the head of the Surete), and others. As often as not Lupin may not be identified as Lupin until late in the tale — if at all.

    Like most fictional criminals, he changes midway in his career to more detective than thief rivaling Sherlock Holmes with whom he had two memorable encounters (today the books use Holmes’ name, but at the time he was Herlock Sholmès), but even at his most criminal he is a righter of wrongs and defender of the weak, and like Holmes he is given to a sort of manic depression, very high highs and low lows (several times he considers suicide when all is lost).

    If Lupin is a younger brother to Raffles, he is at least that or more to the Saint. That said, Lupin is a very Gallic hero, given to dramatic flair and boasting. Compared to Lupin, Poirot, the Belgian, is a shrinking violet.

    Over his long career he also acquires a great deal of wealth, numerous wives and lovers, a lost son, and even his own submarine (The Secret of Sarek) given to him for his services to a Moroccan prince (his adventures, both recorded and only referred to carry him to the literal ends of the Earth — to Antarctica, Saigon, Tibet, New York, Morocco … but always back to France).

    In 813, the greatest of the Lupin sagas, he only just misses becoming a power in Europe by putting a puppet king on a European throne. He is possibly the most ambitious hero in the genre.

    Today the adventures of his non-canonical grandson Lupin III, created by manga artist Monkey Punch and hero of anime and live action films (including The Castle of Cagliostro directed by anime legend Hayao Miyazaki) are better known to most than Lupin himself, but the original still has his charms, and in 2004 he returned to the big screen in a widescreen adventure worthy of a career that began in 1905 and which continues today.

    In the 1950’s and 60’s five pastiche of his adventures were penned by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narjeac, authors of Les diaboliques and Vertigo. Today many of the books are still in print, and his adventures continue in pastiche form in the Black Coat Press “Tales of the Shadowmen” anthologies.

    Arsène Lupin, the film, is based on Leblanc’s 1924 novel Le comtesse de Cagliostro (in the US and UK, The Memoirs of Arsène Lupin), which recounts the origins of Lupin and his first great adventure.

    Taking a cue from that, the film opens with Lupin’s childhood where he is the son of a young woman virtually indentured to her well-married half sister and a teacher of fencing and martial arts (particularly savate — French kick boxing).

    The young Lupin is enamored of his cousin, and unaware of the tensions in the house — or that his father is a thief after a fabulous necklace owned by his uncle — in fact the necklace — the infamous piece of jewelry owned by Marie Antoinette that helped to spur the French Revolution and part of the lost jewels of the kings of France.

    When the police come for Lupin’s father, he escapes, but returns and enlists Arsène to steal the necklace, but he is apparently killed in a struggle with an accomplice within sight of the famous “Needle” a peculiar shaped rock off the French coast, and Arsène and his mother are exiled from their home, young Arsène swearing revenge on society and particularly on his uncle and men like him.

    Some years later we meet the youthful adult Arsène (Raymond Duris) on board a gala yacht for a costume ball. Despite his grand manner, monocle, and white tie and tails he is little more than a pickpocket, but a talented one.

    It’s at this point he meets the beautiful Countess Cagliostro, Josephine Balsamo (Scott Thomas), who claims to be the granddaughter of Joseph Balsamo. the notorious Count Cagliostro, charlatan, con man, and according to some, alchemist and wizard. (See Dan Stumpf’s review of the film Black Magic and his review of the Alexandre Dumas pere novel Joseph Balsamo elsewhere on this blog.) She takes young Arsène under her wing as her lover and student and transforms him from a mere pickpocket into a master criminal.

    But there are dark undercurrents stirring. There is a mysterious cabal of wealthy men sworn to protect the secrets of the lost jewels of the French kings, plus the dangerous man who serves them and is the sworn enemy of Josephine, — the strange scarred man who serves Josephine and distrusts Arsène, and Josephine herself — who rumor has it is not the grand daughter of Cagliostro, but the daughter — the immortal daughter over a century old.

    Eventually Lupin breaks with her, but by now he too is sworn to uncover the secrets of the lost treasure of the king’s of France which leads him back to the cousin he once loved as a youth.

    Thus begins the duel of wits between Lupin and the Countess and the cabal who protect the lost treasure. Cross and double-cross, buckled swashes, gallant gestures, disguise, and the elegance of France in another age are on display in a handsome film that manages to keep tongue in cheek in true Lupin style while never laughing at itself or the audience for enjoying it.

    Though the plot is complex and elements from several of the Lupin novels are brought in, the plot is easy to follow, and Duris makes a charming Lupin, one who grows from something of a talented ruffian in gentleman’s clothing to a master criminal and suave adventurer.

    He has a gamin quality, a rougher edge beneath the suave exterior that gives the character more depth than simply another charming adventurer — much like the original by Leblanc. Thomas as Josephine is simply lovely and clearly having fun playing the wicked and treacherous Josephine, and Eva Green as Lupin’s true love is both touching and beautiful in what could have been a throwaway role.

    I’ll go no farther in describing the plot because I can’t without giving away too much, but needless to say, there are surprises to be had, and twists unexpected, before the film reaches its end, leaving you satisfied and wanting more.

    But that said, and for any treasure hunters out there, despite the film and Leblanc’s book, the famous Needle which features in the film and the Lupin novel, The Hollow Needle, is not hollow, but solid rock. The lost treasures of the French kings will have to be found somewhere else.

    Arsène Lupin is a beautifully shot film that seems to have that same slightly golden glow of photographs of that gilded age. It’s not only a handsome film to look at, but one of the most lavish and playful any genre film has earned. It is also faithful to both the letter and spirit of the Leblanc novels. It’s more than worthy of Lupin and his adventures.

    And a word has to be said for the cinematography of Pasal Ridao. The film is a delight to look at with stunning camera work and sets and costumes adding real depth to the proceedings.

    Lupin was played by John Barrymore in Arsène Lupin (1932, with Lionel cast as his nemesis Inspector Ganimard and Karen Morley in a racy pre-code role as an undercover police agent helping to trap Lupin — it’s delightfully ripe old time cinema) and Melvyn Douglas in Arsène Lupin Returns.

    Charles Korvin played the role in a later film. In France, Robert Lamoureaux, George Descrieres, Jean-Claude Brialy, and Jean-Pierre Cassel have all played Lupin in several films and television series (available in boxed sets, but in French).

    There have also been Lupin comics in France, an animated series, and there were several radio series, one hosted by Lupin himself. In Japan Lupin was played by a Japanese actor in live action films and later featured in an anime aside from the popular Lupin III films and series. In the Philippines a series about a wealthy playboy who was really a thief was called Lupin ran and is also available on DVD.

    Lupin has also appeared in Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier’s “Tales of the Shadowmen” anthology series from Black Coat Press, most recently in my own “The Jade Buddha” in volume 5 of that series in which he encounters the real model for Fu Manchu, Hanoi Shan.

    There are several good French sites for Lupin, and you can learn a good deal more about him at the sites for Black Coat Press and the French Wold-Newton Universe including full bibliographies, chronologies, and filmographies.

    Many of the Lupin books are in print, and those that are not relatively easy to find for the most part, and quite a few are available to read online or download as free ebooks including Leblanc’s two science fiction novels and a few of the non-Lupin novels.

    But even if you don’t want to dip into his literary adventures, treat yourself to this lavish and enjoyable film. Few creations in the genre have received so faithful or so lush a tribute.

CONVICTED WOMAN. Columbia Pictures, 1940. Rochelle Hudson, Frieda Inescort, June Lang, Lola Lane, Glenn Ford, Iris Meredith, Lorna Gray, Esther Dale. Director: Nick Grinde.

   Following Walter Albert’s review of Women’s Prison (Columbia, 1955) reviewed here not too long ago, Walker Martin pointed out that there is a whole subgenre of WIP movies, where for the uninitiated (me) WIP is an acronym for “Women In Prison.”

   I have no idea what the first movie in the category was, but I’m sure someone can easily tell me. At the moment, I’m assuming that this was an early one, but perhaps I’m wrong.

   And I do and I don’t know exactly what the attraction is, and I think that is all that I am going to say about that. I suppose there may even have been entire articles and perhaps even books dedicated to the subject, and if there are, someone can tell me about those also.

   Rochelle Hudson plays Betty Andrews, a young woman who’s sent to prison for a crime she didn’t do, and with a wrong attitude from the get-go (well, wouldn’t you?), she starts out badly and (nearly) ends up worse. Chief Matron Brackett (Esther Dale) does not believe in coddling her prisoners, and for a couple of inmates (June Lang and Lorna Gray), her wishes are their commands.

   But after one girl, tormented too long, commits suicide, reform comes, but the former regime does not intend to go down without a fight. Luckily Betty has help on the outside in the form of an impossibly young Glenn Ford, a reporter who’s been working on her behalf from the beginning.

   Even though it’s short, just over an hour long, I found no difficulty in watching this movie in two or even three installments, which tells you one thing, but the fact that I came back to watch it all the way through, that may tell you something else.

   Naturally it all ends well, but real prison reform is nothing but a pipe dream that never seems to last very long. Why else would there be a whole category of movies just like this one that came along later, with Ida Lupino in at least two of them?

WOMEN’S PRISON. Columbia, 1955. Ida Lupino, Jan Sterling, Cleo Moore, Audrey Totter, Phyllis Thaxter, Howard Duff, Warren Stevens, Gertrude Michael, Mae Clarke, Barry Kelley, Vivian Marshall, Adelle August, Juanita Moore, Ross Elliott, Murray Alper, Frank Jenks, Lorna Thayer, Eddie Foy III. Director: Lewis Seiler. Shown at Cinecon 40, Hollywood CA, September 2004.

   In the midst of the corny but eminently watchable antics at a coed prison, Audrey Totter gives a touching performance (with a deathbed scene to boot) and was the last of the Career Achievement Award honorees to appear and be interviewed after the screening.

   Lupino is the psychotic women’s superintendent constantly sparring with her (at the time) real-life husband Howard Duff, playing the prison doctor with a big heart for the incarcerated dames.

   I was surprised to note that Eddie Foy III was in the cast (I don’t remember seeing his unforgettable kisser in the film) but Sterling, Moore (Juanita and Cleo), and Thaxter all manage to establish their presence among the large cast, and when Lupino goes bonkers, I almost melted from pure joy. (I don’t remember her as being this deliciously over-the-top since her big courtroom scene in They Drive by Night.)

RIVER BEAT. Eros Films (UK) / Lippert Pictures (US), 1954. John Bentley, Phyllis Kirk, Leonard White, Glyn Houston, Patrick Jordan, Robert Ayres. Director: Guy Green.

   This is one of a small host of British movies made in the 1950s for which they imported a semi-star from the US, or a fading one, in order to boost its marketability in the States, and maybe boost audiences in the UK as well.

   Not that Phyllis Kirk was a star that anyone in England had heard of at the time, I don’t imagine, but she had been in the US hit House of Wax (the one with Vincent Price in 3D) which I first saw when I was eleven, and I’ve been madly in love with her ever since.

   A petite and decidedly pretty brunette, she had very little future in noir films (of which this is one, but only by the widest of definitions) since she was radiantly and too obviously innocent (in this case) of smuggling diamonds into England from the ocean-going liner which she’s the radio operator for.

   No, even though she’s arrested twice for being involved, it’s a complete frame-up, and even Detective Inspector Dan Barker (John Bentley) knows it, even though the incidents do complicate the romance and growing attraction between them.

   John Bentley, among other roles, played Paul Temple three times, and John Creasey’s “Toff” twice. He’s stalwart, handsome and strong, and he’s 100% right for the three roles: this one and the other two, which I can easily tell you, even though I’ve yet to see him in the other two.

   Phyllis Kirk, who of course was the primary reason I watched this otherwise fairly ordinary crime film, later when on to play Nora Charles opposite Peter Lawford for two seasons of the TV version of The Thin Man, of which I am sure I watched every episode. And some more than once. (I have the series on collector edition DVDs, and no, it doesn’t hold up very well today. Perhaps it never did.)

   The major problem with this movie, the one at hand, though, is that the crime involved, and how it’s committed, makes no sense at all. That is, it doesn’t once the movie ends and you back up and start running it through your mind again.

   While you’re watching, though, it’s suspenseful enough for me to recommend it to you on that basis alone, although some might say, and truthfully so, that the early pace is slow.

   As you can see, I’m somewhat split on this, but another huge plus is the well-guided black and white photography, with much of the movie filmed on location.

   All in all, it made for a decent start for director Guy Green, whose debut this was. He later went on to helm such ventures as Diamond Head, A Patch of Blue, and Luther, among a few other films whose titles you will recognize much more readily than you will this one.

  NOBODY LIVES FOREVER. Warner Brothers, 1946. John Garfield, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Walter Brennan, Faye Emerson, George Tobias, George Coulouris. Screenplay by W.R. Burnett, based his novel. Director: Jean Negulesco.

    When Nick Blake (John Garfield “People like me don’t change.”) comes back to New York from the war he finds his girlfriend night club singer Tony Blackburn (Faye Emerson who has a nice number, “You Again” in the club) has double crossed him and given the $50,000 he left with her to her boyfriend. Nick gets the money back and heads to Los Angeles with the $50k for seed money with his pal Al Doyle (George Tobias) to take up his old life of con man.

    Once he reaches L.A. Nick meets another old con, Pop Gruber (Walter Brennan), who tells him about Gladys Halvorsen (Geraldine Fitzgerald) a widow with two million dollars and Nick sets out to woo her, win her, and fleece her, but he finds he is falling for her, and when he tries to back out of the con runs afoul of one time partner Doc Ganson (George Coulouris) and ends up having to rescue the kidnapped Gladys after a number of well handled plot twists and Blake’s struggle with his unexpected reform.

    The slick little exercise in romantic noir is a neglected little gem from both Burnett and director Negulesco. Brennan and Tobias are scene stealers as usual, Fitzgerald gets a rare chance to shine as a romantic lead, and Garfield gets a showcase for his tough but tender screen persona.

    Coulouris had a long colorful career in such bad guy roles (he was still at it as late as the Lord Peter Wimsey adaptation of Clouds of Witness, where he plays a murderous farmer), and gets to shine here. Emerson has a nice turn as a none too honest blonde bombshell who sets up a nice contrast with Fitzgerald later in the film.

    The film is true to the book, as might be expected, since Burnett wrote both, but Garfield can’t help but bring a layer of vulnerability to Nick that may not be as obvious on the printed page, and Brennan makes the most of Pop Gruber (you have to wonder if this is a nod to Frank Gruber with whom Burnett sometimes collaborated on screenplays).

    Nobody Lives Forever isn’t major noir, but it is an attractive and well done little film that delivers what it promises, with an outstanding cast that never falters or missteps.

    It may be noir in a minor key, but nary a false note is struck, and at 100 minutes the film is lean and stripped down, yet has time to develop character and a plot that has some nice touches, such as a scene in which Cole Porter’s “Don’t Fence Me In” plays on a juke box in the bar in counterpoint to Nick’s internal debate.

    Humphrey Bogart allegedly turned the role of Nick Blake down. Just as well, it fits Garfield’s persona like a glove.

    This isn’t a great film, but it is an example of the kind of intelligent and entertaining fare the studios used to turn out with surprising regularity. Like Jules Dassin’s Two Smart People, it’s well made and stands on its own merits.

    It’s one of those films that succeed so well at what it sets out to do that you may have to watch it a second time to recognize just how artfully it is constructed and played.

DETOUR. PRC, 1945. Tom Neal, Ann Savage, Claudia Drake, Edmund MacDonald, Tim Ryan. Story & screenplay: Martin Goldsmith. Director: Edgar G. Ulmer.

   I hadn’t seen the movie Detour for quite some time, so I pulled it out the other night and gave it a look. And I’m glad I did. It’s even better than I remembered it.

   For those who are unfamiliar with this 1945 classic film noir (and I hope there aren’t too many), it’s all told in flashback by an unshaven, despondent Tom Neal, who laments everything that has happened to him in recent weeks.

   All he wanted was to hitchhike from New York to Los Angeles to be with his cutesy-poo girlfriend who was trying to “make it in pictures,” but wound up slinging hash instead. That’s all he wanted.

   But what he got was Ann Savage. I’ll just leave it at that.

   Detour was directed by Edgar G Ulmer, and was made at PRC (Producers Releasing Corporation) Studio, the last stop on poverty row in 1940s Hollywood. Filmed in six days on a budget of $30,000, and using the cheapest sets and production values imaginable, Ulmer crafted a haunting tale of people at the bottom of society’s pyramid. To put this budget into perspective, Avatar, the new James Cameron bloatbuster, cost 10,000 times as much.

   Drowning in desperation, the characters try to hold on to what they have, and never seem to have enough.

   When these people are confronted with extraordinary circumstances and emotions, they, like all of us, will alter their mode of behavior. Some will even cross the line, the line that separates legal from criminal, moral from immoral, good from evil, Tom Neal from Ann Savage.

   Film noir is generally associated with sinister characters moving through shadowy lighting. Much of Detour takes place under bright light: sunny rides in an open convertible, a well-lit apartment, and so on, but Ulmer’s direction and the interplay between the two leads give the film a very claustrophobic feel, like it was shot in a phone booth. The relentlessly grim story line follows Neal’s character as his life spirals ever downward to the unusual finale.

   While Detour might be considered classic crime fiction, it’s important to note that no crime was ever committed during the movie.

   There’s a scene where Neal takes money and clothes from a dead man, but you know that if he didn’t take the dough, the cops would when they found him. I don’t put that in the crime category.

   This is definitely a movie that’s worth another look, noir fans. A great story, with both Neal and Savage delivering unforgettable performances in what has to be the finest hour for each of them.

   And if you haven’t seen it, by all means buy it. You can get it online for six or seven dollars. You won’t be sorry.

   And you�ll never pick up another hitchhiker again.

THE HOUSTON STORY. Columbia, 1956. Gene Barry, Barbara Hale, Edward Arnold, Paul Richards, Jeanne Cooper, Frank Jenks, John Zaremba, Chris Alcaide, Jack Littlefield, Paul Levitt. William Castle, director; Sam Katzman, producer. Shown at Cinecon 40, Hollywood CA, September 2004.

    I didn’t know that Castle, before he made something of a name with gimmicky horror films, directed some crime films, and if this film is any indication, quite competently.

    Gene Barry is an oil worker who goes to a local crime-boss (Edward Arnold, considerably thinner than in his years as a major supporting player) with a scheme for skimming off oil from the major companies, installing his unwitting brother-in-law Frank Jenks as the token company president.

    Barbara Hale, almost unrecognizable if you mainly know her (as I did) as Perry Mason’s faithful secretary Della Street, is a nightclub singer and gangster’s moll who hooks up with Barry in his meteoric (and brief) rise to the top of the local mob scene.

    Jeanne Cooper is the pre-crime spree girl friend of Barry who finally catches on to his double-dealing ways, and there’s a tense final shoot-out at the roadside cafe where she works and wears her heart on a sleeve for the errant Barry.

    A fast-paced 80 minutes or so that caught Barry in mid-career between his role as the hero in Pal’s War of the Worlds and his successful career as Bat Masterson (a program I never watched).

   Barry showed something of an edge in the brief interview that followed the screening, shortened I would imagine by his almost total lack of recall of much of his career, with the most uncomfortable moment his confused question, “Have we talked about War of the Worlds?,” a subject that had indeed been covered earlier in the interview.

CRIME RING. RKO Radio Pictures, 1938. Allan Lane, Frances Mercer, Clara Blandick, Inez Courtney, Bradley Page, Ben Welden, Charles Trowbridge, with (uncredited) Paul Fix, Byron Foulger, Tom Kennedy. Director: Leslie Goodwins.

   For a fellow who ended his career as the voice of a talking horse, Allan (Rocky) Lane sure had a long and varied one, beginning, believe it or not, in 1929.

   As a young lad I knew him most as the B-western movie star, and after Roy and Hoppy, I think I might have ranked him number three. I never cared all that much for Gene’s movies, but (come to think of it) Charles Starrett as the Durango Kid has got to be up there quite high as well.

   But I digress. Lane was several years from the saddle when he made this one, a crime film of little major significance, but moderately entertaining enough for me to have watched it twice, once this week and once about seven years ago, when I first recorded it from TCM.

   Lane plays a Joe Ryan, a good-looking newspaper reporter in this one. (The “good-looking” part of the role came naturally.) Aiding him in finding out who’s heading the gang of hoodlums who’re pulling the protection racket on his city’s cadre of fortune tellers and phoney mediums are two lovely ladies from a group of dancing girls he rescues from jail. (I believe they were dancing girls, stranded somehow by their manager, and while I am not sure, I refuse to believe otherwise.)

   And either though phoney mediums are also on his target list, he sets up Judy and Kitty (Frances Mercer and Inez Courtney) as a pair of phoney mediums. Once well established in the town’s circle of fortune tellers, one of whom is about to swindle a wealthy woman (and a good friend of Ryan’s) out of her considerable wealth, they’ve got the foothold they need to bust up both rackets.

   You learn several things from watching low budget crime movies like this. One is that (as the old saying goes) there is no honor among thieves. The other is that you should trust phoney mediums no farther than you can throw them, and I hope a large portion of the audiences who watched movies like this in the 1930s got the message loud and clear.

   And with the message, they got 70 minutes of entertainment to boot. It’s not nearly as entertaining today, I don’t imagine, not for most audiences, but on the other hand (and as for me), read that third paragraph again!

SCENE OF THE CRIME. MGM, 1949. Van Johnson, Arlene Dahl, Gloria DeHaven, Tom Drake, Leon Ames, John McIntire, Donald Woods, Norman Lloyd, Jerome Cowan. Director: Roy Rowland.

   This was a belated attempt by MGM to jump on the Crime Noir bandwagon, but though the effort’s certainly there, the studio’s higher than usual production values seem to work in a conversely counterproductive fashion against any major success the film may have had.

   Van Johnson plays a homicide detective named Mike Conovan in this one, a guy who has to deal with two problems in his life at the same time. First of all, he has to solve the murder of a fellow policeman and a good friend who’s found murdered outside a bookie joint with over a thousand dollars in cash in his pocket.

   Secondly, he has a strikingly beautiful wife Gloria (Arlene Dahl) who loves him but who’s getting more and more fretful and worried about the danger he faces every day.

   The ringing of the telephone every night, calling Mike to duty, doesn’t help matters much, either.

   Surprisingly enough, she appears to be far less fazed when she learns that her husband is cozying up to a gangster’s glamorous girl friend named Lili (the equally glamorous Gloria DeHaven).

   If it weren’t for the fact that he keeps his wedding ring on, and that they keep their feet on the floor all the time, I think there’s more than a hint that something more serious could have been going on. (There wasn’t.)

   In another studio’s production, there may have been more sparks in that direction, just maybe. And yet, even without that particular scenario taking place, what remains is an early attempt at a Dragnet-styled documentary of an actual police investigation, but in unlike Dragnet fashion, one in which human and domestic touches are as much of Mike Conovan’s world as bringing justice into it is.

   There’s also an appreciable amount of violence in this film, certainly enough to make Gloria’s worries about him well-founded. There are also long stretches with no musical score in the background, a touch I always appreciate when I notice it, and I usually do.

   Arlene Dahl, as pointed out before, was exceptionally beautiful — but looking at her overall career, I am struck (and puzzled) as to how short it really was. Her movie career began in 1947 and was essential over by the mid-sixties.

   Absolutely perfect in her role was Gloria DeHaven, but after thinking it over, I don’t think that Van Johnson was quite up to his. Supposedly a tough cop torn between his job and his wife, he seems too bland, too youthful, and not yet having seen enough life to make us believe he had.

   Good, even very good, in other words, but far from exceptional.