Strangers in the Night

The Film Noir Odyssey

Writer: Bryant Ford and Paul Gangelin

Story: Philip MacDonald

Director: Anthony Mann

Cast: William Terry, Virginia Grey, Helene Thimig

Cinematography: Reggie Lanning

Score: Morton Scott

Studio: Republic Pictures

Release: September 12, 1944

Welcome to my new Film Noir Odyssey miniseries, this time focusing on the films of Anthony Mann. I’ve covered a few of his movies previously, mostly with middling reaction, with the exception of the exquisite “The Tall Target,” which is certainly the best noir Abraham Lincoln was ever involved in. My main takeaway from him so far is that his movies often look incredible, but really rise and fall on the strength of the screenplay. He’s not the type of director who can overcome a haphazard story with his visuals or crisp tone… which is fine. Most directors, many of whom have Oscars, fall into that camp.

Mann’s career can be broken into three very distinct phases: his early films noir, his Westerns (entirely unseen by me) and his late career big-budget epics (unfortunately mostly seen by me). Within his noir filmography, Mann is all but inseparable to critics from cinematographer John Alton, who defined many of Mann’s films just as much as he did. I’ll get into Alton more when we reach his collaborations with Mann.

But first, let’s discuss Mann’s first movie that at least comes close to the film noir genre: “Strangers in the Night.” This film is noir in the same way that Alfred Hitchcock’s seminal “Rebecca” is noir… in that it’s a blatant rip-off of that film but also that it’s more concerned about the gothic aspects of its story. Mann had already directed several features, and here was surrounded by a bunch of middle-of-the road collaborators – had it not had the Mann connection, I doubt this movie would be remembered at all.

Johnny (William Terry) is wounded in the war and, during his recuperation, becomes a pen-pal with the mysterious Rosemary, whose name and address he finds in a book he’s reading. He becomes emotionally attached to Rosemary, and after recovering heads to California to seek her out and tell her that he loves her. Concurrently, a doctor named Leslie (Virginia Grey) begins working in the same community. When Johnny arrives at the windswept, cliffside home where Rosemary apparently lives, he instead finds her eccentric mother Hilda (Helene Thimig) and Hilda’s also eccentric best friend Ivy (Edith Barrett), who keeps looking like she can end the movie by saying a single sentence, but then never quite doing it. Hilda says Rosemary is out of town for a few days and asks Johnny to stay with him, then conspicuously waves away any and all follow-up questions. Meanwhile, Johnny and Leslie begin to fall in love while trying to solve the question of where, exactly, is Rosemary.

“Strangers in the Night” came out four years after “Rebecca” won Best Picture and has many of the same bells and whistles that movie had. But the reason “Rebecca” remains a great film is because of its honest exploration of imposter syndrome, something just about every human on this planet has experienced many times. This movie has no interesting thematic subtext anywhere near that, and as a result the viewer just stares at the screen watching a soulless impersonation of a better story. The centerpiece scenes in both films feature a woman leading our hero through the missing woman’s bedroom, noting small things about that person’s life while underlining their obsession with what is gone but never forgotten. In “Rebecca” the scene is excruciating emotionally because we are with the main character every second. Here, Hilda may as well be a real estate agent.

The screen story is by crime author Philip MacDonald, and I’d love to get my hands on that original treatment because I have a feeling it’s a lot more interesting than the finished product. MacDonald wrote a few scripts, including Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto movies, but is primarily remembered for his novels, including “The Rasp” and the outstanding “Murder Gone Mad.” The screenplay, on the other hand, is written by Bryant Ford and Paul Gangelin… neither of whom had sterling careers. Despite massively overstuffing the first five minutes with about 40 minutes of material, once the first act ends the movie hinges on what Roger Ebert called “The Idiot Plot.”

What is The Idiot Plot, you ask? Well, if a single character says a single sentence (which she should logically say), then the movie is over. So instead, the audience is trapped while the filmmakers are stretching and stretching to try and keep the movie to a suitable running time (it’s only 56 minutes long) instead of just having the characters ask follow-up questions. Early in the film, the writers seem so intent on padding that they write in a grisly train accident (!!!) to avoid having Johnny ask Leslie: “Have you heard of Rosemary?”

And even after the big reveal that Hilda made up Rosemary (gasp!), Johnny and Leslie stick around for drinks and chit chat because the movie has only been on for 45 minutes! The lack of logic and pure idiocy of Hilda’s final attempt on the duo’s life makes the ending laughable way before a painting of “Rosemary” apparently becomes sentient and makes a suicide fall on Hilda. That is not an exaggeration.

The only actor who holds her own is Grey, who plays her doctor matter-of-factly throughout and remains firmly above the material. Meanwhile, Terry seems like a doofus in every scene and Thimig swallows all the nearby scenery. Reggie Lanning’s cinematography is undistinguished, making that windswept cliffside house look like a falling-apart standing set (which it probably was).

All of this is to say that Mann wasn’t surrounded by any diamonds in the rough, so I’m not sure how much of the blame I should place on him. “Strangers in the Night” is a bad movie, a worse “Rebecca” rip-off and honestly not worth all the words I have devoted to discussing it. Other critics have bent over backwards in order to find merit in it, but… why? Sometimes bad is just plain bad – I can only hope “The Great Flamarion” is going to be a step up from this dreck.

Score: *

Secret Beyond the Door

The Film Noir Odyssey

Writer: Silvia Richards

Story: Rufus King

Director: Fritz Lang

Cast: Joan Bennett, Michael Redgrave, Anne Revere, Barbara O’Neil

Cinematography: Stanley Cortez

Music: Miklos Rozsa

Studio: Universal

Release: December 24, 1947

Fritz Lang is one of the master storytellers in all of film history – a man with more masterpieces to his name than just about any director not named Akira Kurosawa, Charlie Chaplin or Martin Scorsese. At this point in Lang’s career, he was far from the uber-budgeted productions he made in Germany like “Metropolis,” but was still producing and directing studio films with good casts and production values, even if some were low budget. “Secret Beyond the Door” was made between his masterpiece “Scarlet Street” and the very good “House by the River,” both of which feel like Lang movies through and through. So what do I make of this terrible movie, one that rips off at least four Alfred Hitchcock films freely and quite obviously. It doesn’t feel like something Lang would put his name on and, though it is visually resonant, that can’t make up for the shitty story and shittier casting choices at play here.

Joan Bennett plays some idiot called Celia, a rich woman who has put off marriage through ten (!) engagements, only to have sexy eyes made at her one day in Mexico by penniless architect Mark (Michael Redgrave). The two are married immediately, but Celia just-as-immediately realizes her husband is a terrible person and may in fact be a murderer. She returns to his gigantic home, where she meets his seemingly normal sister Caroline (Anne Revere), the clearly psycho housekeeper Miss Robey (Barbara O’Neil) and his teenage son David (Mark Dennis). Despite having no money, Mark “collects rooms” in his home… buying all the contents from rooms where famous murders took place and recreating them exactly as they were after the killings. But there’s one room in that hallway hidden behind a locked door… what could be inside? Spoiler: it’s Celia’s room, and Mark wants to kill her!

In case you are playing Hitchcock bingo, here we go. Celia marries Mark on a whim and then suspects he’s going to kill her, just like “Suspicion.” She’s now the lady of a gigantic home run by a woman who is unstable and ultimately burns it all down, just like “Rebecca.” Celia wants to fix Mark by figuring out the root cause of his psychological problems, just like “Spellbound.” There’s a long sequence of Celia trying to get her hands on an important key, just like “Notorious.” I’m honestly surprised screenwriter Silvia Richards (“Ruby Gentry”) didn’t find a way to wedge “Lifeboat” somewhere in there too. Does the movie manage to transcend any of the warmed-over tricks and storylines from those Hitchcock films? No. And that’s a really low bar, considering I dislike “Suspicion” and “Spellbound.”

The one good scene in the movie comes early, when Celia is on vacation in Mexico and witnesses two men fighting to the death over a woman. The crowd runs, not wanting to be hurt, but she stays and watches – barely flinching when an errant thrown knife impacts the table right next to her. In fact, Celia looks completely turned on when this happens. The scene goes a long way to show that danger makes her horny, which allows the viewer to put up with her idiotic behavior concerning her husband up to a certain point.

 That said, Mark is clearly fucked up in a way that isn’t going to be fixed. He hates women and mentions it almost every time the script gives him a chance. Even grosser, the movie explains away his want to murder Celia with the excuse that women domineered him all his life… and the only evidence of that I can see onscreen or spoken in dialogue is that they voice their opinion out loud every now and then, which is apparently way too much for Mark to take. Celia’s first experience seeing Mark and his son together is to watch Mark berate the young boy for nothing in particular and then slap him in the face. She barely blinks when this happens. And, to be clear, Mark genuinely is going to murder Celia and plans the murder for weeks, prepping his murder room to look exactly like Celia’s bedroom. But when he walks in with a cloth in his hands to strangle her, she decides not to run and instead psychoanalyze him. Yes, you read that last sentence right… even with the knowledge that he wants to murder her in cold blood and has been plotting for weeks, she still wants to stay with him! And, spoiler alert for the final scene, she does just that! In the immortal words of Whoopi Goldberg: “Molly, you in danger, girl.”

And how does the extraordinary Bennett handle a stupid character whose decisions are impossible to act? The answer is “not well.” She has much too strong of a presence for such a weak person, and you keep expecting her to kick ass and take charge of the situation. It’s a terrible miscasting, but not as bad as Redgrave, who is heinous here. He’s not terrifying at all and looks like he could be felled by a simple punch to the arm, and his sexual energy (which is played up through Celia’s voiceover) is nonexistent. He’s a vaguely handsome wet blanket, nothing more. The supporting cast of Revere, O’Neil and Lovey Howell as the doddering aunt do their best to make things interesting… but there’s not much you can do to patch the Titanic, unfortunately.

Lang works well enough with Cinematography Stanley Cortez (“The Night of the Hunter”), despite Lang saying after the fact that Cortez couldn’t achieve the shots he wanted. There are some glorious atmospheric sequences in hallways, and the climactic fire is well rendered. But those murder rooms that are so important to the plot never look like anything other than a boring empty room with a few bloodstains… whoops.

I’m actually not sure how much I should blame Lang for the film. Apparently Universal was very unhappy with his first cut and hired an outside director (I’m not sure who) to reshoot most of it. Though Lang was ultimately allowed to come in and reinsert his vision into the final cut, who knows how much actually was him and how much was the other guy. Whatever the case, Lang dislikes “Secret Beyond the Door” with a passion in every interview I read, and I can’t say that I disagree with him.

Score: *

Suspicion

The Film Noir Odyssey

Writer: Samson Raphaelson, Joan Harrison and Alma Reville

Based on the novel “Before the Fact” by Francis Iles

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Cast: Joan Fontaine, Cary Grant, Nigel Bruce

Cinematography: Harry Stradling

Music: Franz Waxman

Studio: RKO

Release: November 14, 1941

Awards: Fontaine won Best Actress. The film was nominated for Best Picture along with “The Maltese Falcon” and “Citizen Kane,” but all lost to “How Green Was My Valley.” It was nominated for Best Dramatic Score along with “Citizen Kane,” and “Ladies in Retirement,” but all lost to “All That Money Can Buy.”

“Suspicion” is wonderful up until the final seven minutes, at which point it implodes. What happens at the climax is so repugnant that it’s perhaps the only example I can think of where the finale of a film completely destroys any enjoyment that I had in what proceeded it. Here is a movie made by a bunch of wonderful filmmakers… and I blame none of them for the finale because it was forced on them by the studio.

But before we get to that ending, let’s talk about the beginning.

Joan Fontaine stars as Lina, an introvert from an upper middle-class family who meets professional asshole Johnnie (Cary Grant). After overhearing that her parents think she’ll never marry or find happiness, she impulsively marries Johnnie. The relationship is toxic from the start – Johnnie mentally abuses her (his pet nickname for her is Monkey Face), manipulates her at every turn, lies all the time about things both small and important, steals from her, cannot keep a job, gambles and insults her savagely if she questions any of her actions. In one line that especially hasn’t aged well, Johnnie says “you’re the first woman I met who meant yes when she said ‘yes.’” Lina struggles with the relationship, choosing to forgive him time and time again because she keeps telling herself she loves him and, despite every action we see from fade in to fade out proving the contrary, he loves her. Johnnie has a friend, the bumbling Dr. Watson… er… Beaky (Nigel Bruce), who becomes business partners with Johnnie and then mysteriously dies. Soon Lina is struggling with her suspicions – in addition to everything else, could Johnnie be a murderer as well? And if so, is she next?

Up until its last moments, “Suspicion” is a fascinating, deeply impactful portrait of a woman who keeps digging her own grave… a grave she is more and more aware of with each passing moment. She has a hundred opportunities to stop her own abuse and demise, but she chooses none of them. Not because she is weak, but because she tells herself she is… and because she insists to herself that this type of behavior isn’t as horrifying as it is. There’s a moment right before a family death where Lina is about to leave Johnnie, and even in her goodbye note we can sense her bargaining with herself about how much to rip into the man who is destroying her life and happiness. It’s not as subtle as the gaslighting Ingrid Bergman’s character suffered through in the masterpiece “Gaslight” – instead Johnnie’s sins are right there out in the open – which makes them even more insidious in many ways, because he knows he can get away with it.

Fontaine and Grant were well-cast in their roles. Fontaine seems to be doing an extension of her character from “Rebecca,” which is not a bad thing at all. Grant is one of the most interesting leading men in Hollywood history because he had no problem going to extremes in his craft; he could be charming or bookish to the point of parody… but he could also turn dark and twisted. Hitchcock would harness this power brilliantly in his masterpiece “Notorious,” where we hate his character’s actions but also root for him to save the heroine. Here, there’s an air of desperation in his charm you don’t see in his other performances. More than that, the moments he drops any guise of kindness and just attacks Lina mentally are rightly upsetting. Fontaine won an Oscar for the role – she should have won for “Rebecca” – but Grant’s performance is the more impressive of the two in retrospect.

Hitchcock used long takes elsewhere in his career, and those are much more famous. But his use of them here is ingenious, oftentimes cornering Lina physically and metaphorically in them. He uses them to explore the awkwardness of the breaking relationship first, then keeps the camera on the awfulness of Johnnie… climaxing in the moment he brings her a poisoned glass of milk before bed, which Hitchcock placed a lightbulb in for maximum effect. Well, except the milk wasn’t apparently poisoned.

Because the last few minutes of the movie fuck everything up.

Hitchcock and his screenwriters Samson Raphaelson (“The Shop Around the Corner”), Joan Harrison (“Dark Waters”) and Alma Reville (“Shadow of a Doubt”) had originally intended for Johnnie to murder Lina with the milk after she had written a letter to her family explaining her suspicions. The film was to end with Johnnie mailing the letter, her final wish before she drank the milk and died. That was a perfect ending, tragic in all the right ways and paying off all the themes of abuse and isolation that the film sets up. But the studio balked, insisting Grant was too big of a star to be a murderer and insisting on a rejiggered ending where Johnnie saves her from falling out of her car and off a cliff and then admitting he’s a terrible husband (just not a murderer) before Lina takes him back yet again.

Pardon me while I go vomit.

The saddest part of the new ending is that it resolves nothing. Johnnie is a known liar, so when he says his alibi for the night Beaky died, there is no reason for the audience or Lina to believe him. And how are we supposed to know whether or not he’ll simply kill her off moments after the film fades to black? It’s an ending, but not a conclusion to the film we saw – just another symptom of the toxic relationship. Just another moment in a doomed relationship.

More than that, what infuriates me is that, retrospectively, the film now is about a pathetic woman who was silly to ever doubt her husband. We can wave away all of Johnnie’s sins because he wasn’t an actual killer… and Lina should have put up with them without ever complaining or being suspicious about his activities. That’s the lesson the movie now leaves its audience with – and I am getting angry again just writing about it. This could have been a classic Hitchcock… certainly one of his darkest, boldest films. But instead we get a pile of hot trash that is great until it is very, very terrible.

Score: *

Foreign Correspondent

The Film Noir Odyssey

Writer: Charles Bennett and Joan Harrison, with additional dialogue by James Hilton and Robert Benchley

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Cast: Joel McCrea, Laraine Day, Herbert Marshall, George Sanders, Albert Bassermann

Cinematography: Rudolph Mate

Music: Alfred Newman

Studio: United Artists

Release: August 16, 1940

“Foreign Correspondent” is a hodgepodge of different genres which don’t go together, baffling tonal shifts, gigantic plot holes and it has the wrong character as its protagonist. That said, it’s a pretty good movie.

Though he has no real knowledge of the politics of Europe, reporter John Jones (Joel McCrea) is assigned to cover the oncoming war overseas. He heads there and immediately finds himself in the midst of conspiracies within conspiracies – a friendly diplomat named Van Meer (Albert Bassermann) is seemingly shot to death on the steps of the embassy but that was a body double – the real Van Meer is being held hostage until he reveals certain government secrets. Also wrapped up in the madness is the woman John falls in love with named Carol (Laraine Day), her father Stephen (Herbert Marshall) who is the head of the Universal Peace Party, and the incredible reporter Scott ffolliott (George Sanders), whose last name is not misspelled, I promise.

Unlike other thrillers by director Alfred Hitchcock, this film was crafted partially as entertainment but partially as a propaganda piece by producer Walter Wanger in order to rally support within America against the rise of fascism overseas. To the film’s credit, it rarely feels that way while you are watching it until the final epilogue. That said, when you step back and think about a bunch of the creative decisions in play, you can see it more clearly.

The biggest example of this is the choice to make John the lead instead of Scott. The film goes to lengths to underline that John knows nothing about what’s going on overseas before sending him into the action, almost as if the filmmakers are shaking viewers while screaming “He’s just like you! Identify with him!” Once in Europe, John makes one or two smart decisions (most notably noticing the windmill spinning in the wrong direction), but in general is an idiot who argues against every smart decision made by other characters. He’s not the stupidest Hitchcock hero (that would be Ingrid Bergman’s character in “Spellbound”), but he’s pretty damn close. Also… frankly… he’s kinda boring. McCrea is a good actor, but the role gives him nothing to do, to the point where the character subtly breaks the fourth wall at a certain point to comment that his romance has happened super fast with no chance to build the relationship.

The filmmakers seem to realize this, and once the second act begins, John disappears from the movie for giant stretches of time – sometimes 20 minutes – even though he’s the hero of the movie. Even they seem bored with John. In his place, the film leans into Scott’s character, who is smarter, wittier, wilder, cooler and just better than John in every way. Sanders seems to be having a ball playing the character, and his enthusiasm is infectious – the moment he jumps out of a sixth story window, lands on an awning and tears his way through, straightening his suit upon landing on the ground, is some kind of perfect.

Scott is the better character, but apparently John was the better way for the audience to get into the story. This imbalance between the characters underlines the issues with the script, which shifts wildly from screwball comedy to brutal horror… sometimes within the same scene. Those tonal shifts are partially a leftover from Hitchcock’s British thrillers, where the tone would often vary, though never this much. But I suspect it is also partially a symptom of the multitude of writers who penned the film – there are two credited screenwriters and another two credited for the dialogue, but apparently another three are uncredited but did major work. Knowing that and knowing Wanger rushed the movie into production, it’s easy to see why it flip flops like it does.

I know that I’ve been knocking on the film for a bunch of paragraphs now, but I also need to underline that (though these are major problems), the movie is actually a lot of fun. Once it gets moving during the rainsoaked assassination setpiece, which is one of the best sequences Hitchcock ever filmed, things remain fast-paced and enjoyable. It’s hard to complain about the problems when things are moving so quickly that your issues are already in the rear-view by the time you process them. The climactic plane crash is also incredible and features incredible special effects for 1940 – the sequence is shockingly harrowing and emotionally resonates more than you’d expect.

Also Santa Claus himself, Edmund Gwenn, plays a ruthless assassin… so that’s awesome.

Hitchcock was working with ace cinematographer Rudolph Mate, who would lens classic noir “Gilda” before becoming a director himself and making movies like “D.O.A.” and “The Dark Past.” I give him a lot of credit for helping the narrative hiccups by making the film visually smooth throughout. There are a couple scenes between Scott and Stephen in shadowed rooms where the Dracula filter is used on their eyes that are sublime to watch.

I like “Foreign Correspondent,” and suspect as time passes the problems will drift from my memory while the great set pieces and Sanders’ aces performance will remain. It’s a delightful marriage between the British Hitchcock and what would become his American aesthetic… just try not to pay too much attention to the film’s hero.

Score: ****

Awards: The film was nominated for six Oscars and lost all of them. For Best Picture (also nominated was “The Letter”) it lost to fellow noir “Rebecca.” Bassermann lost Best Supporting Actor (also nominated was James Stephenson for “The Letter”) to Walter Brennan for “The Westerner.” It lost Best Original Screenplay to “The Great McGinty.” It lost Best Black-and-White Art Direction (also nominated was “Rebecca”) to “Pride and Prejudice” and Best Black-and-White Cinematography (also nominated was “The Letter”) to “Rebecca.” Finally, it lost Best Special Effects (along with “Rebecca”) to “Thief of Bagdad.”

Rebecca

The Film Noir Odyssey

Writer: Robert E. Sherwood and Joan Harrison

Based on the novel by Daphne Du Maurier

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Cast: Joan Fontaine, Laurence Olivier, Judith Anderson

Cinematography: George Barnes

Music: Franz Waxman

Studio: Selznick International Pictures/United Artists

Release: March 21, 1940

As things have progressed here, I’ve started to do small mini-Odysseys, like my recent ones focusing on the actors Humphrey Bogart and John Garfield. I can’t wait to get into Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Crawford coming up, but there are directors where I want to make sure I cover all of their major noir work as well. With certain people like Fritz Lang, the list is fairly clear what I need to cover… but as I dive into a mini-Odyssey covering the noir films of Alfred Hitchcock, the question quickly becomes which of his movies are noir, really?

Sure, a few of his works, most of which I’ve already covered like “Strangers on a Train” and “Rope,” are very obviously noir, but there are a large number where they feels like noir, but only if you squint. Hitchcock is a master of mixing genres and tones – “Psycho” (which I will be covering) is as much a noir as it is a slasher film and a dark comedy… three genres that don’t easily co-exist. “Rebecca” is certainly another example of a sorta-kinda-maybe noir. It certainly deals with several thematic ideas often explored in noir, but it also feels more gothic in its shadows and more romantic in its shading. It’s an important film for Hitchcock – his first big American production, his first collaboration with producer David O. Selznick (and, spoiler alert, his only successful one) and his only film to win Best Picture. So it’s important to cover, even though I honestly don’t think I would be focusing on it in this Odyssey had it not been for the Hitchcock connection.

Our hero is a young woman (Joan Fontaine) who is never named in the film, but I’m going to refer to her as Mrs. DeWinter because, before the end of act one, she marries the uber-rich Maxim DeWinter (Laurence Olivier). He’s far above her station in life, but she tells herself that doesn’t matter until she arrives at his palatial home Manderley… and the imposter syndrome begins almost immediately. Not helping matters is the head housekeeper Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson), who is obsessed with Maxim’s previous wife, the titular Rebecca, and refuses to allow the new Mrs. DeWinter to step out of Rebecca’s shadow. Worse, Maxim also seems still stuck on his dead wife, who everyone goes to lengths to underline was the most beautiful and charming human being ever to exist in the history of time.

The film is a very good adaptation of an excellent novel by Daphne Du Maurier, which I read in high school. That gothic romance genre is marketed and geared specifically towards older women, which is a shame because the book perfectly speaks to a lot of what anyone is going through in high school. That imposter syndrome theme I mentioned earlier will especially resonate with anyone who is not a raging narcissist. And it’s a joy to see screenwriters Robert E. Sherwood and Joan Harrison (“Foreign Correspondent”) keep that at the forefront of the adaptation – they do such an excellent job of making Mrs. DeWinter a sympathetic heroine, despite being passive throughout the majority of the film. When she finally stands up to Mrs. Danvers, you want to stand up and cheer.

This also underlines that Fontaine’s performance is the soul of “Rebecca” and the reason it works. She may have won the Oscar for the much-less successful “Suspicion,” but her work here ranks among the best in any Hitchcock film. Her eyes and mouth are so expressive that you can always tell what she is thinking, and even in moments where she goes over-the-top into cringing dramatics like she’s a silent movie star… it shockingly works. This is because she makes the viewer believe that her character is unable to hide her emotions, which can be a great strength but is seen as weakness by those who want to exploit it. Fontaine doesn’t have much chemistry with Olivier, but she miraculously manages to make that work to her performance’s advantage, using it to underline her awkwardness and how unsure she is of the tilting world around her.

None of this is to say that the rest of “Rebecca” is not well done, because it is. The filmmakers wisely understand that the heart of the story is not the romance between Mrs. DeWinter and Maxim, but Mrs. DeWinter’s relationship with the deceased Rebecca, brought to life explicitly by Rebecca’s most loyal Mrs. Danvers. The best scene in the film is a simple one, where Mrs. Danvers shows Mrs. DeWinter around Rebecca’s suite, simply showcasing things as she describes the intricacies of Rebecca’s life. The room feels haunted (thanks in no small part thanks to ace cinematographer George Barnes’ (“Spellbound”) work), and it seems as if Rebecca herself will somehow enter the room any second.

Much has been made about the adjustment to the makeshift mystery of what happened to Rebecca – Maxim killed her in the novel and it was accidental in the film… but the mystery doesn’t really matter in any way other than that it extends Rebecca’s shadow over the ensemble for the running time, so it did not bother me at all. But aside from the ending, I do find myself wishing the filmmakers had felt a little freer with their adaptation, because it is slavish in places. Did we really need the full monologue of the opening of the book as we drift through Manderley’s weaving paths?

I think “Rebecca” is wonderful in many ways and I find myself revisiting it quite often, especially in moments where I am feeling like an imposter in my own life. That said, I rewatched “The Letter” last week, which was also released in 1940 and was nominated for Best Picture against “Rebecca.” I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if that film’s director, William Wyler, would have instead directed this, with Hitchcock handling “The Letter.” Part of me thinks that switch would have made both films transcendent. Still, what we have here is a minor classic in Hitchcock’s oeuvre, and it’s more than worth your time.

Score: ****1/2

Awards: “Rebecca” won Best Picture – among the other nominees were films noir “Foreign Correspondent” (also directed by Hitchcock) and “The Letter.” Barnes took home the Oscar for Best Black-and-White Cinematography (also nominated were “Foreign Correspondent” and “The Letter”). Hitchcock was nominated for Best Director (also nominated was “The Letter”) but lost to John Ford for Grapes of Wrath. Olivier was nominated for Best Actor but lost to “The Philadelphia Story” and Fontaine was nominated for Best Actress (along with “The Letter”) but lost to “Kitty Foyle.” Anderson was nominated for Best Supporting Actress but lost to “The Grapes of Wrath.” The film was nominated for Best Screenplay but lost to “The Philadelphia Story” and Best Score but lost to “Pinocchio” (also nominated was “The Letter”). It lost Best Black-and-White Art Direction to “Pride and Prejudice” and Best Editing (also nominated was…wait for it… “The Letter”) to “North West Mounted Police,” which is apparently a movie that exists. Finally, it was nominated for Best Special Effects to “The Thief of Bagdad” (also nominated was “Foreign Correspondent”).

Cry Wolf

The Film Noir Odyssey

Writer: Catherine Turney

Based on the novel by Marjorie Carleton

Director: Peter Godfrey

Cast: Errol Flynn, Barbara Stanwyck, Geraldine Brooks

Cinematography: Carl E. Guthrie

Music: Franz Waxman

Studio: Warner Bros.

Release: July 18, 1947

Percent Noir: 50%

“Cry Wolf” is 95% a very good film and 5% abhorrent trash. The unlucky thing is that the 5% is the final moments, so it leaves a terrible taste in the viewer’s mouth when he looks back at the entire thing. What a damn shame, because for awhile there, I was pretty sure I was watching a lost treasure.

Queen of film noir Barbara Stanwyck stars as Sandra, a gutsy woman who stomps her way into the family home of Mark (Errol Flynn) and says that she is the wife of his just-deceased brother Jim. She hides nothing – Jim told her that he needed to be married to inherit and she needed her college paid for, so they entered the marriage almost as strangers and planned to divorce quietly six months later after the money came through. But then Jim died. Sandra offers up a copy of a will and just wants her part. Mark is immediately venomous toward her, forcing her to threaten to take the entire estate unless they find the original will.

Soon enough Sandra is staying at the house while the search is mounted. She meets Jim’s spirited sister Julie (Geraldine Brooks), who begs for her help. Mark is controlling her entire life and did the same for Jim before he died, Julie says. And he keeps holing himself up in a locked-off wing all night. Sandra doesn’t know what to make of it… but then begins to hear screams echoing from the closed-off wing…

I’m a sucker for this kind of noir… where it’s meshed together with old dark houses and vaguely romantic melodrama. Daphne du Marier didn’t write the novel upon which “Cry Wolf” was based, but she might as well have. What truly elevates this from most other entries in this sub-genre is Sandra (and Stanwyck’s performance). Girl is take-no-prisoners in the best way possible. “I am not a placid girl,” she says early in a great line of dialogue, and damn if she isn’t right. She uses a dumbwaiter to get into the hidden wing and, later, crawls across the roof to gain entry through a skylight. She slaps a motherfucker when he crosses a line. And she is blunt instead of hiding how she’s feeling. I genuinely loved her and was rooting for her hard to uncover the secret.

Further, screenwriter Catherine Turney (“No Man of Her Own”) does a brilliant job of setting all the chess pieces in the right places. Up until those terrible last five minutes, when the truth becomes clear as to what is going on, I was mystified as to what was going on. Turney is excellent at leaning into Mark’s ambiguity without pushing him too far into villainy, and note how she places emphasis on visuals to underline or contrast what we are hearing in the dialogue.

And then that ending fucks it all up.

Turns out Jim is alive and crazy and murdered someone so Mark faked his death and has been keeping him essentially hostage on the grounds in order to… something. Keep things kosher? Julie was also crazy before she maybe committed suicide. And Mark is a hero and Sandra apologizes and says she never should have meddled or not trusted him even though literally everything he did was suspicious and all those screams in the night and… UGH. I hate it. So much.

The twist certainly hasn’t aged well in terms of shaming those who have mental illness and calling them too fargone to ever find love, marry or have children. In other words, it’s gross as hell. But it’s also, well, the cheapest possible way out of the tantalizing maze the rest of the film has gotten the viewer lost in. It’s basically telling you that there isn’t even a maze. And those few lines of dialogue undo all the fine character work we’ve seen from Sandra… turns out she was just a silly woman after all who should have never questioned the man in charge.

Pardon me while I vomit.

Stanwyck is superb. Because of course she is. The dialogue she’s given was already good, but she elevates it in every scene she is in. Flynn, who was of course one of the great assholes of his generation of actors, is also very good. He plays his possible villainy beautifully… is he a monster, or just on the spectrum? It helps that he and Stanwyck play very well off one another – it’s not sexual chemistry, but they make one another better every time their characters spar. The only other major character is Julie, and Brooks beautifully renders the character, especially when you look at her in retrospect after learning the aforementioned shitty twist. It’s a shame she never became a bigger star.

Director Peter Godfrey made the noir adaptation of “The Woman in White,” but this is in a different league than that half-baked thing. Here he has a good handle on his actors, and his collaboration with cinematographer Carl E. Guthrie (who also lensed “Woman in White”) is sublime. The house the characters inhabit is truly an astonishing visual achievement – in its best moments it can give Manderly or Norma Desmond’s home a run for its money. That includes the set design – note how in the closed-off wing literally everything possible is painted white, and how impactful that is in the wide shots.

I have no idea how to recommend this film aside from to say that it’s great until it’s really, Really, REALLY not great at all. There are a myriad of things to recommend in it, but that ending comes close to undoing them all. I’m not unhappy I’ve seen it, but I’m never going to watch it again. So how about I toss two-and-a-half stars its way then throw up my hands and walk away?

Score: **1/2

The Letter

The Film Noir Odyssey

Writer: Howard E. Koch

Based on: “The Letter” play by W. Somerset Maugham

Cinematographer: Tony Gaudio

Music: Max Steiner

Cast: Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, James Stephenson, Gale Sondergard, Victor Sen Yung

Release: November 22, 1940

Studio: Warner Bros.

Awards: Nominated for seven Oscars but lost in all categories: Best Picture (to “Rebecca”), Director (to John Ford for “The Grapes of Wrath”), Actress for Davis (to Ginger Rogers for “Kitty Foyle), Supporting Actor for Stephenson (to Walter Brennan in “The Westerner”), Score (to “Pinocchio”), Editing (to “North West Mounted Police”) and B&W Cinematography (to “Rebecca”)

Percent Noir: 60%

That Leslie Crosbie is quite a dame, no?

Don’t get me wrong, she scares the shit out of me. But the way Bette Davis inhabits the character, with her expressive (often angry) eyes, is incredible. Despite her quiet persona, she speaks with an assured tenor and is the kind of person you just know is going to figure her problems out, no matter what the consequences. Leslie is one of the best characters in film noir, male or female, and every moment Davis is onscreen you cannot look away from her.

The film takes place in Malaya, and opens with Leslie unloading all the bullets in a gun into a family friend named Hammond. As one does. Leslie claims that Hammond just showed up and attempted to rape her, but still must stand trial for her act. Her husband Robert (Herbert Marshall) is endlessly supportive, but her lawyer Howard (James Stephenson) begins to have some suspicions. Then a note surfaces that Leslie sent to Hammond, inviting him to come over that night, and Howard finds himself in very, very grey ethical territory. The note is in the possession of Hammond’s wife (Gale Sondergaard in unfortunate yellow face), and she has some very specific demands before it’s turned over.

The thing that immediately sets this noir apart from many others is its tone and how its characters approach Leslie’s act. A British police inspector arrives to investigate and treats Leslie with such kid gloves, you’d think they were discusses a boring croquet match instead of a shooting. Every character immediately gives Leslie the benefit of the doubt, and no one is questioning why the woman is acting much too calm for the situation. No one blinks when someone asks why Leslie didn’t call for help and she shrugs and says “I didn’t want to make a fuss.” When Leslie finishes the story, the inspector immediately says “I think you behaved magnificently.” Seriously.

Later Leslie and her friends sit down at the table and discuss cars and dinner, pretending very intensely that a murder didn’t just take place. These sequences are fascinating to watch – Davis nails Howard Koch’s great, multi-layered dialogue (much taken directly from W. Somerset Maugham’s excellent play of the same name), with people searching for any kind of small talk that could replace conversation about the bloody elephant in the room.

These sequences make a great set-up for when Leslie’s true motives for the murder begin to present themselves and things get messy. Koch interestingly paints all of the British characters as somehow disconnected from reality, whereas all of the native characters have a full understanding of life. Aside from Leslie, the most fascinating character in the film is one of Howard’s assistants, a man named Ong Chi Seng. Played by Sen Yung (Charlie Chan’s Number Two Son represent!), Ong at first seems complacent, with a fake smile plastered on his face as he tries to accommodate everything Howard needs. But watch the way he brings up knowledge of the letter, and later the way he smiles at Howard when he proudly admits that he’s making $2,000 out of the letter/money exchange. It’s a small role, but Yung knocks it out of the park.

The most divisive aspect of “The Letter” is its climax. Whereas the play ends with Leslie being acquitted for the murder and then tearfully admitting that she hates her husband and is still in love with the man she killed, that would not do for the Hays code. So the film takes the sequence a step further, with Leslie wandering outside where she is stabbed to death by Hammond’s wife. Many find this extra beat silly and that it undercuts much of what came before, but several noir scholars have voiced strong support of it.

I wish I had stronger feelings one way or another. On the one hand, it’s a better comeuppance for Leslie to finally admit her true motives to her husband and then have to live with the consequences. On the other, there’s a randomness and viciousness to the act that perfectly bookends the brutality of the opening. I do think that Koch and director William Wyler go way over-the-top in terms of metaphor and imagery in those final moments – there’s the clouds and the moon, the knife, the knitting, the party… the film would have been much better with only one or two of those.

Like Michael Curtiz, Wyler is one of those great directors who created wonderful films in just about every genre. He was a master at picking out the heart of a story and then spinning the rest of the film around it. Because he produced very good movies in various genres, as opposed to specializing in one, he’s less remembered today than he should be, especially considering he’s second only to George Cukor in getting great female performances on film. Bette Davis called him the first great director she ever worked with, and their first collaboration on the “Gone With the Wind” precursor “Jezebel” earned her an Oscar for Best Actress. I would mention my other favorite Wyler films, but then this article would simply turn into a very long list.

For the most part Wyler gets out of the way of his actors, but also throws in some sublime visual touches. The film opens with a “long take” (with several hidden cuts) of the various rubber farm workers sleeping before the camera happens upon the murder – it’s the perfect way to set up the atmosphere of the situation. Wyler returns to that atmosphere in the finale as well. Then there’s a sequence where Leslie is describing the events leading up to the murder where Wyler’s camera becomes a searching POV, much like the explanation scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rebecca,” but the trick works better here.

The film is one of the first of the classic noir cycle, and certainly starts things off with a bang. It’s a shame Davis didn’t portray more femme fatales in her career – she gives one of the defining performances of the noir genre here, one any fan of the genre should seek out.

Score: ****1/2

Jennifer

The Noir Odyssey

Writer: No One, Apparently

Based on: the short story “Jennifer” written by Virginia Myers

Director: Joel Newton

Cinematographer: James Wong Howe

Music: Ernest Gold

Cast: Ida Lupino, Howard Duff, Robert Nichols

Release: October 25, 1953

Studio: Monogram Pictures

Percent Noir: 50%

By one measure, “Jennifer” is more about being alone than just about any other film. Its heroine, Agnes (Ida Lupino) was spurned by her lover, went through an “illness” and now finds herself the sole caretaker of a sprawling mansion in Southern California. She becomes obsessed with the previous caretaker, Jennifer, who was never seen by the townsfolk and one day just disappeared. Agnes’ love interest Jim (Howard Duff) runs the local grocery store but makes it clear early on that he’s lonely for female companionship. And the mansion itself, built in the ’20s and none-too-attractive, sits there in the California heat, alone and a few steps away from disrepair, unwanted by anyone. Every scene and sequence in the film is a meditation on loneliness, missed connections and…for Agnes and the mysterious Jennifer, the feeling that one might not be as alone as one hopes.

Damn, I wish this was a better movie.

It has all the ingredients for a great film, but nearly every moment left me wanting. It’s one of those situations where everything is “almost there,” but not quite.

The film begins with Agnes on her way to the mansion and being told in no uncertain terms by a gas station attendant that she’s not going to last long at the old creepy mansion. I’m not sure if the all-knowing gas station attendant character was a clam back in 1953, but it feels like it should have been. Agnes meets Jennifer’s sister, who informs her that Jennifer just up and disappeared one day with no explanation. The house is still filled with her stuff, and there are reminders of the woman everywhere. Key logical information is missing from this sequence: if Jennifer really disappeared, why did no one call the police? Once the finale’s twist is revealed, you see why the information was glazed over here, but that doesn’t make it any less awkward while watching.

Alone in the mansion, Agnes becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to Jennifer. Jim keeps telling her not to worry about it, which of course makes Agnes even more curious, and also suspicious of him – could he be the reason she is gone?

The story itself, while not original, is an engaging-enough update on gothic melodramas, most obviously “Rebecca,” and the many sequences of Agnes wandering through the house alone bring to mind the decade’s myriad of haunted house thrillers. This is mostly a noir in its visual style, specifically the stylings of the great cinematographer James Wong Howe (hey, what’s he doing as DP on a Monogram movie? More on that later…). The mansion Agnes inhabits is visually ugly, but Howe finds many intriguing, mysterious ways to fill the frame with light and shadows. Mirrors are used well here, with one in the front hall that takes up an entire wall making it seem like Agnes is being followed by someone.

It’s all the small moments that make “Jennifer” unbelievable. Agnes finds Jennifer’s diary, which is helpfully labelled “diary” (the camera lingers on the name and director Joel Newton has Lupino wipe her fingers over the name to ensure we get it. Each page of the diary has only a sentence to sum up the day, written in perfect cursive handwriting. Even considering the finale, this is pretty looney. The score, by Ernest Gold (who won an Oscar for “Exodus” and also composed for such films as “Judgement at Nuremberg”) is a mess, with a female vocalist WAILING in such a way that every time her voice appears with the score it ruins the atmosphere of the scene it underscores. And this wailing shows up a lot. And the sequences of Agnes wandering the house become repetitive only in that she never seems to investigate any of the interesting things she finds herself, instead ending the scene walking away and then exploring later with another character.

Lupino is all wrong for her part. While she’s played repressed wonderfully elsewhere, including the much-better gothic noir “Ladies in Retirement,” here her persona is too strong for Agnes. We sense an inherent strength in Lupino that makes Agnes’ weaknesses seem all the more silly. No one played this type of character better than Joan Fontaine (see “Rebecca” and “Suspicion”), and to imagine her in the role is to imagine a much better movie. Duff (who was then Lupino’s husband) doesn’t do much to soften Jim’s edges, making him seem almost bipolar in the way he focuses on caring for Agnes one moment and completely dismissing her the next. There’s one moment shared between the two actors in a record store that is elegantly staged and beautifully performed, but that’s the exception, not the rule.

The fact that the actors are saddled with some pretty inane dialogue doesn’t help matters. I would point the finger of blame at the screenwriter, but no one is credited! TCM credits two writers, but without a proper explanation of the credit, I don’t feel comfortable attributing their work here. This is director Newton’s sole credit, implying that the name may be a pseudonym (again, TCM credits a different person). Perhaps the film is the work of several black-listed filmmakers unable to take credit for their work? That’s how Howe ended up on the film – he was grey-listed at the time. Then again, almost all of the blacklisted filmmakers were actually good at their jobs, so perhaps my conjecture is fundamentally flawed.

Whatever the case, the mystery behind who actually made “Jennifer” is better than the film itself. Is it worth watching for the gorgeous cinematography? Maybe. But he was the DP on over 100 films, and I’m betting almost all of them were better than this, so go watch one of those instead. If you’re really in the mood for a gothic romantic thriller with a twinge of noir, I highly recommend “Rebecca” instead.

Score: *1/2