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(photo courtesy of Kino International) |
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Brenda Marshall plays anesthesiologist Nora Goodrich, who puts her career before her private life. Marriage isn't particularly important to her. She lives for pioneering new technologies in anesthetics. Her co-worker (Hillary Brooke) envies Nora's position in life and thinks she can do better herself, so during an experiment, Arline (Brooke) arranges for an explosion that badly scars Nora's face. While Nora recovers in a hospital, Arline then sets her sights on stealing Nora's boyfriend (William Gargan), telling him that Nora doesn't want to see him anymore. Once she improves enough that she can leave the hospital, Nora switches identities with a blackmailer who plunges from a high-rise balcony. Allowing the world to think she is dead, Nora plots her revenge.
In terms of plot, Strange Impersonation recalls big-budget women's pictures, such as the Joan Crawford vehicle A Woman's Face (1941); however, you won't find any glossy melodrama here. Strange Impersonation is a wicked little gem that eschews any vestiges of glamour in favor of a blunt and malevolent atmosphere.
A year later, after short stints at PRC and RKO, Mann arrived at Eagle-Lion Studios, where he was teamed with John Alton in one of the most productive partnerships in film noir history. Together they would work on T-Men, Raw Deal, He Walked By Night, and Border Incident. (Their non-noir collaborations include a Western, Devil's Doorway, and a costume drama, Reign of Terror.)
The video transfer for Strange Impersonation was provided by a restored print from the UCLA Film & Television Archive. The video and DVD artwork contains one of Kino's best taglines: "Hell hath no fury as a woman scalded by acid."
Part of the problem can be traced to the casting. While Henry Fonda was one of America's best loved actors, his acting range was somewhat limited. He excelled at playing laconic, slow-talking characters of great moral strength. But in the case of The Long Night, he's asked to play a deeply-troubled man. Joe Adams (Fonda) falls hard for a quiet young woman named Joanne (Barbara Bel Geddes) who stumbles into the sand blasting factory where Joe works. He's immediately smitten and pursues her relentlessly; however, much to his disappointment, he discovers she is already involved with a magician (Vincent Price) who lies habitually and gloats over his conquests.
Fonda attempts to create the same smooth, earthy performance that Jean Gabin brought to Le Jour se lève, but forced to spout pages of dialogue, Fonda becomes overbearing and unconvincing. Likewise, Barbara Bel Geddes is out of place as the object of Joe's affection. While Bel Geddes appeared in several fine films, such as Panic in the Streets and Vertigo, her career in Hollywood as a leading actress never really took off. Here, in her debut performance, Bel Geddes needs to inspire Joe's obsessive attraction, but she's too bland to inspire much of anything.
To help compensate for the lack of fire between Fonda and Bel Geddes, Dimitri Timokin's score swells during the dialogue sequences between Joe and Joanne. But this tactic quickly becomes a major irritant as it destroys the movie's quiet atmosphere. (Similar scenes in Le Jour se lève have no music.)
Sol Polito captures some magnificent images as he recreates the ambiance of a Pennsylvania industrial town, but The Long Night feels all too planned and storyboarded. Nothing happens spontaneously. Everything is meticulously designed, and while the results are visually rich, the results are also artificial.
The Long Night pales in comparison to Le Jour se lève. Part of the problem is simply the limitations on Hollywood films during this era. While Jean Gabin's intentions are clearly sexual in Le Jour se lève (in a marvelous scene he tries to coax his girlfriend to come to bed with him), Henry Fonda's intentions are less defined. When Jean Gabin kidnaps a doll from his girlfriend's bedroom, we laugh at him for this modest form of sexual blackmail. But when Henry Fonda steals a doll from Bel Geddes' room, he looks like a nutcase.
The DVD presentation of The Long Night includes a gallery of photographs and artwork, an essay on the production design, and two excerpts that compare similar scenes in both Le Jour se lève and The Long Night (however, the excerpts from The Long Night didn't queue up correctly on our preview copy).
Behind Locked Doors isn't among Boetticher's best crime thrillers, but it's rarely a dull movie. Saddled with Richard Carlson (one of Hollywood's dullest actors) in the leading role, the drama struggles to rise above the emptiness caused by Carlson's presence. He plays a private detective named Ross Stewart. Lucille Bremer hires him to look into the goings-on at a mysterious sanitarium and determine whether a crooked judge is hiding out within its walls. (Carlson's attempt at turning on the charm when Bremer walks into his office is laughable.) In a plot development that Samuel Fuller would utilize over a decade later in Shock Corridor, Stewart (Carlson) has himself committed to the sanitarium so that he can begin searching for the missing judge.
This story presents many opportunities for shadowy intrigue and claustrophobic atmosphere, but it's hard to work up much concern for such a stiff actor as Carlson. However, the story picks up once Carlson discovers the existence of an off limits wing of the sanitarium. Within a padded room in this wing stalks a demented ex-prizefighter who attacks anyone who enters his room. He slashes down on shoulder blades and heads with his massive, meaty hands. Played by Tor Johnson, who would soon become a major player in Ed Wood's stable of actors, the ex-prizefighter is an enormous brute who knows nothing but inflicting pain. But aside from the scenes with Tor Johnson, Behind Locked Doors is an unexceptional little thriller.
Filmed at Eagle-Lion Studios, where Anthony Mann worked on several top-notch B movies, Behind Locked Doors never fulfills the "classic film noir" label (words that appear on the video sleeve), but it's a fast-moving suspense yarn, propelled by Boetticher's penchant for menacing shadows and claustrophobic interiors.
Boetticher himself didn't think much of his early thrillers: "The less said about [these movies] . . . the better. . . . I was really working in the dark. . . . There isn't a bit of directing in them. None of them is any good." While it's true that Boetticher's early thrillers certainly don't match up to his best Westerns, Boetticher overstates his case. With Behind Locked Doors, we see a director who lets actors carelessly wade through trite dialogue, but this same director also displays a growing awareness of how to use the camera to create onscreen paranoia. This is a minor Boetticher movie, but it offers an intriguing perspective on the developing talents of one of the great genre directors.
"Noir: The Dark Side of Hollywood" Series IV is now available from Kino International, and it includes Strange Impersonation, The Long Night, and Behind Locked Doors. All three movies are available on both VHS and DVD. Suggested retail price: $24.95 each for VHS and $29.95 for DVD. For more information, check out the Kino Web site.
Review of "Noir: The Dark Side of Hollywood" Series One Review of "Noir: The Dark Side of Hollywood" Series Two Review of "Noir: The Dark Side of Hollywood" Series Three Review of Ida Lupino's The Hitch-Hiker. |
