Thirteen movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. One mild spoiler.]

Elaine said in passing that 1947 might be our ideal year for movies. It’s the year of The Lady from Shanghai, Nightmare Alley, and Out of the Past. So we decided to watch a dozen of the year’s movies, a somewhat random assortment with an emphasis on film noir. But I miscounted, and we ended up watching thirteen.

The Flame (dir. John H. Auer). Two brothers; one, a scheming rat (John Carroll), the other, a goody-two-shoes (Robert Paige); one vacillating girlfriend/wife (Vera Ralston); and a blackmail scheme. The real standouts here are Broderick Crawford as the blackmailer and Constance Dowling as a louche nightclub singer. Best scenes: “Love Me or Leave Me” and the overheard soliloquy. Goofiest: Goody-two-shoes at the organ. ★★★

*

Dear Murderer (dir. Arthur Crabtree). A story of infidelity and, uh, murder, with many surprises. Eric Portman is a jealous husband; Greta Gynt, whom I’d never seen before, is a philandering wife. As always happens, a perfectly plotted crime goes awry. It’s the kind of plot that reminds me of how every short trip begins with a neatly packed suitcase and ends with everything in a mess. ★★★★

*

Bury Me Dead (dir. Bernard Vorhaus). Well, not every movie from 1947 is a good one. This one, a whodunit (and to whom?), is marred by a bizarre script that keeps turning to improbable comic bits (including, yes, a discussion of who and whom). But any movie starring June Lockhart and Hugh Beaumont is one I have to see — and Cathy O’Donnell (from The Best Years of Our Lives) is here too, still with her studio-provided stage diction, and now as a teenager reading psychology textbooks to figure out what’s wrong with her. Things improve considerably toward the movie’s end, when fear and pity take over with the help of John Alton’s spooky interiors. ★★

*

A Double Life (dir. George Cukor). Ronald Colman stars as a stage actor whose long run in Othello begins to alter his character. I can imagine Orson Welles in this role: indeed, the movie has the grandeur and strangeness of a Welles effort. The depiction of theater as theater, letting us see audience, stage, and backstage, is remarkable, as are the contrasts between stage acting and film acting, as are scenes in which Colman, offstage and partly in costume, walks a line between life and art. With Signe Hasso, Edmond O’Brien, Shelley Winters, and, ever so briefly, Betsy Blair. ★★★★

*

Secret Beyond the Door (dir. Fritz Lang). A new bride (Joan Bennett) comes to her husband’s (Michael Redgrave) large maze-like house and finds that it holds many secrets, past and present. I’d describe this movie as a cross between the Bluebeard story and Rebecca, and trust me — that description gives away little. Stanley Cortez’s cinematography adds plenty of atmosphere: dark and still darker rooms, flashlit hallways, and fog-bound grounds. Watch for Natalie Schafer already playing a version of Lovey Howell. ★★★★

*

The Red House (dir. Delmer Daves). Gangster, attorney, professor, Nazi hunter: Edward G. Robinson could play anything, couldn’t he? Here he’s a farmer, living in a claustrophobic farmhouse with his sister (Judith Anderson), an orphaned teenager (Allene Roberts), and many secrets. Lon McAllister is the stranger from the daylight world determined to explore the darkness. Bert Glennon’s cinematography makes this film a satisfyingly disturbing treat. ★★★★

*

Body and Soul (dir. Robert Rossen). John Garfield as a fighter torn between money and honor. Fine performances from all involved: Anne Revere as a loyal, suffering mother, Lilli Palmer and Hazel Brooks as magnetic poles, William Conrad and Lloyd Gough as promoters, Canada Lee as a fighter and trainer. And great work by cinematographer James Wong Howe. It was more disturbing than I could have imagined to hear an amoral promoter sounding like William Barr: “Everybody dies.” ★★★★

*

Whispering City (dir. Fedor Ozep). A melodrama set in Québec City, with a plucky reporter (Mary Anderson), a tormented composer (Helmut Dantine), and a sinister patron of the arts (Paul Lukas). The reporter’s interview of a dying actress lead her to investigates two other — are they murders? The plot is holey, the resolution too sudden. But there’s an excellent score, a foreshadowing of Strangers on a Train, eerie atmosphere in the newspaper office, and Paul Lukas. ★★★

*

The Unsuspected (dir. Michael Curtiz). Claude Rains is Victor Gadison, “writer, art collector, and teller of strange tales,” owner of a great estate, and host of the mysterious radio show The Unsuspected. Strong echoes of Laura, but the plot here defies comprehension, and when things begin to make sense, you realize that the plot (with bodies piling up) never mattered much to begin with. The actors and the atmosphere are all. Constance Bennett and Audrey Totter shine, and Woody Bredell’s cinematography is brilliant. ★★★★

*

Night Song (dir. John Cromwell). An improbable variation on City Lights, with Merle Oberon as Cathy Mallory, a socialite smitten with recently blind pianist and composer manqué Dan Evans (Dana Andrews), whom she meets in a nightclub while slumming with friends. To help bring Dan back to his composing, Cathy pretends to be blind (and a non-socialite). Ethel Barrymore is terrific as Cathy’s wise-cracking, mystery-reading aunt; likewise Hoagy Carmichael as Dan’s cigarette-lighting, beer-fetching pal. Dan’s music is by Leith Stevens, and though derivative (Rachmaninoff, Debussy, Gershwin), it’s good enough for Eugene Ormandy and Artur Rubinstein — oops, that’s the one spoiler. ★★★

*

Heartaches (dir. Basil Wrangell). Little more than a quick effort to cash in on “Heartaches,” the 1933 Ted Weems recording that became an improbable hit in 1947. A crooner (Kenneth Farrell) with a dark secret, his sidekick (Chill Wills), and death threats. An interesting start, with the viewer watching a movie audience watching a trailer for the crooner’s latest feature. But the story is inane; the acting, wooden; and the crooner, or “crooner,” lacks the presence that would make it possible to imagine his having a screen career. ★

*

The Guilt of Janet Ames (dir. Henry Levin). Post-war catharsis, for a public needing to work through painful questions about life and death in battle. It’s difficult to say much about this film without giving everything away. The ending might be considered a cop-out, but I prefer to see it as the only way to address a dilemma for which there is no satisfactory resolution. With Rosalind Russell, Melvyn Douglas and a surprising array of supporting players, including High Beaumont, Betsy Blair, Sid Caesar, and Nina Foch. ★★★★

*

13 Rue Madeleine (dir. Henry Hathaway). From the director of The House on 92nd Street, another semi-documentary — and it had me at “semi-documentary.” James Cagney is Bob Sharkey, an American espionage instructor who learns that one of his trainees is a Nazi agent. Sharkey’s decision to feed the agent false information and drop him into Holland leads to unforeseen complications. Suspense, suspense, and more suspense, with Annabella, Richard Conte, and Sam Jaffe. ★★★★

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