A delirium of shadows

The premise is bizarre: Suspense (dir. Frank Tuttle, 1946) is a film noir set in the world an ice-skating revue. The story bears some resemblance to that of Nightmare Alley : an itinerant man, Joe (Barry Sullivan), steps into a job, quickly rises to success, and makes a play for a woman — here, the lead skater and boss’s wife Roberta (British skating star Belita). I have decided to call the final forty-five minutes of the movie a delirium of shadows. The cinematography is by Karl Struss. I had to look up his name to realize that he was the (Academy Award-winning) cinematographer for F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise.

In these images: Barry Sullivan, Eugene Pallette as right-hand man, Belita, Albert Dekker as the boss (backlit, hatted), and an unidentified actor as a timpanist (!) in the revue’s orchestra. The final image reminds me this image of The Man (George O’Brien) in Sunrise. Click any image for a larger view.