The Conspirators (1944)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Conspirators (1944) – J. Negulesco

Sure, it echoes Casablanca, with a number of shared cast members and similar plotline, but even if it's empty at the centre, it makes all the right moves and therefore I found it an easy and enjoyable entertainment.

 

The Suspect (1944)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Suspect (1944) – R. Siodmak

Charles Laughton is a kindly businessman with a shrewish wife in early 20^th century London. When young jobseeker Ella Raines chances into his office, they strike up a friendship which blossoms into affection.  Eventually, Laughton decides to ask his wife for a divorce, but she refuses. He tells Raines that they can’t meet again but it is too late because his wife has found out and threatens to tell everyone about his suspected infidelity.  The next thing we know, she is dead and a police inspector is nosing around Laughton’s place.  We never feel anything but sympathy for Laughton, even as the police start tightening the screws upon finding a “motive” (his relationship with Raines).  But they can’t pin anything on Laughton – that is, until his drunken rotter of a neighbour (Henry Daniell) claims to have heard the murder through the walls. Now Laughton is really cornered and the usual fate of the film noir protagonist awaits him.  Yet he is willing to try one last gambit (and still remarkably retains audience sympathy).  This is not the typical noir, but a character driven piece with Laughton more subtle than his later scenery chewing years would suggest and fine direction from noir stalwart Robert Siodmak (The Killers, Criss Cross, etc.). 

 

The Woman in the Window (1944)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Woman in the Window (1944) – F. Lang

Watching this noir from Fritz Lang while knowing the ending takes some of the bite away (although Lang apparently defended his creative decision).  Perhaps Scarlet Street (1945, with the same stars and director) hits harder in contrast.  Here, Edward G. Robinson is a psychology professor who has a random meet-up with Joan Bennett (the titular woman in a painting he admires) while his wife and children are away.  Unlike in the subsequent film, no romance begins – but the pair kills her lover (in self-defence) when he barges in unexpectedly.  The noir element extends from their decision to cover up the crime.  Lang (and screenwriter Nunnally Johnson) are particularly good at detailing the methodical steps the police take to solve the crime (and the clues that Robinson has left behind), even as Robinson is forced to be an onlooker to their processes by virtue of his friendship with the District Attorney.  And then things get worse when Dan Duryea shows up.  Surprisingly, Lang and Johnson don’t turn Robinson and Bennett against each other, perhaps a missed opportunity for even more suspense (it is hinted at as a possibility).  Things do get pretty dark – and then there is that ending!  A surprisingly languid affair, all up, but certainly in the top 100 of films noir from the era.

The Rats of Tobruk (1944)

☆ ☆ ☆

The Rats of Tobruk (1944) – C. Chauvel

This version of the Australian WWII war picture is nearly 30 minutes longer than the version currently circulating in the US.  This might explain some of the bad reviews it has received on the internet, although it’s true that it doesn’t really distinguish itself in the field of combat.  Yet, it is (and was) something to see (stereotyped) Australian characters on the big screen.  Grant Taylor is Bluey, the rough womaniser (who secretly yearns for his one true love); Chips Rafferty is Milo, the lanky Ocker with the broad Strine accent; and Peter Finch is the Brit journalist who narrates the picture and delivers some stirring patriotic speeches (including from the Bard’s Henry V).  The plot is largely anecdotal, focused on Australian troops who held off Rommel in the North African city of Tobruk (Libya).  The battle sequences are intercut with comic relief and scenes reminding us that Bluey is pining for his love back home.   

  

The Uninvited (1944)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Uninvited (1944) – L. Allen

I keep returning to this film because I want it to be something that it is not.  I want it to be a spooky supernatural ghost story, along the lines of The Haunting (1963), and although it does include all the elements from the haunted house genre, the tone of the film consistently undercuts its spookiness.  For one thing, there is Ray Milland, constantly joking and not really taking the supernatural (sobbing from somewhere in the dark house, sudden cold spots or a whiff of mimosas, doors slamming) seriously at all.  His sister, with whom Milland has bought the house on the clifftop overlooking the sea on a whim, is a bit more concerned.  But the film jauntily moves along (with some mickey-mousing on the soundtrack) to focus on a burgeoning romance between Milland (aged 38) and Gail Russell (aged 20), who is the daughter of the woman who used to live in the house who died mysteriously, falling from the cliff.  It is the mother who is thought to haunt the house -- but this doesn’t quite jell because of the malevolence of the spirit toward Russell.  A seance is held to try to sort it all out and the plot thickens considerably (including the introduction of a possible lesbian subplot).  With all these classic ingredients, The Uninvited should be a spine-tingling ghost story but instead it becomes a fantasy film (save for one “angry ghost” scene), offering hope for romance if only the secret of the ghost can be worked out and Russell freed from its curse.  And approached with these different expectations, the film works.

Earlier, I wrote more pithily:

Ray Milland plays a 30-something jovial oaf who moves into a haunted house with his sister and puts the moves on a 20-year-old neighbor girl who is the target of the ghost's energies. Generally lighthearted and romantic but with some good (and not overdone) chills (room gets colder, pets won't go in there). Solving the mystery of the ghost's back-story means saving the girl.

The Lodger (1944)

☆ ☆ ☆

The Lodger (1944) – J. Brahm

Filling in the missing films noir that I haven’t seen means seeing some that are pretty ordinary.  John Brahm’s films fit that bill (although I think I enjoyed Hangover Square, 1945, and The Locket, 1946, a bit more than this one).  Taking its name and its general idea from the earlier Hitchcock film (and/or the source novel by Marie Belloc Lowndes), The Lodger is set in London during the time of Jack the Ripper.  Heavy-set character actor Laird Cregar (whose career was cut short by heart failure at age 30) plays the man who moves into the attic rooms and attracts suspicion when he stays out all night and leaves other clues that he might be the Ripper.  Merle Oberon plays the music hall dancer who would seem to be a prime target for the villain and who does attract the interest of Cregar too.  George Sanders is on hand as the detective on the case.  Although the film never really builds suspense (and this may be the fault of the somewhat incongruous music by Hugo Friedhofer), the mise-en-scene is well developed and there is a foggy/misty atmosphere throughout the Whitehall section of London that makes all the events seem dreamlike (when perhaps they should have been nightmarish).  

The Spider Woman (1944)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Spider Woman (1944) – R. W. Neill

Action-packed instalment of the long running series with Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson.  Holmes very nearly meets his match in Gayle Sondergaard’s Spider Woman (potentially drawn from Conan Doyle’s Irene Adler who was Holmes’ great female adversary and possible love interest).  She almost does him in on more than one occasion as he attempts to solve the mystery of the “pajama suicides” – men awakening in the middle of the night and killing themselves.  Of course, Holmes suspects foul play – and he both fakes his own death and goes undercover as an Indian gambler to try to gather evidence about the crimes.  In the end, the script draws liberally from several Conan Doyle’s stories and also inserts Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito into the plot (as targets at a shooting gallery) as a tip of the hat to modern wartime audiences.  Bruce is his usual bumbling self, Rathbone is cunning and playful, and Dennis Hoey is all bluster (though with a sentimental streak) as Inspector Lestrade.  The plot has enough twists and moves swiftly. Indeed, all of the elements of the franchise are here and they make for rip-roaring fun.

Christmas Holiday (1944)

☆ ☆ ☆

Christmas Holiday (1944) – R. Siodmak

Unusual ingredients make up this strange pudding that wants to be a film noir but lands closer to melodrama, of a particularly bleak variety.  Perhaps it doesn’t feel quite like noir because the central protagonist, the narrator of the flashbacks, is female (played by teen actress Deanna Durbin in a grown up role).  Watching women suffer the cruel twists of fate that the noir deals out doesn’t create so much darkness as pity, especially when the woman is steadfast in her commitment to the wrong guy, the guy who caused her so much pain and misery.  That guy is Gene Kelly in an early role – he always seemed to have a sinister problematic quality and he plays it up here.  He is believable although Durbin (whose character has sunk to presumed prostitution) is not.  Director Robert Siodmak (The Killers, Phantom Lady, etc.) lays all the noir trappings out but the underlying story by Somerset Maugham (The Razor’s Edge), written for the screen by Herman J. Mankiewicz (Citizen Kane), is missing some edge.  An odd framing device involving a soldier on Christmas furlough doesn’t quite fit.  As I said, it is a strange pudding that might have tasted better if it weren’t a Deanna Durbin vehicle (albeit one designed to remake her image).

Charlie Chan and the Chinese Cat (1944)

☆ ☆

Charlie Chan and the Chinese Cat (1944) – P. Rosen

After Warner Oland died, Sidney Toler took over as Charlie Chan with Fox’s blessing for 11 films.  My dad always said he liked Toler better.  However, when Fox dumped the series in 1942, it moved to Monogram Pictures, a so-called Poverty Row studio.  The budget dropped from $200K to $75K.  Although the Chinese Cat is thought to be one of the better Monogram Chans, the low budget shows – we’ve got pretty spare sets and mostly fog or murky darkness.  Toler is good and a bit tougher than Oland – even K. O.-ing a few crooks near the end.  Mantan Moreland provides bug-eyed (racist) comic relief as Birmingham Brown.  Benson Fong is wooden as Number Three Son, Tommy.  For once, the crime isn’t solved by Chan identifying a suspect from a group gathered together for that purpose – instead we are treated to a bit of a chase in a funhouse before the (potentially solvable) answer is revealed.