My Name is Julia Ross (1945)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

My Name is Julia Ross (1945) – J. H. Lewis

Director Joseph H. Lewis may be best known for Gun Crazy (1950) or The Big Combo (1955), two great noirs, but this 65-minute thriller from 1945 is also a gem. Nina Foch plays the title character who is tricked into accepting employment as a live-in secretary for the Hughes family (mother Dame May Whitty and son George Macready) who subsequently try to gaslight her into thinking she is someone else.  Essentially she is trapped in the Hughes mansion and everyone is led to believe she is crazy.  Great premise but not for those prone to paranoia.  Macready is a perfect edgy villain (with Gilda and Paths of Glory yet to come) but it is a shock to see Dame May Whitty on the dark side, since I identify her strongly with her heroic spy in The Lady Vanishes.  As directed by Lewis, this is a tight film, suspenseful, and ultimately fulfilling.  Is it noir? Perhaps but Julia Ross does not deserve any of this (perhaps that is exactly why it is noir!). 

 

The House on 92nd Street (1945)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

The House on 92^nd Street (1945) – H. Hathaway

Using the documentary style for which Dragnet later became famous on TV, Henry Hathaway’s war-time noir includes voice-over narration, real location shooting, found footage (of Nazi spies, J. Edgar Hoover, etc.) mixed with actors (Lloyd Nolan and Leo G. Carroll, most noticeably) and a torn-from-the-headlines plot (Nazi spies are trying to smuggle secrets of the atomic bomb out of the US).  Bill Dietrich (William Eythe) is a college student recruited by the Germans to spy for them but he quickly tells the FBI and works as a double agent for them.  We see how he makes contact with the Nazi spy ring and attempts to earn their confidence while still passing along details of their actions and communications back to the FBI.  With this information, FBI Inspector Briggs (Nolan) hopes to find the local kingpin, Herr Christopher, and break up the ring before it’s too late.  Apparently, references to the bomb were added just before this was rushed into release in September 1945.  Not bad but a bit of a programmer.

 

The House of Fear (1945)/The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½     The House of Fear (1945) – R. W. Neill

☆ ☆ ☆         The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939) – A. Werker

We watched a Sherlock Holmes double feature (well, across two nights), featuring, first, The House of Fear (1945), the tenth film in the long-running series starring Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Watson, and then, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939), the second in the series and one of only two (along with The Hound of the Baskervilles, also 1939) produced by Fox with a comparatively higher budget before the series moved to Universal. As readers will remember, I used to watch these Holmes films on Saturday nights on Channel 38 with my Dad, so it is a pleasure to be able to watch them now with my own sons. Moreover, The House of Fear is loosely based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s story The Five Orange Pips, which I read to the boys when we were camping earlier this year. That story turns out to feature the KKK as the villains, responsible for sending orange pips to members of a family against whom they held a vendetta and wanted to kill. In the movie, the orange pips feature in an Agatha-Christie-styled plot where a group of retirees called the Good Comrades die one-by-one after receiving the pips with suspicion falling on the survivors until only one is left. Holmes steps in with his powers of deduction to solve the mystery before it is too late (and Watson provides comic relief plus discovers the final clue). It's a fast-paced and fun affair.  Rewind to six years earlier and The Adventures is considerably more staid (although we do get to see more of 221 Baker Street than ever) with Rathbone and Bruce slightly less settled in their characters (it is jarring to see Holmes snap at Watson, even though this side of his personality was evident in the stories). This film spotlights Holmes rivalry with Professor Moriarty (George Zucco) who vows to commit the crime of the century, challenging Holmes to stop him. Clever Moriarty devises a distraction for Holmes – mysterious letters sent to Ida Lupino and her brother that suggest they are to be murdered – even as he plots to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London.  For most of the film, Holmes is indeed distracted by the strange case and Moriarty very nearly gets away with his caper, even as Lupino is only very nearly rescued.  But the plot doesn’t completely make sense (due to some scenes left on the cutting room floor, as the DVD booklet explains) and Fox dropped the series when the film was poorly received. Fortunately, Rathbone and Bruce were able to take their act to Universal where they managed another 12 films of fun and mystery.

Pursuit to Algiers (1945)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Pursuit to Algiers (1945) – R. W. Neill

Twelfth out of the 14 Sherlock Holmes films with Basil Rathbone (Holmes) and Nigel Bruce (Watson). Although the series was in decline (and sometimes hijacked as a vehicle for patriotic WWII messaging), this entry holds up pretty well (and I could not remember any of the details, including the twist ending, from previous viewings which may very well have been 40+ years ago). Holmes is invited (through a series of mysterious clues) to a meeting where he is asked to protect the heir to the throne of a European country whose king had recently been assassinated. To distract the enemies of the throne, he sends Watson by ship while he accompanies the prince by plane.  Some twists later, they are all on the ship and playing literal and figurative chess with a trio of bad guys (and numerous red herrings) who want to capture the prince and kill Holmes.  Watson is slightly less the buffoon here but still mostly along for comic relief.   Always a salve to a weary brain, the B-movie series.

 

Conflict (1945)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Conflict (1945) – C. Bernhardt

My PhD supervisor gave me a book called “Psychiatry and the Cinema” (Gabbard & Gabbard, 1987) and it’s a shame that this film is only relegated to a footnote.  Sydney Greenstreet plays a psychiatrist who seems pitched halfway between the Freudian psychoanalysts of yore and the cognitive behavioural therapists of today.  He suggests to Humphrey Bogart that obsessive thoughts can take hold of a person and need to be changed via talk therapy rather than surgery.  Of course, he doesn’t yet know that Bogie has become infatuated with the younger sister, Evelyn (Alexis Smith), of his wife, Kathryn (Rose Hobart) – and when the opportunity arises, when he has the perfect alibi, Bogie does kill Kathryn.  Or does he? Over the course of the second half of the film, clues materialise suggesting that she is still alive since her body was never discovered.  Bogie feels as though he is going crazy as a result which drives him to the story’s inevitable conclusion.  Although Bogie did not always play the good guy, his portrayal of the killer feels a bit more regressive to his earlier heavy roles rather than his more complex and ambivalent anti-heroes of the future (i.e., Treasure of the Sierra Madre, 1948; In a Lonely Place, 1950). We don’t feel much sympathy for him.  Greenstreet, in contrast, does make for a avuncular and positively framed psychologist – not always the case in Hollywood films of the day.

 

The Southerner (1945)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Southerner (1945) – J. Renoir

One of a handful of films from Jean Renoir’s American Period (roughly 1941 to 1947) that saw him tackle American themes but never straying too far from his interests in class and economic justice (that were most prominent in his greatest film, The Rules of the Game, 1939, and even La Grande Illusion, 1937).  Here, Zachary Scott plays a cotton picker with a young family who decides to strike out on his own as a sharecropper (renting some of his former boss’s land and including a share of the crop as payment).  His wife, Betty Field, enthusiastically throws herself into fixing up the farm and sowing the field.  His grandmother, Beulah Bondi, complains endlessly but is sweet deep down.  Renoir manages to lend some human feeling to the proceedings and the relationships among the family and between Scott and his mean-spirited neighbour (J. Carroll Naish) seem authentic enough.  It’s a tough life but Scott and his family tackle it in a good humoured way (most of the time). In some ways, this is almost a neo-realist view of the (poor white) South, though I reckon things would have been even harder for some.

The Woman in Green (1945)

☆ ☆ ½

The Woman in Green (1945) – R. W. Neill

Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone) and Dr. Watson (Nigel Bruce) tangle with Professor Moriarty who was previously thought dead in Montevideo (although Holmes suspected otherwise).  Now, he has masterminded a blackmail scheme that tricks wealthy men into thinking they have murdered young women and cut off their pinky finger (finding this in their pocket the next day).  How is this done?  Through hypnotism, my friend, which (of course) Watson has total disdain for, resulting in one of those scenes where Bruce can play the total buffoon (while hypnotized).  Fortunately, the blackmailed men aren’t doing the actual killing – they just think they have.  Holmes figures out that the hypnotist is a beautiful woman (in green) and the finale involves her believing she has triumphed over Holmes by giving him cannabis japonica and forcing him out onto a dangerous ledge – but fortunately he quickly substitutes another drug and is only pretending.  That wily Holmes!  And now perhaps Moriarty really is dead (!?!).  A solid entry in the long-running series, although not its peak.

Dillinger (1945)

☆ ☆ ½

Dillinger (1945) – M. Nosseck

Lawrence Tierney’s starring debut as the titular bank robber is a no frills bio pic (of sorts) shot for Poverty Row studio Monogram.  Highlighted by an early script from noir specialist Philip Yordan – best known for Johnny Guitar – the film is concise at 70 minutes and keeps its action to a minimum, favouring blunt talking instead.  However, Tierney would snarl more, with more wicked charm, in Born to Kill (1947) and, of course, Reservoir Dogs (1992).  So, if you are looking for Film Noir or heist films, this isn’t the place to start but it’s not bad for a B genre film if this is your bag.

Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945) – R. Bresson

Although he hadn’t yet developed his mature visual style (focused on hands and feet engaged in action), in this, his second feature film, Robert Bresson had already identified his key theme of transcendence through suffering.  True, many of his later characters were pure, naïve, and innocent, and their suffering lends a spiritual dimension to those films (Diary of a Country Priest, Mouchette, Au Hasard, Balthazar, etc.) whereas here we see a victim who has sinned herself and needs to be forgiven.  However, the plot is much more intricate than this simple theme might suggest.  Indeed, there is a deviousness of purpose that sets the plot into motion, courtesy of Maria Casares who tricks her ex-lover into wooing the heroine and former cabaret girl (i.e., prostitute) without his awareness of her checkered past.  Yet, somehow true love triumphs over all (and the dialogue by Cocteau surely helps to highlight this romantic theme).  Nevertheless, as the film fades out, Bresson’s intense focus on the moment of release from sin prepares us for his substantial body of work yet to come.