Angel on my Shoulder (1946)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Angel on my Shoulder (1946) – A. Mayo

Paul Muni mugs a lot as the gangster sent to hell but then returned to the land of mortals by Mephistopheles (Claude Rains) who wants to ruin the career of do-gooder (and gubernatorial candidate) Judge Parker by inserting rough-edged Eddie Kagle into his body.  Of course, it’s a comedy, as Muni gets to perform a bull-in-the-china-shop routine as others act shocked at the noble judge’s transformation.  Rains is sly and arch as the Devil (with a few tossed off one-liners) but his schemes do not play out as planned when Kagle accidentally improves the judge’s popularity. Naturally, with the help of love interest Barbara (Anne Baxter), Eddie begins to see the error of his ways and turn from bad to good.  That’s how it goes in movies like this (especially with the Hays Code in effect).  As directed by Archie Mayo, it's a trifle, never laugh-out-loud funny, but pleasant enough – and who doesn’t love a movie that takes a trip down to Hell (fire and brimstone included)?

 

Three Strangers (1946)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Three Strangers (1946) – J. Negulesco

With a John Huston/Howard Koch script that was initially going to be repurposed as a sequel to The Maltese Falcon (1941) (until Warner Brothers discovered that they did not own the rights to the characters), Three Strangers still emerged as the 8^th (out of 9) collaboration between Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet (who were so memorable in the earlier film). Having Bogie or Mary Astor appear would have elevated the proceedings but the result is nevertheless perfectly passable as noir-tinged drama. Geraldine Fitzgerald lures Lorre and Greenstreet to her London apartment where she convinces them to help her make a wish in front of her statue of the Chinese goddess Kwan Yin, an opportunity that only happens at midnight on Chinese New Year and only if three strangers present agree upon the same wish.  They agree to wish that Lorre’s sweepstakes ticket is a winner and subsequently that they will bet any winnings together on the big horse race happening immediately after the lottery.  From there, they go back to their separate lives which turn out to be very compromised by poor choices (Fitzgerald plays an adulteress seeking to get back with her estranged husband; Lorre plays a drunk mixed up in a robbery gone wrong and charged with murder; Greenstreet plays a lawyer who has misused money from a trust he was overseeing).  All of them could benefit from winning but only Fitzgerald truly believes in Kwan Yin’s powers; she is also the most unsavory of the trio. The film (as directed by Jean Negulesco) flips back and forth between the three stories, ultimately bringing the three strangers back together at the end, to seal their fate. Of the three, Lorre provides the most sympathetic portrayal and the strongest acting, but the film is also aided and abetted by a number of (other) familiar character actors. That said, it lacks enough panache (or enough depth in each of the three stories) to really capitalize on all of the talent on hand.

 

Nobody Lives Forever (1946)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Nobody Lives Forever (1946) – J. Negulesco

Nick Blake (John Garfield) has been honorably discharged (returning home in 1944, when this film was shot) but isn’t anxious to return to his life as a con-man/swindler, although his friend Al (George Tobias) is keen to get him back into the game. With his life in New York suddenly less interesting (when he finds that his gal has been cheating on him while he was away), Nick heads to California to catch up with his mate Pop Gruber (Walter Brennan) who turns out to be down on his luck.  Although he really just wants to rest and recover from his wartime trauma, Nick allows Al and Pop to convince him to sign up to con a widow out of her $2 million fortune (a scam organised by evil “Doc”, George Coulouris). But, of course, Nick falls for the beautiful widow, Gladys (Geraldine Fitzgerald).  This being noir, things get complicated fast. Director Jean Negulesco adds a few unusual flourishes (the visit to the Mission) and occasionally undercuts the noir vibe with a humorous note. Garfield is strong as the conflicted anti-hero and holds things together throughout, with strong support from the assorted character actors. Above average.

 

The Verdict (1946)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

The Verdict (1946) – D. Siegel

Don Siegel’s first directorial outing is a re-teaming of Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre (from The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca). Greenstreet plays a police superintendent who accidentally supplies evidence which sends an innocent man to the gallows. Lorre is one of his friends, a decadent artist, who becomes one of the suspects (at least for viewers) when the brother of the woman killed earlier is also murdered.  Intriguingly, this turns out to be a classic “locked room” mystery, because the body is found in a room with the door and windows locked from the inside.  Siegel, who we probably know best for his partnership with Clint Eastwood in the ‘60s and ‘70s (resulting in Dirty Harry, 1971), does an adequate job here with the Gothic Victorian period piece (same era as Sherlock Holmes, and also featuring some character actors from the Rathbone/Bruce series filming contemporaneously). I’ll admit that my attention wavered a bit, as not all of the red herring characters were interesting enough, but the twist at the end is deliciously surprising and satisfying.

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) – L. Milestone

More melodrama than film noir (although the shock ending does tilt things in the direction of the bleaker genre). After a long preamble with child actors that sets up the three central characters and the basic plot dynamics, we join Sam Masterson (Van Heflin) as he re-enters Iverstown for the first time in 17 or 18 years. He meets cute with Toni Marachek (Lizabeth Scott) and decides to use his old childhood connections to help her out of a legal jam. So, he asks D. A. Walter O’Neil (Kirk Douglas in his debut film) to pull some strings to help Toni out; however, O’Neil is worried that Masterson is actually prepared to blackmail him and his now wife, heiress Martha Ivers (Barbara Stanwyck), over a past event that he may or may not have actually witnessed.  The melodrama comes in because Martha still loves Sam and feels she was manipulated into marrying Walter, just as Walter feels trapped in their marriage and bullied into doing what Martha requires him to do. Sam can only look on in pity and plot his escape with Toni.  It’s funny because none of the four principals plays a wholesome character – they’ve all got checkered pasts – but certainly Heflin seems the most level headed and clear thinking of the lot. But, my, there is a lot of drinking as a coping strategy in this film – it doesn’t seem to work.

 

I See a Dark Stranger (1946)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

I See a Dark Stranger (1946) – F. Maunder

Deborah Kerr is a lot perkier than I remember her being in other pictures (and just a year before Black Narcissus and her turn as an uptight nun). But what’s this? She’s an Irish lass who has heard so many stories of the revolution that she hates the Brits enough to help some Nazi spies? This weird premise pulls viewers in funny directions – do we want her caught or not?  Trevor Howard falls in love with her, but he’s a British officer and sworn to turn in any spies he finds. The action moves from Ballygarry to Dublin to the Isle of Man and somehow becomes a very Hitchcockian thriller.  Apparently, Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne were set to reprise their comic characters from The Lady Vanishes but had too many demands and were replaced by substitutes (the cops on the Isle of Man, obviously). In fact, the movie is written by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat who wrote that Hitchcock picture (Launder directs here). Some classify this as noir and it is about serious matters – the D-Day plans are the MacGuffin! But it’s a lot more fun than that suggests.    

Crisis (1946)

☆ ☆ ☆

Crisis (1946) – I. Bergman

Ingmar Bergman’s first feature is a melodrama about women’s relationships (foreshadowing some of his later concerns).  In particular, we meet an older woman, Ingeborg (Dagny Lind), who has been foster mother for a young girl, Nelly (Inga Landgré), now 18 and ready for adulthood. They live in a country town, away from the pleasures and perils of the big city.  However, at the start of the film, Nelly’s birth mother arrives from Stockholm to take her back, now that she has established herself with her own beauty salon and slick boy toy (Stig Olin).  Of course, this creates conflict, as the strangers bring their different (rougher) sensibilities to the town, threatening Nelly’s relationship with older suitor Ulf (Allan Bohlin) and Ingeborg’s health and well-being (because Nelly is her only companion).  When Nelly does choose to leave in defiance, she finds that the city is not exactly what she wants.  So, a rather straightforward melodrama marked by some ordinary and variable acting, a few stock types and situations, but the occasional glimpse of something more interesting.  Olin, as the most interesting character, manages his part well and Bergman gives him a well-staged end. Even maestros start somewhere...

The Spiral Staircase (1946)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Spiral Staircase (1946) – R. Siodmak

Version 1:  A high water mark for the "woman in peril" genre (with all of its flaws) that is basically just a fulfilled opportunity to try to scare viewers. A serial killer is on the loose, hunting women with disabilities of some kind, and he's apparently made it to the sprawling dark mansion in which Helen (Dorothy McGuire), who has been mute since childhood, is working as a maid for invalid Ethel Barrymore. Sumptuous in its décor and art direction and expert in its camerawork, Robert Siodmak (The Killers, Phantom Lady) uses his noir skills to great spooky effect. Anyone could be the killer (of course) but the pay-off is sort of ho-hum.

Version 2:  A serial killer menaces women with disabilities in a Gothic New England town in the early 20^th century in this noirish tale.  Dorothy McGuire, mute since a childhood trauma, is handmaid to Mrs. Warren (Ethel Barrymore), an seemingly insufferable invalid who lives with her son, Steven (an irresponsible rascal just back from Europe) and her stepson, Albert (a Professor who has taken on the burden of caring for his stepmother after his father’s death).  Early in the film, it is made clear that the killer has entered the house, now besieged by a terrible storm, and director Robert Siodmak takes the opportunity to introduce us to a number of suspects, including Mr Oates (Rhys Williams) and Dr Parry (Kent Smith), the latter also a possible love interest for Helen (McGuire).  The cast is rounded out by Rhonda Fleming, Elsa Lancaster, and Sara Allgood who work for the family in various capacities.  As I said, it was a dark and stormy night.  McGuire can’t scream.  The killer strikes.  Who will be his next victim?  The conclusion sees a number of characters running up and down the spiral staircase which leads to the basement.  Although my synopsis may make this seem formulaic, the result is not anything like the various mystery serials that were popular in the day (which often say the suspects rounded up into a room where the detective announced the killer).  Instead, things are moodier, more visually interesting, darker, and hard (but not impossible) to predict.

Somewhere in the Night (1946)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Somewhere in the Night (1946) – J. L. Mankiewicz

One of the better early noirs, with John Hodiak playing an amnesiac World War II vet who doesn’t reveal his condition after finding a note that suggests that he wasn’t such a nice guy. So, he struggles to piece together the puzzle of his life, starting with his last known address in Los Angeles.  A few clues lead him to a bank where a mysterious “Larry Cravat” has deposited $5000 into an account for him.  Although Hodiak (playing “George Taylor”) flees when the bank staff become too curious, this event starts him on a search for Larry Cravat that takes up the rest of the film.  Along the way, he gets himself into trouble for being too nosey, gets help from a local club owner (Richard Conte) who knows a friendly police detective (Lloyd Nolan) and falls in with a torch singer from the club (Nancy Guild).  Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz (in only his second outing) manages to visit many of the noir settings (mental hospital, wharf at night, fortune teller’s, Turkish bath, nightclub) and keeps the audience as confused as Taylor, with an assortment of interested parties (femme fatale/tramp, thug/mobster, infirm eyewitness) also pursuing Cravat (and/or the MacGuffin).  Although things wrap up rather conventionally, there is enough real desperation and dread here to sink your teeth into (even if Hodiak underplays everything).  Recommended.   

Dressed to Kill (1946)

☆ ☆ ☆

Dressed to Kill (1946) – R. W. Neill

The last film in the long-running Sherlock Holmes series starring Basil Rathbone-Nigel Bruce, the best and most classic Holmes films.  Of course, Bruce plays Watson as something of a buffoon, but he is always lovable, even if his actions threaten the success of the case.  Here, he lets the villain steal the last of three music boxes that together provide the code that reveals the whereabouts of the hidden Bank of England plates.  But Holmes always forgives him, tut tutting fondly, although this usually happens after he has managed to solve the case anyway.  Dressed to Kill is likely not based on any actual story by Arthur Conan Doyle and it is transposed to “modern day” England rather than the literary Holmes’ time but it still captures the flair and air of mystery that the stories held (and still hold), even if it isn’t every really possible to solve the case yourself (and here there is really no mystery but rather some suspense instead).  The nostalgia that comes with these films is always a salve for the weary brain.

  

The Time of Their Lives (1946)

☆ ☆ ☆

The Time of Their Lives (1946) – C. Barton

Abbott and Costello are, respectively, a butler and a tinker in the Revolutionary War era United States.  They both love the same woman, a maid, but she only has eyes for Lou.  Although Bud hopes to dispatch his rival, a group of soldiers mistakenly shoots and kills Costello and Marjorie Reynolds, thinking them traitors, when in fact Lou has a letter of reference from General George Washington and Reynolds (playing Melody Allen) was just about to expose the real traitors (including her fiancé). Fast forward 165 years and Costello and Reynolds are stuck haunting the same estate where they were killed.  A group of modern young people, including Abbott playing his own descendant, now a psychiatrist, are staying overnight in the house, now restocked with its original furniture.  The only way that Costello and Reynolds can be freed from the curse that keeps them in the house is to get those people in the house to find the hidden letter from Washington that reveals that they aren’t traitors.  But enough about the plot, there is a bit of slapstick and some ghostly special effects to please the 1940s audiences; however, I didn’t find myself laughing too much.  Other films by the comedy team seem funnier (despite the high rating on IMDb for this one).

  

The Chase (1946)

☆ ☆ ☆

The Chase (1946) – A. Ripley

This is a B-noir that is clearly low budget but with a plot that pulls the rug out from under you (not unlike Takashi Miike’s Audition, 1999 – uh, well, not that sadistically).  Robert Cummings is Chuck Scott, a down-and-out veteran who returns a lost wallet only to end up as chauffeur to a notorious gangster (Steve Cochran) in Miami. Cochran’s wife (Michèle Morgan) is kept under lock and key and only allowed to take short trips to the beach at night with Cummings; eventually, they decide to escape together to Havana.  Down in Cuba, they run into trouble and Cummings is soon accused of murder.  Ultimately, it appears that Cochran’s henchman Peter Lorre is behind it all.  And truly, Cochran and Lorre seem to delight in tormenting Cummings (including with a strange added accelerator in the back of the car that takes over control from the driver).  Of course, Cummings doesn’t end up in their clutches but how we get to that point isn’t straightforward.  Despite the bare bones feel and the second string actors, there are enough weird and impressionistic touches here – on top of all of the archetypal noir trappings – to make this worth a watch, if you are digging deep into this genre.

  

Five Women Around Utamaro (1946)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Five Women Around Utamaro (1946) – K. Mizoguchi

Having just seen the Katsushika Hokusai exhibit at the National Gallery of Victoria today, I thought the time was right to check out Kenji Mizoguchi’s film about another contemporaneous ukiyo-e woodblock print artist, Kitagawa Utamaro.  Utamaro was famous for his bijin ōkubi-e "large-headed pictures of beautiful women" of the 1790s (according to Wikipedia) and was a denizen of the red-light district of Edo, although the film shows him sublimating any erotic impulses into his art.  Even so, the women (and men) around Utamaro do nothing but give in to their passionate desires, causing endless intrigues.  Kinuyo Tanaka plays Okita, the most impetuous of local courtesans who drinks too much and chases after young Shozaburo who instead runs off with Takasode, the courtesan with the Utamaro drawn tattoo on her back.  Utamaro himself gets into trouble, first for boasting that his art is better than that of the local traditional painting school (which earns him a duel and then an acolyte) and second for making prints that displeased the shogunate (resulting in 50 days in handcuffs).  As a director, Mizoguchi had not yet reached his mature period of masterpieces (Ugetsu, Sansho the Bailiff, The Crucified Lovers, and more) but this film has some lovely outdoor (location) shooting and some complex camerawork.  The story itself contains too many minor characters, not always clearly delineated, and therefore loses some impact.  But surely the vision of the artist consumed by their art was a deeply personal one for this director.

Cloak and Dagger (1946)

☆ ☆ ☆

Cloak and Dagger (1946) – F. Lang

Lesser Fritz Lang effort that was apparently subject to some post-production tampering by Warner Brothers to remove some pointed anti-nuclear bomb sentiment (presumably since the US had already dropped the bomb and showed no intention of backing away from holding a nuclear arsenal).  Gary Cooper plays a nuclear scientist who is recruited by the OSS to go overseas to Europe to contact other nuclear scientists who have been forced by the Nazis to contribute to their bomb-making initiative.  Things move reasonably swiftly until the action moves from Switzerland to Italy and Cooper meets his love interest (Lilli Palmer).  But then everything drags as they wait for offscreen events to occur.  Basically, the Allies hope to convince an Italian nuclear physicist to escape with them but they need to first free his daughter who is being held hostage by the Nazis.  Why we don’t get to see this action beats me but instead we hang out with Cooper (who is not the most dynamic of actors at this stage in his career) and Palmer.  The film wraps up soon after and when I discovered later that a fourth reel may have been deleted, this made sense.  However, even so, the film doesn’t really seem to link with any of Lang’s major themes (a pessimistic view of societal forces that entrap the protagonist – as in the classic films noir that he directed); instead it is a straight adventure yarn, albeit with some serious consequences. 

  

Dick Tracy vs. Cueball (1946)

☆ ☆ ½

Dick Tracy vs. Cueball (1946) – G. Douglas

Solid entry in the Dick Tracy series but with Morgan Conway taking a turn as the homicide detective.  This time, Dick is in pursuit of a gang of jewel thieves who spend all of their time double-crossing each other.  Cueball may be low man on the totem pole but he’s grit and grunt enough to knock off all of his colleagues.  Of course, Tracy tracks him down in the end and he meets a gruesome death.  The characterizations in small parts are interesting enough – although not really comic-book-like – to hold one’s attention for an hour.  Nothing more to be said.  Other serials have stronger entries and lasted longer (on the big screen) but this was fine on a rainy night with a cold.

The Overlanders (1946)

☆ ☆ ☆

The Overlanders (1946) – H. Watt

It’s Election Day here in Australia.  So, to commemorate that fact, last night I watched this classic Australian film.  In order to escape the potential Japanese invasion of the Northern Territory during WWII, a drover (played with confident charm by Chips Rafferty) gathers together a team to lead a mob of cattle all the way across the continent to Brisbane, Queensland.  This film is the story of their journey through the outback.  Produced by Britain’s Ealing Studios but filmed on location in Australia and populated with Australians speaking Australian English (although as can be expected, the actors speak with a variety of accents), it’s a real treat to see a story based here in my adopted country. The cattle face numerous obstacles and there is a bit of a love story between cowgirl and cowboy but it’s mostly action, filmed documentary-style by Harry Watt, with hundreds of real cows, dozens of real horses, and a “you are there” feeling.

  

Cluny Brown (1946)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Cluny Brown (1946) – E. Lubitsch

The final film that Lubitsch completed before his death by heart attack, Cluny Brown is a gently amusing comedy buoyed by a delightful performance by Charles Boyer (playing a Czech refugee from the Nazis despite his unmistakably French accent).  Jennifer Jones (borrowed from Selznick) plays the title character, an irrepressible maid cum plumber who has a sense of wonder and joy about everything.  This approach (and the similarly direct responses of Boyer) flies in the face of the restrictive social structure – neither Jones nor Boyer properly fit into either the Upstairs or Downstairs environments.  Even the pretentious middle classes have no room for Cluny who doesn’t seem to “know her place”.  As always with Lubitsch, there are a lot of wry chuckles on offer here, some of them verging on double entendres, and more often than not, it is the script that heightens the humorousness of the situations rather than the context being funny on its own.  Moreover, the excellent array of character actors in bit parts enlivens everything. All that said, this one probably doesn’t reach the heights of Lubitsch’s best work (The Shop Around the Corner, To Be or Not to Be, Trouble in Paradise) but it is a very pleasant diversion.