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The Second Woman

Made in 1950. In flashback from a'Rebecca'-style beginning: Ellen Foster, visiting her aunt on the California coast,meets neighbor Jeff Cohalan and his ultramodern clifftop house. Ellen is strongly attracted to Jeff, who's being plagued by unexplainable accidents,major and minor. Bad luck, persecution...or paranoia? Warned that Jeff could be dangerous, Ellen fears that he's in danger, as the menacing atmosphere darkens.

A better-than-average psychological thriller, The Second Woman blends aspects of Rebecca and Gaslight into a savvy,neo-Gothic style (there's even an ultramodern, Manderley-like pile of memories high above the crashing ocean; it, too, ends in conflagration). Robert Young plays a young architect who can't wriggle out from under a jinx. The night before their wedding, a car crash claimed the life of his fiancée, for whom he'd built the cantilevered"house with wings." Now it's a mausoleum where he broods to the Tchaikovsky on the sound track. Lapses of memory and moody episodes undermine his work. His horse, his dog, even his prize rosebush die mysteriously. He's sinking, an object of pity and, increasingly, apprehension.
Into this slough of despond comes a guardian angel (Betsy Drake), an intelligent and independent insurance investigator who falls for him, as he for her. (She's something of an anomaly in film noir, where all the brains and spunk usually go to the wicked women.) She supplies Young with the resolve to solve the puzzle when he ceases to care.
 
Big Town After Dark

 Made in 1947. When Lorelei Kilbourne leaves her job as the police reporter for the Illustrated Press, Managing Editor Steve Wilson employs the publisher's niece, Susan Peabody, to replace her. Susan becomes involved with gangsters in plotting a $50,000 swindle against her uncle, which Steve and the returned Lorelei uncover.

A typical reporter crime movie. As usual, there is a crack female reporter andher sidekick, the guy she loves, who's having to go it alone. Enter a little 21year old femme fatale who plays the innocent and disrupts things. She is trouble from the start, but the blinders are on and she manages to work things up. She has connections to a gang that runs a gambling palace in Big Town. Anyway, this is pretty much what you would expect. There are misleading clues,bad judgments, sloppy reporting, just plain carelessness. It's interesting how these guys get themselves into life and death situations and don't bother to have any backup. Suffice it to say, even though the big lug has a fixation on this little woman, it's the rock solid older woman who pulls him back to his senses. Unfortunately, he ends up in the hospital in the process. A decent film, but no new territory.

 
The Moon is Blue

Made in 1953. Long before Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks discovered they loved each other atop the Empire State Building, William Holden and Maggie McNamara met on the observation tower of the venerable skyscraper in the film version of the hit Broadway play, "The Moon is Blue." One of the best and most sprightly comedies of the early fifties, Otto Preminger had a fight on his hands when the film went before an aghast Production Code board. The movie makes rather light of a young woman's commitment to chastity, suggests that seduction is an amusing and acceptable pastime for a single male and uses words like "pregnant" and "virgin" offhandedly. The lovely, talkative, self-assured Patty even demands to know the meaning of the charge, by her new boyfriend's barely ex-girlfriend, that she's a "professional virgin." Shocking stuff and approval was denied. Perhaps equally stunning to the Hollywood censors was Preminger's decision to release the film without approval, something he had the clout to do.

As it turned out, audiences were able to deal with this explosive material. And almost fifty years later, when virtually nothing remains to be said or done on the silver screen, this film retains its charm, humor and attractiveness because a superb trio of actors - William Holden, Maggie McNamara and an irrepressible David Niven, who steals some of the scenes - gives a timeless quality to their sterling performances. The script hews pretty much to the original play with minimal set changes. The dialogue is witty and fast. Preminger knew he had created a gem of a romantic comedy and it's good entertainment today in a world where the values expressed by the characters seem as remote as the social customs of the Neandertals. This is a true and timeless classic.



 
Night Has a Thousand Eyes

Made in 1948. Triton (Edward G Robinson) has the gift of 2nd sight. He withdraws from life as his ability to foresee the future can be disturbing, especially when he sees people die. This happens on a few occasions but when he meets with his ex-partner's daughter Jean (Gail Russell), we have a countdown to her imminent death before the week is over. The place she will die is "under the stars". This film has a good story and a good cast. Elliott (John Lund) is pretty annoying as a doubter but by the end of the film he has changed his tune. The film starts well with a suicide attempt and we are then taken back in time through flashback sequences to understand the characters before returning to the present as we wait for the death of Jean. There are some omens we are told to look out for - a trampled flower, a gust of wind, a broken vase, lion's feet, some spoken words - and sure enough, they all come true until we arrive at the moment of death - 11pm.

William Demarest has some funny lines as "Lt Shawn", the policeman in charge of stopping the tragedy from happening and the story is cleverly tied up. I wasn't too convinced by Gail Russell's ability to negotiate business deals - she seems far too fragile a character to be involved in the hard-edged corporate world. But so what. It's a good film.
 
The Uninvited

Made in 1944. This 1944 Paramount film is one of my very favourites. Long hailed as Hollywood's first attempt at a "serious" ghost story, it will no doubt please most all fans of the genre. Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey play Roderick and Pamela Fitzgerald who are siblings. They are nearing the end of their seaside holiday in Cornwall, England when they happen to come across a lovely old deserted Georgian house while chasing their terrier, Bobby. The Fitzgeralds meet the dour owner (played by Donald Crisp) and they purchase the small mansion for a surprisingly affordable amount of money.

Naturally, the house is haunted. The acting - particularly that of Gail Russell as the luminous, moonstruck Stella Meredith - is effective and charming. The black-and-white cinematography by Charles Lang is exquisite as is Victor Young's hauntingly lovely theme, "Stella by Starlight". The film has a moody, frisson quality which few films of the "ghost genre" can match. In one of her very few film appearances, Cornelia Otis Skinner is memorably sinister as Miss Holloway who was a friend of Stella's mother, the deceased Mary Meredith. A thoroughly enjoyable film with some real jolts and a great atmosphere, ghost fans should be enthralled by this one.
 
Cottage To Let

Made in 1941. From the jaunty opening scenes to the thrilling ending, you could be forgiven for thinking 'Cottage To Let' was made during the post war period. But this film was released in 1941, when the outcome of the war was still in the balance. The cast reflects the wealth of talent available in the British Film Industry at this time and for two decades onwards. Not a false note is struck: Jeannie De Casalis makes me laugh out loud playing the dotty wife (check out her introduction speech for John Mills at the fête). Leslie Banks turns in a precise low key performance. He is an antidote to all the eccentric and unbalanced scientists that were/are the staple of cinema-land. Michael Wilding is urbane and, in his scenes, a good foil for a crumpled Alistair Sim, or the intense and faintly menacing John Mills.

Sim, of course, had managed to get his protégé George Cole the part of Ronald. Cole had (I think) already played this role on the stage, but took to the sound stage like a fish to water. He moved and acted as if born to boom and camera. In an idle moment compare young George as Ronald with middle-aged George as Arthur Daley in TV's Minder. It's all there: the sideway looks, aggrieved voice, controlled energy, sheer believable and likable personality. The film scores on all points for me. The script is realistic and economical, the supporting cast firmly wedded into the few sub-plots. Even the sets, one or two seem to have migrated from other films, are splendid and evocative. And the final denouement is probably one of the most menacing in wartime film, if not the wettest.
 
Larceny, Inc

Made in 1942. Three bumbling crooks buy a store so that they can rob the bank next door. When they soon discover the money they can make as legitimate businessmen, they abandon their plan. Trouble is, one of their cohorts, who's escaped from jail, won't let them.

Hysterical madcap fun. There may be no funnier moment in the history of film than Edward G. Robinson irritably gift wrapping a piece of luggage (all reasonably priced at $9.75) for a bothersome customer. The pacing of this movie is breathless (it's like a Bugs Bunny cartoon) and it's one of the few comedies that can legitimately claim to have a laugh virtually every minute. It's a movie that understands how funny a single door constantly opening and closing can be, provided there is a parade of zany enough characters passing through it, all of whom possess impeccable comic timing. It's also got a young, menacing Anthony Quinn to give it some edge, and an early Jackie Gleason to steal a couple scenes. Nearly as delightful as the king of screwball comedies "Bringing Up Baby".
 
Breakfast In Hollywood

Made in 1946. To demand greatness of a film like this is to misunderstand the function of a programmer. Breakfast in Hollywood is popcorn for the mind, a pleasant interlude with some great characters actors (ZaSu Pitts, Beulah Bondi, Billie Burke, Raymond Walburn, Hedda Hopper) and a chance to see Nat "King" Cole and the King Cole Trio on the screen very early in his career (though carefully segregated from the rest of the cast.) Spike Jones does two numbers with the City Slickers. This unpretentious film with a remarkable cast features one of the last movie appearances of Bonita Granville, who deserves rediscovery through everything from the newly released "Nancy Drew" DVDs to a very effective performance in "These Three." Here she boosts a simple programmer with charm and conviction.


A wartime romance provides a bit of drama although the war is technically over, and there is even a cute dog. The inimitable ZaSu Pitts is worth the price of admission all by herself! The plot, such as it is, is a sort of comedic Bridge of San Luis Rey, following the lives of A HALF DOZEN people attending the radio broadcast. The stories are funny, romantic, or dramatic -- and no one dies at the end! Pure escapism, nicely done.
 
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