Barbara Carlin (June Lockhart) is a bit like Tom Sawyer (or various
superheroes), seeing as we first meet her when she’s attending her own funeral,
incognito under a nice black veil that’ll fool everybody she knows and loves (or
hates), of course. Apparently, a stable with her inside burned down under
somewhat suspicious circumstances. It’s just that she wasn’t actually at the
family mansion at the time, so the burned-up female body must belong to somebody
else.
Instead of visiting the police once she learns what has occurred, Barbara
decides to take the matter of cracking this case on her own, trying to surprise
a confession out of her friends and relatives by just turning up at everyone’s
place after her funeral. Given what we later get to see of the way the local
police operates, her plan’s probably the safer bet to come to the truth of the
matter. So we get to meet the family when Barbara first makes herself known to
the always dependable family lawyer Mike (Hugh Beaumont), then her sort of (it’s
complicated, so we get our first flashback) sister Rusty (Cathy O’Donnell), her
shiftless and shifty estranged husband Rod (Mark Daniels), her basically
brain-dead (but hot if you’re into idiots, apparently) boxer lover George (Greg
McClure) who once was Rusty’s boxer lover before Barbara got between them – for
Rusty’s own good, of course. Flashbacks and a lot of wisecracking ensue, until
the murderer tries to do Barbara in again.
Going by the title and the classically noir beginning (as shot by the great
John Alton, no less), you’d expect the film (a PRC productions, purveyors of the
finest noir on Poverty Row) to continue as some Woolrich-style weird mystery,
but once Barbara unmasks herself to Mike and starts to go through all the
suspects she knows (basically everyone she ever met), the whole thing plays out
more as a comedy, with our heroine wisecracking and tough-talking through the
mystery, and the generally sarcastic tone of the dialogue making mincemeat of
all of the film’s melodramatic pretensions. And this isn’t a case of the film
being unintentionally funny – the dialogue as well as the characterisation
border on open satire of the non-genre of the noir, populated as the film is by
people like “neurotic” sister Rusty who does all of the Freudian psychobabble
you’ll find in noir but hilarious, or George who isn’t just a tool but an actual
comedic idiot. All of this does of course weaken the dramatic impact of the
film’s various melodramatic conniptions; but then, I don’t believe for one
moment the film as directed by the sometimes great Bernard Vorhaus wants its
audience to find them anything but sardonically funny.
It’s a pretty great comedy too, with Lockhart (who has all the best lines)
cracking wise and taking names for most of the film, making Rod’s lack of open
infatuation with her the most improbable part of the film. Of course, the film
has a final scene where Barbara is supposed to be willing to put the household
into Rod’s hands and he babbles something about from now on “taking good care of
her”, but everything we’ve seen before does make this sound like the film going
“yes, yes, yes, propriety must be restored, the censors and such” at the
audience instead of meaning anything of what it just said. The viewers have,
after all, met Barbara and her husband.
Before this supposed happy end, the film’s final act does step away from the
comedy a bit (but not so far as not to have fun having its way way the police
and especially their star criminologist), and does get up to some actually
thrilling noir business, with some tightly directed suspense (that’s still based
on the police being so comically stupid, even Rod turns out to be a
better detective than any of them are) whose impact is greatly enhanced by
Alton’s standard tricks working well with Vorhaus’s sense of timing.
It’s a great little film, really, even though it’s not the one its title
suggests.
Showing posts with label bernard vorhaus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bernard vorhaus. Show all posts
Sunday, August 11, 2019
Friday, August 25, 2017
Past Misdeeds: The Amazing Mr. X (1948)
aka The Spiritualist
Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.
Please keep in mind these are the old posts without any re-writes or improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.
Stinking rich widow Christine Faber (Lynn Bari) lost her beloved husband Paul (Donald Curtis) two years ago in the sort of car crash that can only be described with the adjective "fiery". Though Chris has a new beloved in form of the horrifically boring and prosaic district attorney Martin Abbott (Richard "Wooden" Carlson), and a marriage proposal is in the air, she hasn't really come to grips with Paul's death. So it's not that much of a surprise when Chris one night thinks she hears a voice that might very well be Paul's calling out her name - or maybe it was just the sound of the waves hitting the beach close to her villa. On the beach, she doesn't find Paul's ghost, but rather a smarmy guy calling himself Alexis (Turhan Bey) who works on her with a highly practiced psychic spiel full of things no stranger could know about the woman.
At first, Chris is still wavering between fascination and scepticism, but a horrible nightmare, or rather a vision full of barely disguised wedding anxiety (which seems perfectly natural when one is to wed Richard Carlson), puts Chris over the edge, so she decides to visit Alexis in his "professional" capacity. A few tricks later, Chris is a regular customer of the psychic, a fact neither Martin nor her younger sister Janet (Cathy O'Donnell) are too happy with once they find out.
Martin and Chris seek out the help of a detective specialized in debunking phony psychics. Unfortunately, he recommends that Janet pay an pseudonymous visit to Alexis too to make clear that the man's a phony. That would be well and good if not for the fact that Alexis is quite the diligent professional and that Janet is improbably stupid. So now Chris and her sister are completely under the psychics' spell, as if they were a Texan sheriff's department.
Even worse, the psychic's wish for money isn't the biggest problem the sisters have; someone else is playing another game with them for even higher stakes.
The Amazing Mr. X is that most curious of animals, a fake psychic movie whose script is actually carefully constructed so that the supposedly supernatural occurrences are all accounted for and explained through more than just some cop shouting "phony psychic!" and some hand-waving in the film's final five minutes. Instead, the film's two scriptwriters explain what's going on early and often, and it's quite obvious that they have actually put some thought into the way a con like this would work in the real world. Then, because it would be a bit boring and obvious otherwise, they add a second, much more lethal con that sometimes crosses over with the first one to confuse matters and add moments of actual physical menace to the film.
It's a very effective combination based on honesty towards the film's audience and shows a belief in the usefulness of suspense to carry a movie that still wasn't all that common at that point in time. The Amazing Mr. X is pretty much what happens when the fake psychic movie is kidnapped by the early thriller.
The film's weaknesses are all on the acting side: while Turhan Bey and Lynn Bari work their respective melodramatic acting styles very well and quite nuanced, Richard Carlson is the sort of non-entity US movies of the 40s, 50s and 60s just loved to inflict on their audiences as their supposed heroes. Charmless, humourless and with the personality of a very boring robot, the best thing I can say about Carlson's performance is that he's not on screen all that often. The other problem child is Cathy O'Donnell's Janet Burke. Parts of her acting troubles are probably caused by the script’s indecisiveness on the question if Janet's the younger sister who has always mothered her older sibling, or an especially stupid twelve year old in the body of a twenty year old. O'Donnell's performance suggests she doesn't have an idea about that either, which results in her acting like a time-displaced moe character in 40s clothes. Unfortunately, she's much more important to the success or failure of the movie than Carlson is.
Getting back to the more positive aspects of The Amazing Mr. X, future blacklist victim Bernard Vorhaus's direction is often quite inventive. Even if the rest of the film were completely without merit, the staging of Chris's nightmare sequence and her near death in the final part of the movie alone would be worth watching; the former is as fine an example of the psychoanalytically influenced dream sequence so beloved of noir and its sister genres as you will find, while the latter is a wonderful example of how to make a difficult to stage scene look natural.
Vorhaus had excellent help in making his film moody and impressive too. His director of cinematography was John Alton, one of the DoPs of noir cinema. Alton brought much of the non-genre's visual trappings with him to films like this which most people wouldn't exactly call noirs (for my definition, The Amazing Mr. X lacks the nihilist streak of the "true" noir, but your mileage and definition will vary). There are moments of great visual beauty to be found throughout the film, beauty that lies in the expected atmospheric play of shadows as well as in Alton's often stunning use of light on reflecting surfaces that turns the film's world into a place where light and shadow are at once less real and more real than in our world.
Come to think of it, that's pretty much what Alexis makes his money with in the movie, too, which makes it an exceptionally clever addition to an exceptionally clever film.
Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.
Please keep in mind these are the old posts without any re-writes or improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.
Stinking rich widow Christine Faber (Lynn Bari) lost her beloved husband Paul (Donald Curtis) two years ago in the sort of car crash that can only be described with the adjective "fiery". Though Chris has a new beloved in form of the horrifically boring and prosaic district attorney Martin Abbott (Richard "Wooden" Carlson), and a marriage proposal is in the air, she hasn't really come to grips with Paul's death. So it's not that much of a surprise when Chris one night thinks she hears a voice that might very well be Paul's calling out her name - or maybe it was just the sound of the waves hitting the beach close to her villa. On the beach, she doesn't find Paul's ghost, but rather a smarmy guy calling himself Alexis (Turhan Bey) who works on her with a highly practiced psychic spiel full of things no stranger could know about the woman.
At first, Chris is still wavering between fascination and scepticism, but a horrible nightmare, or rather a vision full of barely disguised wedding anxiety (which seems perfectly natural when one is to wed Richard Carlson), puts Chris over the edge, so she decides to visit Alexis in his "professional" capacity. A few tricks later, Chris is a regular customer of the psychic, a fact neither Martin nor her younger sister Janet (Cathy O'Donnell) are too happy with once they find out.
Martin and Chris seek out the help of a detective specialized in debunking phony psychics. Unfortunately, he recommends that Janet pay an pseudonymous visit to Alexis too to make clear that the man's a phony. That would be well and good if not for the fact that Alexis is quite the diligent professional and that Janet is improbably stupid. So now Chris and her sister are completely under the psychics' spell, as if they were a Texan sheriff's department.
Even worse, the psychic's wish for money isn't the biggest problem the sisters have; someone else is playing another game with them for even higher stakes.
The Amazing Mr. X is that most curious of animals, a fake psychic movie whose script is actually carefully constructed so that the supposedly supernatural occurrences are all accounted for and explained through more than just some cop shouting "phony psychic!" and some hand-waving in the film's final five minutes. Instead, the film's two scriptwriters explain what's going on early and often, and it's quite obvious that they have actually put some thought into the way a con like this would work in the real world. Then, because it would be a bit boring and obvious otherwise, they add a second, much more lethal con that sometimes crosses over with the first one to confuse matters and add moments of actual physical menace to the film.
It's a very effective combination based on honesty towards the film's audience and shows a belief in the usefulness of suspense to carry a movie that still wasn't all that common at that point in time. The Amazing Mr. X is pretty much what happens when the fake psychic movie is kidnapped by the early thriller.
The film's weaknesses are all on the acting side: while Turhan Bey and Lynn Bari work their respective melodramatic acting styles very well and quite nuanced, Richard Carlson is the sort of non-entity US movies of the 40s, 50s and 60s just loved to inflict on their audiences as their supposed heroes. Charmless, humourless and with the personality of a very boring robot, the best thing I can say about Carlson's performance is that he's not on screen all that often. The other problem child is Cathy O'Donnell's Janet Burke. Parts of her acting troubles are probably caused by the script’s indecisiveness on the question if Janet's the younger sister who has always mothered her older sibling, or an especially stupid twelve year old in the body of a twenty year old. O'Donnell's performance suggests she doesn't have an idea about that either, which results in her acting like a time-displaced moe character in 40s clothes. Unfortunately, she's much more important to the success or failure of the movie than Carlson is.
Getting back to the more positive aspects of The Amazing Mr. X, future blacklist victim Bernard Vorhaus's direction is often quite inventive. Even if the rest of the film were completely without merit, the staging of Chris's nightmare sequence and her near death in the final part of the movie alone would be worth watching; the former is as fine an example of the psychoanalytically influenced dream sequence so beloved of noir and its sister genres as you will find, while the latter is a wonderful example of how to make a difficult to stage scene look natural.
Vorhaus had excellent help in making his film moody and impressive too. His director of cinematography was John Alton, one of the DoPs of noir cinema. Alton brought much of the non-genre's visual trappings with him to films like this which most people wouldn't exactly call noirs (for my definition, The Amazing Mr. X lacks the nihilist streak of the "true" noir, but your mileage and definition will vary). There are moments of great visual beauty to be found throughout the film, beauty that lies in the expected atmospheric play of shadows as well as in Alton's often stunning use of light on reflecting surfaces that turns the film's world into a place where light and shadow are at once less real and more real than in our world.
Come to think of it, that's pretty much what Alexis makes his money with in the movie, too, which makes it an exceptionally clever addition to an exceptionally clever film.
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
In short: The Ghost Camera (1933)
Returning from a vacation in the more boring parts of the country – though
there is a very picturesque ruin around - John Gray (Henry Kendall) finds a
camera the audience saw falling into his car among his luggage. Because
developing the film in it seems a possible way to find out who it belongs to
(and because he’s frankly rather curious but would never admit to it), Gray does
so. The first photo he develops seems to show a fight to the death between two
men, but before he can examine things more closely, someone organizes the
fiendish distraction of a ringing at the door, and it is stolen.
His curiosity now truly peaked, Gray investigates and strolls into a case concerning the mandatory beautiful woman (Ida Lupino), her missing brother, and a stolen diamond.
This little British low budget mystery romance directed by Bernard Vorhaus is surprisingly engaging. There’s not just Ida Lupino before she was a star or the only female director in Hollywood who made up for the “only” by being quite brilliant behind the camera here bursting with energy in front of it, Henry Kendall playing a proto-nerd hero I can only read as a young M.R. James character fighting crime, a plot that moves through the film’s 65 minutes with verve and control, and the time capsule effect low budget films often achieve much better than productions that are allowed to aim higher.
Vorhaus also demonstrates in his first feature film all the visual talents that would stand him in good stead in the future (at least in those of his films I have seen): there’s some fine use of chiaroscuro effects, a real sense for expressive editing that never reaches the tackiness of The Montage (there, I said it), and an understanding of the creation of mood with simple means. Particular highpoints are a proto noir style flashback to the film’s central murder and an interrogation sequence at an inquest that sees the accused bodily shrinking ever further into a corner, while the camera moves closer and closer to the accusing coroner’s face with every shot.
The Ghost Camera is light and a bit fluffy, but also engaging and much better made than it needed to be, which is quite an achievement for an eighty year old low budget film.
His curiosity now truly peaked, Gray investigates and strolls into a case concerning the mandatory beautiful woman (Ida Lupino), her missing brother, and a stolen diamond.
This little British low budget mystery romance directed by Bernard Vorhaus is surprisingly engaging. There’s not just Ida Lupino before she was a star or the only female director in Hollywood who made up for the “only” by being quite brilliant behind the camera here bursting with energy in front of it, Henry Kendall playing a proto-nerd hero I can only read as a young M.R. James character fighting crime, a plot that moves through the film’s 65 minutes with verve and control, and the time capsule effect low budget films often achieve much better than productions that are allowed to aim higher.
Vorhaus also demonstrates in his first feature film all the visual talents that would stand him in good stead in the future (at least in those of his films I have seen): there’s some fine use of chiaroscuro effects, a real sense for expressive editing that never reaches the tackiness of The Montage (there, I said it), and an understanding of the creation of mood with simple means. Particular highpoints are a proto noir style flashback to the film’s central murder and an interrogation sequence at an inquest that sees the accused bodily shrinking ever further into a corner, while the camera moves closer and closer to the accusing coroner’s face with every shot.
The Ghost Camera is light and a bit fluffy, but also engaging and much better made than it needed to be, which is quite an achievement for an eighty year old low budget film.
Friday, June 10, 2011
On WTF: The Amazing Mr. X (1948)
aka The Spiritualist
If you ask me, the phony psychic genre is the cause of some of the laziest writing, and some of the most annoying films ever produced. So it came as quite a surprise to me to find The Amazing Mr. X to be a pretty intelligently written and very well-made movie. It's as if everyone involved felt respect for their audience!
Of course, this being a Friday, I'm going to tell you more about the film on WTF-Film.
Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,reviews,thriller,bernard vorhaus,turhan bey,lynn bari,richard carlson
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