Fantasmas en la noche

This unusual Film Noir (the only one ever to be made into a whole series of films) certainly catches the sinister atmosphere of its genre, both visually with very well done shadow effects and the adequate 'cheap' harbor surroundings of a B movie, and thematically, using a lot of psychology which doesn't fail to have its effects, neither on the protagonists nor on the audience - but just a little bit of an overdose of the belief in 'destiny'...

Whose destiny is it to live or to die? Who has a 'right' to live or to die? Questions like these are maybe somehow out of place in a Film Noir - because they've got too much to do with morality. The Noir world (at least that of the 40s) is usually quite immoral (see "The Maltese Falcon", "The Shanghai Gesture", "Gilda"); and it's not always the good ones who get away - that's the cynical Noir philosophy...

But anyway, "The Whistler" still remains an enormously suspenseful film with a very capable cast and direction; and a 'must' for every fan of classic crime.