La cicatriz

Paul Henreid and Joan Bennett star in "The Scar," otherwise known as "Hollow Triumph."

As a film noir, "The Scar" works on several different levels. And even though a major plot point in the story stretches the realm of possibility a bit too far, this forgotten little film deserves a better fate than its present public-domain, bargain bin video status.

The plot revolves around John Muller (Henreid), who organizes a major casino heist with a few of his pals. When the sting is botched, Muller runs as far away as he can with his ill-gotten gains. The casino's owner, a gangster (who bears an interesting likeness to Richard Conte) isn't planning on taking this robbery on his back. He dispatches two of his more intimidating thugs to locate him and ... well ... retrieve the stolen money. "Even if it takes you 20 years," he demands. In a desperate attempt to conceal himself from the vengeful clutches of the fore-mentioned gangster, Muller engineers a plan to impersonate a psychologist who, as it turns out, is a carbon-copy lookalike of himself. The only difference between the two is a rigid scar that outlines his left cheek. Can Muller find it within himself to kill the psychologist and begin living a double life? Will the gangsters guns find him first?

I have to admit, with the exception of a couple of protracted scenes, "The Scar" truly is a first-rate thriller. Steve Sekely directs, punctuating just about every scene with classic film noir iconography. Daniel Fuchs' script is also top-notch ... which may have served as a primer for his next project ... the indelible "Criss Cross" for Universal. (He also penned "Panic in the Streets," another great, oft-overlooked film noir starring Richard Widmark.) Joan Bennett's performance comes off as a trifle pallid ... but then again, this was Henreid's picture from the get-go. He commands every scene that he appears in with suave acumen, something that I missed from his performance in the overrated "Casablanca." I'll be the first to admit that I've not seen many of his other pictures. But Henreid really won me over with this film ... he deserves a far better acknowledgement than only as "the other guy" of "Casablanca."

More than anything, I think "The Scar" (or "Hollow Triumph" ... whatever) is a classic example of just how absent-minded popular culture really is. More than ever, movie-goers expect a film that is saturated in bloody action, quick-cuts, and talentless actors. There's not a lot going for movies, today. And thankfully ... most of what's out there will have been long-forgotten by the popular culture consciousness in a few years. I think that modern pop culture has unfairly labeled film noir as being movies lavished with shadows, dames and guns. And while all of these are inherent to the genre, they forget the cold, black heart that beats beneath its surface. "The Scar" thrives on this kind of energy. It's a classic example of what made film noir great ... and why we'll never see anything like it ever again.

An escaped robber named Johnny Muller (Paul Henreid) in a desperate attempt to hide from the hired killers chasing after him decides to take the place of a look-a-like psychoanalyst named Dr. Bartok. The only difference is a scar Bartok has on his face...Johnny carries out his plan with surprisingly success except for one small detail. Along the way to becoming Dr. Bartok, Johnny meets and unexpectedly falls in love with Bartok's secretary Evelyn, who has lost faith in mankind, in one of the greatest film noir romances ever put to film.

The best thing about this unlikely Film Noir film is its superb ending...with the close-up on Evelyn's face at the end and an ending we are aware of but she is not.

Paul Henreid produced this film in which he starred, eerily portraying a totally amoral man who does not see anything at all wrong with the occasional murder, as long as he 'needs to do it'. John Bennett delivers an equally powerful performance of a woman who, although not good, is certainly not bad, and it is curious that this study of a woman's fixation on a bad man through infatuation was made in the same year as 'Force of Evil' which showed an even more extreme form of that. It must have been 'beauty and the beast' year. The ingenious plot concerns a double-identity, so there are two major threads of intrigue going on at once. Needless to say, Joan Bennett is involved with both Henreids, but prefers the baddie because he is more spellbinding and, let's face it, far from boring. This is a well-directed, sometimes brutal, atmospheric thriller which is something of a lost classic. It is now available on DVD under its alternative title of 'The Scar', which is a most unfortunate title, as people don't like scars (even though there is one in the story). Joan Bennett was really made for these films, as she proved in 'The Woman in the Window' and 'Scarlet Street' for instance. There is something ambiguous about her, something hard that is soft, you can't quite figure her. That's just right for noir. You should never be able to figure noir, everything should stay in the shadows where it belongs. The thing about a good thriller like this is, the mystery goes beyond the story itself and becomes the mystery of people themselves, what is it that goes on inside heads, those impenetrable citadels of secrets.

Paul Henreid is in every single scene of this movie, and it's hard not to think of him in his most famous role, and to impose that image onto this picture. Henreid's thick accent is a distraction that really robs this movie of some of its charm.

But, the plot twists make up for everything. One takes place in a photo shop, and its significance is immediately apparent. The other is the ending which caught me totally by surprise. I can't say anymore for fear of spoiling it for those who haven't seen it, but I will pause to note how no other commentator here has bothered to note the *irony* of how Laszlo .. er Muller .. er Bartok met his end.

Joan Bennett is terrific here, as a cynical, vulnerable, rather sarcastic secretary who shows herself to be an astute judge of character, though not as hard-hearted as she'd have us believe. Leslie Brooks .. the exquisitely eye-lined Leslie Brooks .. is wasted here.

This is a tedious, hum-drum movie except in the moments when Henreid and Bennett are together on screen, but that wonderful ending is one of the best you'll ever see. 7 out of 10.

I'm commenting here only about some of the rather silly comments expressed elsewhere about Paul Henreid. First of all, he wasn't "Hungarian/French/American", but Austrian/American, born a member of the Austrian nobility in Trieste and raised in Vienna. His original name was too long to reproduce here, but he first acted under the name of Paul von Hernreid. Several have mentioned his THICK accent, but he has almost no accent at all in most of the film, and what accent remains is so light as to be indeterminable (almost the kind of Continental European accent one can hear in Audrey Hepburn's speech when she's not making a determined effort to speak English with no accent at all); whatever the accent may be, it is certainly not "thick"! And his brother in the film is played by American Edward Franz, who very often played roles in which he had no definable accent but seemed to be speaking with one just the same(!). That is pretty much the way I heard him in this film, too. Others claim Henreid was trying to change his good-guy image, but he had already done that several times in films, most especially as Nazis in two English-made films (one of which being the quite notable NIGHT TRAIN TO MUNICH) prior to arriving in the U.S., and concurrently with this film he appeared in ROPE OF SAND as one of the most despicable villains of the late 1940s (at one point, he blinds Burt Lancaster by forcing his head into the sand, and then tries to run over him with a truck!). As with at least a few of the commentators, I usually find that Henreid lacks a certain amount of star charisma, but he seems to have more of it in this film than in any other of the thirty or so films I've seen him in. Ironically, it is in what is probably his least-known starring role effort. Too bad.