Il passato è sempre presente

Just as it was in Alfred Hitchcock's I Confess the old world look and charm of Quebec City in French Canada is a major reason to see Whispering City. One only wishes that it were done in color for preservation. especially for the key scenes in Montmorency Falls.

This was a joint project of the cross the pond shortlived Eagle-Lion studios to boost the Canadian film industry. Helmut Dantine, Paul Lukas, and Mary Anderson came from the USA to star.

Dantine is a classical composer with a shrewish wife who gets herself killed and reporter Mary Anderson looks a bit too hard at rich patron Paul Lukas. He wants Anderson to be killed and like Robert Walker blackmailing Farley Granger in Stranger On A Train, Lukas blackmails Dantine.

That's a rough idea, it's a bit more complicated than that. The great Hitchcock never overplotted his films as this tends to be.

Still it's good, just not Hitchcockian great.