Lady on a Train (1945)

Lady on a Train is a 1945 Universal release included in Kino Lorber’s Blu-Ray boxed set Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema IX. Now I really don’t mind that hardly any of the Blu-Ray film noir releases these days are genuine noir. I understand that it’s a marketing thing. Slapping a film noir label on a movie makes it a viable physical media release and as a result lots of unfairly neglected movies are now seeing the light of day. That’s a good thing.

But the sheer brazenness of trying to pass off Lady on a Train as a film noir is awe-inspiring. This movie is not noir. It’s not noirish or noiresque or noir-adjacent. It does not contain even trace elements of noirness.

Lady on a Train is a lighthearted comic murder mystery with a decided screwball comedy flavour. It’s also a rather delightful movie in its own way.

It was based on a Leslie Charteris story and if you’re a fan of Charteris’s Saint stories you know that he was all about clever plotting, style, wit and fun. And this movie contains all those ingredients.

Deanna Durbin plays Nikki Collins and she is most certainly a screwball. She’s on a train and she’s reading a murder mystery by her favourite writer of detective stories, Wayne Morgan. She spends a great deal of time reading detective stories. She looks up from her book, out the window of the train, and she witnesses an actual murder. It’s not her overheated imagination.

The problem is that the police assume she’s a ditzy blonde who reads too much detective fiction and they don’t believe her.

She decides she’s going to need some help from a real expert, and surely no-one knows more about murder than Wayne Morgan. The writer is naturally flattered by the admiration of a cute blonde but his girlfriend, fashion model Joyce Willams (Patricia Morison), is less happy about pretty blondes taking an interest in her man. In fact she’s very disgruntled indeed.

Nikki does have a lead. She is sure that the murder victim was a wealthy industrialist named Josiah Waring. He is indeed deceased, although his demise has been attributed to a freak accident with a Christmas tree.

Waring left an odd will. His two nephews, Arnold Waring (Dan Duryea) and Jonathan Waring (Ralph Bellamy), were left nothing. The entire vast fortune went to Waring’s mistress, nightclub chanteuse Margo Martin (Maria Palmer).

There are plenty of other dissatisfied would-be heirs so there’s no shortage of potential suspects for murder.

There's a solid mystery plot but the emphasis is on lighthearted fun, and on watching Nikki’s attempts to play the part of an ace girl amateur detective. Her attempts turn up some clues but cause a good deal of amusing mayhem. She has a knack for blundering into situations with all the overconfidence of an enthusiastic schoolgirl.

The part is tailor-made for Deanna Durbin. She gets to be feisty, smart, accident-prone, cute and adorable. All things that she did supremely well. Her likeability factor is high enough to keep us interested in her adventures.

Naturally she has to sing and since for much of the movie she’s pretending to be a nightclub singer the songs slot neatly into the film and they’re pretty good. When she sings Night and Day she’s as close as Deanna Durbin ever got to being sultry. And she does a very sexy version of Silent Night. Yes I know that sounds bizarre but she manages it.

You might think that Dan Duryea’s presence in the cast would add some noirness but Duryea displays little of his trademark sinister presence. He’s very good, but he’s not playing a heavy.

You just have to accept that this is not going to be a film noir, and enjoy it for what it is. It’s a decently plotted murder mystery combined with a screwball comedy. Nikki is totally a screwball comedy female protagonist and Wayne Morgan is a classic screwball comedy male protagonist. Initially she drives him insane and threatens to reduce his well-ordered life to a shambles. You know that eventually they’ll realise that since they’re both screwballs they might as fall in love.

The Circus Club (where Margo is the headliner) makes a fine visually interesting setting for much of the later action. Durbin gets to wear some very fetching costumes.

The murder mystery and screwball comedy elements are nicely balanced. The mystery plot works satisfactorily, the screwball comedy elements are genuinely amusing. And Deanna Durbin’s sparkling performance is the main attraction. A charming and delightful movie, highly recommended.

The Kino Lorber Blu-Ray offers a very nice transfer. There is no audio commentary, and given the very dubious quality of most of the audio commentaries that Kino Lorber offer that’s probably a blessing.