Lady of Burlesque (1943)

Lady of Burlesque is a 1943 comedy/mystery directed by William A. Wellman and starring Barbara Stanwyck. It’s a murder mystery set in a burlesque theatre.

Dixie Daisy (Barbara Stanwyck) is the headliner at S.B. Foss’s burlesque theatre. There are the usual backstage dramas. There are romantic entanglements between the girls and the male comics. One of the girls is involved with Louie Grindero (Gerald Mohr), a slightly shady ex-racketeer. The stage manager doesn’t like burlesque artistes. The haughty Princess Nirvena (Stephanie Bachelor) is no princess but she has plenty of attitude and doesn’t get along with anyone. Dixie and Lolita La Verne (Victoria Faust) don’t get along at all. Comic Biff Brannigan (Michael O’Shea) is crazy about Dixie but she doesn’t share his feelings.

But these are all just the usual dramas you expect in any theatre. They’re not likely to lead to anything serious. They’re certainly not likely to lead to murder.

But something does lead to murder.

Almost everybody in the theatre is a suspect. There are performers and stage hands constantly wandering about all over the place so anyone could have entered the dressing room at the time of murder.

With so many romantic dramas and jealousies almost anyone could conceivably have had a motive. And there are plenty of suspects without rock-solid alibis.

The murder weapon was a G-string. A G-string that has now mysteriously disappeared.

This is nothing startling in the plotting department but it’s a perfectly decent murder mystery.

As you might expect the movie’s biggest asset is Barbara Stanwyck. This is a semi-comic movie and Stanwyck can handle that sort of thing with ease. She also gets to be sexy. She has no problem with that either. She can certainly be a sassy wise-cracking dame. And she does some remarkably energetic dancing.

The movie’s biggest problem was of course the Production Code. An inherently sexy story had to be made squeaky clean. Burlesque was all about pretty girls taking most of their clothes off. In this movie we have pretty girls who don’t take off any of their clothing at all.These are the most over-dressed strippers you’ll ever see.

Burlesque was also about risqué comedy (it was often lame but it was always risqué). In this movie the onstage comedy routines are both lame and tame.

On the other hand once the performers are offstage we do get some hardboiled dialogue and some very amusing bitchy exchanges.

One thing I really love about this movie is that every single scene takes place in the theatre. It gives it an atmosphere that is claustrophobic but also emphasises that this is an entire separate world with its own rules.

The movie was based on the novel The G-String Murders by Gypsy Rose Lee. For some years there was controversy about the authorship of the novel, with claims that it was ghost-written by Craig Rice. It’s now generally accepted that Gypsy Rose Lee did indeed write the novel, with Rice perhaps doing a little bit of polishing. The novel’s great strength is that it was written by one of the great burlesque queens and she was writing about a world she knew intimately, and a world she loved. It vividly captures the seedy-glamorous world of burlesque.

It is sad that the story had to be toned down so much. One of the cool things about the burlesque of the golden age of strip-tease (which was over by the mid-1950s) is that we know exactly what these burlesque shows were really like. We know because of the existence of large numbers of burlesque movies which were actual filmed burlesque shows. We know that burlesque in its heyday was a whole lot sexier than anything in this movie. These burlesque movies are easy to find, they’re worth seeing and I’ve reviewed a bunch of them including Midnight Frolics (1949), 'B' Girl Rhapsody (1952) and Everybody’s Girl (1950).

Despite being toned down it’s an enjoyable lesser murder mystery and Barbara Stanwyck is in sparkling form. Recommended.

The good news is that Lady of Burlesque is very very easy to get to see. The bad news is that it’s public domain and the prints are not great. It really needs a restoration and a Blu-Ray release.

Mystery of Marie Roget (1942)

Mystery of Marie Roget is a 1942 adaptation of an Edgar Allan Poe story. Now there have been countless movies ostensibly based on stories by Poe many of which have only a tenuous connection with the source material. This movie was based on one of Poe’s three detective stories, stories which have a very strong claim to being the first-ever genuine detective stories. Once again, the Poe connection turns out to be somewhat nebulous.

It does at least feature a character named Dupin. But instead of the brilliant amateur detective C. Auguste Dupin this one, Dr Pierre Dupin (Patric Knowles), is a Paris police detective who appears to be a pioneering forensics scientist.

The setting is Paris in 1889. The very popular musical comedy star Marie Roget has disappeared without a trace. After ten days there seems little hope that she will be found alive. And indeed her dead body is finally found.

Since Marie Roget is played by the star of the movie, Maria Montez, we’re not the least bit surprised when she turns up very much alive. This is not a spoiler. This happens right at the beginning of the movie. The supposed disappearance of Marie Roget is merely the start of the story.

There is certainly a mystery involving Marie Roget. The mystery also involves her sister Camille (Nell O’Day), their eccentric grandmother (played by Maria Ouspenskaya), the grandmother’s pet leopard, a young man named Marcel (Edward Norris) who has been romancing both sisters and a middle-aged government official named Beauvais (John Litel) who is making a fool of himself over Marie.

There is also an immense inheritance at stake.

The grandmother is convinced that an attempt will be made to murder Camille. She wants Dupin to act as bodyguard. Dupin agrees reluctantly, mostly because there is something about Marie’s disappearance that puzzles and fascinates him.

Dupin will play the master detective role, with Lloyd Corrigan as the Prefect of Police Gobelin being the comic relief sidekick.

The plot has some reasonable twists and a few very unconvincing elements. It works well enough overall.

At this stage Universal had not yet figured out what to do with Maria Montez, although they did know they wanted to make her a star. She’s probably a bit miscast here. She also doesn’t get a huge amount to do.

Patric Knowles is not wildly exciting but he’s a serviceable hero. Maria Ouspenskaya has fun as the crazy grandmother. The other cast members are adequate without being dazzling.

Rigid genre boundaries did not exist in Poe’s days and in the first of his Dupin detective stories, The Murder in the Rue Morgue, he incorporated elements we might be more inclined to associate with horror. Universal had had some success with an adaptation of that story and obviously hoped to repeat that success. As a result Mystery of Marie Roget does have a few macabre touches (faceless corpses and body parts stolen from the morgue).

The period setting is done quite well although it certainly does not have a noir look. There’s a pretty decent horse-and-carriage chase and a couple of moderately effective action scenes.

Mystery of Marie Roget is enjoyable enough if you don’t set your expectations too high.

It’s included in Kino Lorber’s Film Noir: The Dark Side Of Cinema XVI Blu-Ray boxed set. Needless to say Mystery of Marie Roget has not the remotest connection with film noir. The transfer is nice and there are two audio commentaries.

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.

Walk a Tightrope (1964)

Walk a Tightrope is a low budget 1964 British murder mystery with a nicely twisted premise which seems like it’s going to be rather intriguing. The good news is that it delivers on its promise.

Having a bad day at work is something that happens to everyone. Even hired killers like Carl Lutcher (Dan Duryea). Lutcher is having a really bad day. It was such a simple job but now it’s blown up in his face. It’s not just that things did not go quite as expected - things took an absolutely bewildering turn.

Lutcher is not the only one who is bewildered. It seems that everyone involved is confused and disturbed. Including the victim’s widow. Everyone is adamant about what happened but no-one’s story agrees with anyone else’s and no-one’s story makes sense.

The nice thing is that it’s not only the characters who are unsure of what is really happening. The audience is baffled as well. Baffled, but in a good way. We really don’t know which story to believe. A murder has been committed. We don’t know why. We know who did the killing but was someone else behind it?

As soon as we start to think that one of the people involved is telling a pretty plausible story something happens to plunge us into doubt again.

We also see the seeds of suspicion starting to plant themselves in the minds of various characters, and there’s a growing sense of paranoia.

When the major plot twists do kick in they’re deliciously nasty.

These were the days when producers of low-budget British movies liked to use imported has-been American stars whose careers were sufficiently on the downward slope that they would work for peanuts. Surprisingly it’s something that more often than not worked very well, since those superannuated Hollywood stars were often very fine actors. In this case we have Dan Duryea whose career was severely in the doldrums. Duryea was however a great actor and at a time when he was grateful for any work this was an excellent part that suited him down to the ground. He makes the most of it. Duryea was always marvellous at playing mean nasty manipulative characters who were also slightly pathetic. By the time he made this one the years were visibly starting to catch up with him and that adds a certain poignancy to his performance. Carl Lutcher is contemptible but he’s such a sorry loser we almost feel sorry for him.

Patricia Owens as the widow of the murder victim has a very demanding rôle. She has to make Ellen Shepherd sympathetic but we have to be not quite sure of her. Owens carries this off with considerable confidence. The supporting players are very solid as they usually were in even cheap British movies in those days. Trevor Reid manages to make Inspector MacMitchell a slight variation on the usual run of movie Scotland Yard policemen - he’s like a slightly dotty but likeable old uncle.

Richard Leech does a good job as the best friend who’s as ambiguous as all the other characters. Special mention should be made of Shirley Cameron’s touching performance as Lutcher’s devoted girlfriend Maisie.

Frank Nesbitt directed and did so quite competently. It’s one of only three features he directed but one of those three was another murder mystery with Dan Duryea Do You Know This Voice? which I’m now more than a little anxious to see, especially since Neil McCallum scripted both films.

Network’s Region 2 DVD is barebones but the anamorphic transfer is lovely. The movie was shot in black-and-white and it looks terrific.

Walk a Tightrope is a well above average murder mystery with a cleverly constructed plot and fine performances. Highly recommended and if you’re a Dan Duryea fan it’s obviously a must-see.

Portrait of Alison (1955)

Portrait of Alison (released in the US as Postmark for Danger) is a fine example of the mystery thrillers that were a staple of the British film industry in the 1950s.

Tim Forrester (Robert Beatty) is an artist. Not a hugely successful artist - he mostly makes his living doing commercial art. He’s content enough. At the beginning of the movie he’s completing a painting for an advertising agency. His model is Jill Stewart (Josephine Griffin) and there’s a suggestion of a minor romantic involvement that is unlikely to go anywhere, mainly because Jill is determined to marry serious money. She seems likely to achieve that objective in the person of the rich if slightly dull and slightly over-serious Henry Carmichael (Allan Cuthbertson).

Tim’s brother Dave (William Sylvester) arrives with bad news. Their brother Lewis has been killed in a car accident in Italy.

This is upsetting enough but worse is to come. The police seem very interested in the case, more interested than one might expect in what was after all just an accidental death. And then Tim receives a mysterious commission - to paint a portrait (from a photograph) of the girl who was killed in the accident with his brother. To help with the portrait her father lends Tim her favourite dress which he sets up on a dressmaker’s dummy. Things get really strange when the portrait is vandalised and the photograph and the dress are stolen. Worse still, Tim finds himself a murder suspect.

Clearly Lewis Forrester was mixed up in something dangerous in Italy and it appears to be connected with a postcard Lewis sent. The trouble is that no-one is sure what the postcard meant or where it is now.

The screenplay by Guy Green and Ken Hughes throws in plenty of twists and succeeds fairly well in keeping the audience guessing. Guy Green directed as well and with considerable panache. 

The strong cast is a major plus. Both Robert Beatty and William Sylvester are very solid and Terry Moore and Josephine Griffin are extremely good as the two women who complicate Tim Forrester’s life. The supporting cast includes such reliable stalwarts of British cinema as Geoffrey Keen (playing a policeman as he so often did) and Allan Cuthbertson. All the performances are nicely judged.

This is not film noir but it does have the occasional noirish visual moment and on the whole it’s a movie that film noir fans are likely to enjoy. The key role played by the portrait does suggest some affinity with the noir classic Laura.

There’s a bit more action than you generally get in British mysteries of this era with a couple of fairly good fight scenes. It was obviously not a big-budget effort but the production values are quite adequate - this movie never looks cheap or shoddy.

One interesting feature is that this is a very rare example of a thriller in which the protagonist mostly behaves quite sensibly, rather than making the series of dumb mistakes  that you expect movie heroes to make in order to drive the plot.

Network DVD have done an admirable job here. The widescreen anamorphic transfer is excellent.

Portrait of Alison might not be in the very top rank of British mystery thrillers but overall it’s a well-crafted movie that delivers the goods. Highly recommended.

Home at Seven (1952)

Home at Seven (released in the US as Murder on Monday) was Sir Ralph Richardson’s only outing as a director (and he was the star as well). It’s a low-key quirky little mystery thriller that would be too amiable for its own good if it wasn’t for some dark moments that crop up rather suddenly and unexpectedly.

Richardson is David Preston, a mild-mannered and very ordinary bank clerk. In fact he’s about as mild-mannered and ordinary as a man can possibly be. His life of quiet contentment is built on orderliness and routine. He arrives home from work at seven o’clock every day, without fail. Until one fateful Tuesday he arrives home at his usual time to discover that something very strange and very disturbing has happened. His wife Janet (Margaret Leighton) is in tears, owing to the fact that he didn’t come home at all on the Monday. This is very puzzling to David because he knows it is Monday and he has certainly not been out all night. The puzzle deepens after Janet manages to persuade him that it really is Tuesday and he really did not come home the day before. And she has telephoned the bank and been informed that he hasn’t been in today at all. But David distinctly remembers leaving the bank as usual, catching his train as usual, and arriving home as usual. It appears that he has somehow lost an entire day. Things like that simply do not happen to people like David Preston, and yet it appears it has happened.

The family doctor, Dr Sparling (Jack Hawkins) is called in. He can’t find any evidence of any physiological abnormality but he is convinced David is telling the truth. Dr Sparling concludes that David has suffered a memory lapse, probably brought on by some kind of shock.

This is all somewhat distressing but it becomes really worrying when it is revealed that a robbery and a murder took place on the Monday evening in question. And (in a nicely executed little twist) it appears that the mild-mannered David Preston not only had the opportunity to commit both crimes, he also had very strong motives. 

David still has no recollection of the missing day. Dr Sparling is still certain that his patient is telling the truth. Inspector Hemingway (Campbell Singer) is however far from convinced. And even Dr Sparling has to admit that the circumstantial evidence is rather strong. Most worrisome of all is that David has absolutely no alibi and absolutely no way of proving his innocence. It all looks rather grim for David Preston.

It’s a good basic idea and it’s developed quite effectively by scriptwriter Anatole de Grunwald (the script being based on a play by R. C. Sherriff). 

Richardson’s inexperience as a director inclines him to play safe and to avoid anything fancy. This movie might strike some viewers as being a little bland but Richardson’s very low-key approach is quite effective, emphasising the extreme ordinariness of the characters.

To make such a low-key approach works requires a very strong cast and fortunately that condition is fulfilled very adequately. Richardson avoids the temptation of trying to convey David’s inner turmoil through acting pyrotechnics (although he was an actor who could produce such effects when required). David Preston is not a man who puts his emotions on display and Richardson’s performance is entirely believable. Margaret Leighton adopts a similar approach which proves equally effective. Jack Hawkins does the same. These are people who are not accustomed to dealing with bizarre and sensational events and they respond with the kind of quiet dignity that rings true given their social milieu and the mores of the times.

Inspector Hemingway is just about the most sympathetic police inspector you’re ever going to encounter. Initially the viewer is tempted to see this as evidence of his cunning as a detective but by the end of the movie we realise that he really does happen to be a very sympathetic person who has been fortunate enough to find that his empathy makes him a very efficient policeman.

As for the dark moments I alluded to earlier, the most telling occurs when, just as we’ve come to believe that David must be entirely innocent, he suddenly makes a rather shocking admission which leaves us having to wonder if we’ve been entirely wrong about him. 

Home at Seven is careful to treat its characters with respect. It would have been easy to mock David Preston and his wife but faced with the alternative of chaos that threatens them we can’t help feeling that there’s something to be said for an orderly life.

Network DVD have released this black-and-white film on DVD without any extras apart from a rather sparse stills gallery. The transfer is however very satisfactory and the very low price is another major plus.

Home at Seven is a product of a time when the British film industry seemed to have a practically unlimited capacity for making excellent thrillers and mysteries that combined subtlety and understatement with an appealing quirkiness. This one is definitely worth a look. Recommended.

Murder with Pictures (1936)

Murder with Pictures is a 1936 murder mystery which (as was customary in Hollywood at that time) mixes the mystery with a dash of comedy.

It was based on a story by George Harmon Coxe. In the 1930s Coxe had written a series of crime stories for the pulp magazine Black Mask featuring news photographer Flashgun Casey who spends as much time solving crimes as taking photos. Coxe also wrote a series of novels featuring Kent Murdock, essentially a smoother slightly more up-market and slightly toned-down version of Flashgun Casey. Murder with Pictures was the first of the Kent Murdock books and Paramount’s film version quickly followed. Coxe co-wrote the screenplay with Sidney Salkow.

Nate Girard (Onslow Stevens) is a shady businessman who has made a lot of money from oil and he’s also a mobster. He’s just been acquitted on a murder charge. His businessman partner, a shyster lawyer named Redfield, got him off but no-one really believes he was innocent. Kent Murdock (Lew Ayres) finds himself involved when a girl named Meg Archer (Gail Patrick) persuades him to hide her in his hotel room. Meg is the number one suspect in a new murder, that of Redfield. It just so happens that Murdock’s assistant Doane spanned a picture that showed the actual murder and Mudock, who has convinced himself that Meg is innocent, believes that picture will clear her. The trouble is that everyone wants to get hold of that picture.

The plot complications accumulate at a frenetic pace. Everyone seems to be trying to double-cross everyone else and those who want that picture are wiling to kill it to get hold of it. Murdock has to try to keep Meg out of the hands of the police while also keeping her, and himself, alive.

Murdock has other problems. Under the influence of a few too many highballs he had proposed marriage to bubble-dancer Hester Boone (Joyce Compton) and now she is trying  to fleece him.

Nate Girard and Redfield had cheated Meg Archer and her father out of their lucrative oil business so Meg has a motive for murder and while Murdock still thinks she’s innocent (possibly because he’s fallen for he) there are times when he has his doubts.

The plot is not always easy to follow but the movie’s brisk pacing keeps things entertaining  even when things get pretty confused.

Lew Ayres is a typically fast-talking newspaper man. He plays Murdock just a little too much for laughs for my tastes but he’s reasonably likeable and not entirely unconvincing. Gail Patrick is an engaging and fairly feisty heroine. Joyce Compton provides some fairly amusing comic relief. The supporting cast comprises solid B-movie players. 

Director Charles Barton directed. He did a lot of B-movies and he does a workmanlike job and keeps things moving along. There’s enough action to keep things interesting.

This is a movie that has fallen into the public domain. The Mill Creek DVD I watched was not too bad by that company admittedly very low standards. Picture quality is quite acceptable but there are a few sound issues which is unfortunate because the complex plot becomes harder to follow when you find yourself missing some of the dialogue.

Murder with Pictures is a fairly solid mystery in the 1930s B-movie style. The idea of the crucial piece of evidence being a photographic plate which everyone is trying to steal is quite clever (and was very much a George Harmon Coxe trademark). Recommended.