The Second Woman (1950)

The Second Woman (later re-released with the title Ellen) is a 1950 United Artists release that has languished in obscurity and that’s rather unfortunate.

The opening is obviously and I would assume deliberately reminiscent of Hitchcock’s Rebecca. A woman tells us that she keeps remembering a house, a house named Hilltop, now just a ruin.

There are moments that will call to mind several other notable movies of the 1940s, including other Hitchcock movies.

We get a scene with a man seemingly over come by carbon monoxide fumes from a car with its engine kept running in a garage.

A woman is told that she should leave her house immediately because she is in extreme danger.

We need to be wary of taking anything we see in this movie at face value.

Then we go into a flashback which occupies most of the movie’s running time.

Ellen Foster (Betsy Drake) meets Jeff Cohalan (Robert Young) on a train. He’s charming and friendly and he seems to be trying to pick her up (and she seems to like the idea) but there’s something slightly odd about him. He seems a bit distracted, a bit moody. As if something was haunting him.

They’re both heading for the same small town.

Jeff is an architect and apparently a very successful one. He’s well-liked but people worry about him. He has never been the same since the accident in which his wife was killed. Nobody likes to talk about the accident and Jeff certainly doesn’t want to talk about it.

But Ellen has fallen head over heels in love with Jeff and there’s no way to restrain a woman’s curiosity.

Jeff invites her to look inside Hilltop, the house he designed and in which he lives. That causes some surprise to the locals - Jeff has never allowed anybody inside Hilltop.

Jess seems to be getting more distracted and disturbed. And strange things keep happening to him. His much-loved horse breaks its leg. His dog is poisoned. There is worse to come. The painting is a particular puzzle. It’s one of Jeff’s prized possessions but the colours have started to fade. Ellen is convinced there’s something very significant about this painting.

And as Ellen says, it just isn’t possible for anybody to have that much bad luck. There’s something sinister going on. Everything that Jeff loves dies. Dr Hartley (Morris Carnovsky) is concerned that Ellen might be in danger. That seems more and more likely.

One nice twist is that we cannot be certain that Ellen is the one in danger. Events seem to be heading inexorably towards disaster but we don’t know from which direction the danger is coming and we don’t know the motive.

There are several plausible explanations for these strange events. The movie does a pretty good job of keeping us in doubt about the actual explanation.

The plot twists are handled quite deftly. There’s some decent misdirection. Mostly it relies on an atmosphere of suspicion and paranoia that builds gradually but inexorably.

I loved Jeff’s cliff-top modernist house (I dislike modernist architecture for public buildings but I have a real weakness for modernist houses).

I have issues with Robert Young in his 1930s movies. He tries too hard and he’s too hyper-active. By 1950 however he had learnt to tone things down and he gives a fine subtle performance here. Betsy Drake is a likeable lively heroine.

This is a psychological thriller at times veering toward psychological horror and with some hints of the gothic. There are obvious echoes of Rebecca but also of Suspicion and Spellbound and maybe Laura.

This movie ticks just about all my boxes. I enjoyed it enormously. It deserves to be much better known. Highly recommended.

My copy of this film, which obviously had fallen into the public domain, is in one of those Mill Creek 50-movie DVD sets (in this instance their Mystery Classics set). The transfer is quite good.

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.

A Blueprint for Murder (1953)

A Blueprint for Murder is a rather superior 1953 20th Century-Fox murder mystery with just a dash of film noir to it. It’s well-made but it’s biggest asset is the excellent cast.

Whitney 'Cam' Cameron (Joseph Cotten) rushes to the hospital to be with his sister-in-law. His niece Polly has suddenly been stricken by a mysterious illness. She keeps screaming to the nurses not to touch her feet. She soon seems to be on the road to recovery but then has an equally unexplained relapse and dies.



Polly and her brother Doug were the children of Cam’s brother who died some years earlier. Their mother died many years earlier but the brother’s second wife Lynn (Jean Peters) raised the children as her own.

So far it seems like just a straightforward family tragedy and that’s what Cam assumes it to be until he starts talking to his friends Fred and Maggie Sargent. Maggie (Catherine McLeod) is a pulp writer and some time earlier she’d been doing research on poisons for a murder mystery. What bothers Maggie is that Polly’s symptoms, although they could be explained by a number of illnesses, do just happen to be the symptoms of strychnine poisoning. And Polly’s father’s symptoms just before he died were very much the same. Of course there’s probably nothing in it, but still it is odd.



And then Fred (Gary Merrill) mentions that he had prepared Cam’s brother’s will and that all the money was left in trust to the children. But if both children were to die Lynn would get everything. And the estate is a very substantial one indeed. So Lynn would in fact have a motive for murdering Polly, and she’d also have a motive for murdering the surviving child, Doug. Cam was very fond of both children. After their father’s death he was the closest thing they had to a father and being childless himself the two children were the closest thing he had to a family. He’s particularly fond of his nephew.

Of course they all realise that this is just wild supposition but they can’t help feeling slightly uneasy, especially when Cam mentions that Lynn was anxious to have Polly cremated although he’d managed to talk her out of it. They feel so uneasy that they persuade the police medical examiner to perform an autopsy. And sure enough, Polly is found to have died from a massive dose of strychnine.



The police now view the case as murder and Lynn is their prime suspect but as the homicide cops point out to Cam it’s incredibly difficult to get a conviction in a poisoning case. In fact it’s almost impossible without a confession.

Cam is now haunted by the fear that Doug will be Lynn’s next victim. But what can he do? The police believe Lynn is guilty but they don’t even have enough evidence to bring the case to trial, much less secure a conviction. Cam is almost insane with worry, to the point where a desperate plan suggests itself to him. But is Lynn really a murderess? No-one, least of all the audience, can be absolutely certain of that.



Writer-director Andrew Stone made a number of movies in the film noir and thriller genres during the 50s. He handles this one quite skillfully, slowly ratcheting up the tension as we see Cam becoming more and more convinced his nephew is going to be murdered. The final scene is particularly well done.

Joseph Cotten gives his usual reliable performance. The support cast is excellent with Gary Merrill and Catherine McLeod both excellent. But the movie belongs to Jean Peters. She’s the potential femme fatale here but she doesn’t play it that way - it’s a cool and controlled performance and Lynn really seems like a rather nice person. Despite the circumstantial evidence we find it hard to believe she could really murder anyone, and of course there’s always the possibility that she’s innocent. It’s really a superb performance.



This is a B-picture with an A-picture cast and with enough doubts about the outcome to keep the audience guessing right to the end. A very entertaining noirish mystery and highly recommended.

The DVD, in MGM’s Midnite Movies range (paired with  the Man in the Attic, comes with a warning that it is based on the best surviving film elements. That sounds ominous but don’t panic - it’s actually a very good print indeed.

So Long at the Fair (1950)

So Long at the Fair is the kind of mystery thriller that the British film industry did so well in the 40s and 50s. A young woman (Vicki) and her brother John arrive in Paris for the Great Exposition of 1889. The book into their hotel, the sister taking taking Room 17 and the brother taking Room 19. In the morning there’s no sign of the brother. Even more worryingly, there’s no sign of Room 19 either! No member of the hotel staff will admit to having seen Vicki with her brother the previous day. His name is not on the register. And the staff insist that there never was a Room 19, it was only ever a bathroom. They suggest that perhaps she has been undue strain, and should return to England immediately to consult her doctor.

The British Consul is sympathetic, but unless she can provide some evidence there is little he can do. All her attempts to find some proof are of no avail until she happens to run into a rather pleasant young man named George Hathaway who borrowed 100 francs from her brother the night before. And yes, he most certainly remembers her brother. Being an amiable if slightly eccentric young chap (he’s an artist, much to the disapproval of his family) and being somewhat bored and having a taste for adventure he agrees to help Vicki solve this puzzle.

This was one of Terence Fisher’s early efforts as a director (he’s actually credited as co-director along with Antony Darnborough). Fisher of course went on to considerable fame as a director of horror movies for Hammer Studios, but he started out making movies in the mystery and film noir genres, and he made some very fine films of this type (Stolen Face being particularly good). So Long at the Fair has one of Fisher’s classic trademarks as a director - it doesn’t waste any time, it gets on with the plot and the pacing never drags. It also benefits from a very strong cast, with Jean Simmons as Vicki and Dirk Bogarde as George Hathaway being entertaining and very likeable leads. David Tomlinson plays Vicki’s brother; he was fated always to play such secondary roles, but he always played them well. There’s a fine assortment of noted British character actors including André Morell and Felix Aylmer, and watch out for Honor Blackman (better known as Cathy Gale from The Avengers TV series) in a small part.

The plot is ingeniuous and although it’s a little far-fetched the movie is so well-executed it simply doesn’t matter. Vicki’s confusion and growing terror at her bewildering situation are conveyed very effectively and the suspense is maintained right up to the end. The 19th century costumes look great, the sets are good and overall the movie looks polished and assured. A very enjoyable and very well-made movie and highly recommended.