Daily Archives: March 2, 2015

Dead Reckoning
Directed by John Cromwell
Written by Oliver H.P. Garrett, Steve Fisher et al
1947/USA
Columbia Pictures Corporation
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Captain Warren ‘Rip’ Murdock: You know, you do awful good. I came here to – but go ahead. Put Christmas in your eyes and keep your voice low. Tell me about paradise and all the things I’m missing. I haven’t had a good laugh since before Johnny was murdered.[/box]

Columbia attempts to replicate the magic of Bogie’s Warner Brother’s films noir with mixed results.

Captain “Rip” Murdock (Humphrey Bogart) and his fellow paratrooper Johnny Drake are on their way to Washington on an unknown mission atthe end of the war .  When Johnny finally discovers that he is to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor there, to great publicity, he makes a speedy getaway.  Rip deduces Johnny’s real name from some engraving on the back of his Yale pin and takes off for Johnny’s home town.

Oddly for someone so afraid of being found out, that is exactly where Johnny headed. Johnny suspected that Rip would end up there and leaves him a letter with the bartender at a shady bar/casino run by the gangster Martinelli.  The singer at the club is Mrs. ‘Dusty’ Chandler (Lizabeth Scott) for whom Johnny had pined throughout the war.  Before Rip can catch up with his correspondence Johnny and the bartender are both dead and the letter is MIA.

It develops that Johnny was the prime suspect in the murder of Dusty’s husband but managed to elude the police.  After the briefest of mourning for the dead Johnny, Dusty has thrown herself at Rip’s feet and teams up with him to find Johnny’s killer and clear Johnny’s name.  With Wallace Ford as a safe cracker.

Having got its hands on Bogie, Columbia decided to recycle all the tropes from Warner Brothers films like The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca, right down direct quotes in the dialogue, in Dead Reckoning. Unfortunately, instead of Mary Astor or Ingrid Bergman, Lizabeth Scott has to deliver the other half of the repartee. And try as she might, despite her husky voice and languor, she just is no Lauren Bacall.  It all came off a bit forced to me.

Trailer

Possessed
Directed by Curtis Bernhardt
Written by Silvia Richards and Ranald MacDougall; story by Rita Weiman
1947/USA
Warner Bros.
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Louise: “I love you” is such an inadequate way of saying I love you. It doesn’t quite describe how much it hurts sometimes.[/box]

Whatever you might think of Joan Crawford’s acting style, she sure does make a convincing crazy person.

As the film opens, we see the dazed and disheveled Louise Howell (Crawford) wandering the streets of Los Angeles and calling out for “David” to random strangers.  She soon suffers a complete breakdown into catatonia in a diner and is taken to the hospital.  We are then treated to some psychiatric mumbo jumbo as the doctors try to determine what is wrong with her and who she is. They give her a drug which allows her to talk.

Segue to flashback.  Louise has been having an affair with bachelor engineer David Sutton (Van Heflin).  This is evidently the first big love of Louise’s life and David is unsuccessfully trying to bring the relationship gently to a close over her clinging, pleading, and threats.  Louise is the private nurse to the pathologically jealous and chronically invalid wife of wealthy construction magnate Dean Graham (Raymond Massey).  David approaches Graham and asks him for a job in northern Canada, evidently with the intention of getting as far away from Louise as possible.  He gets the job.

That very night Graham’s wife commits suicide by drowning.  His children have been away at school.  When they arrive home, teenage daughter Carol, who has received letters from her mother accusing Graham and Louise of an affair, blames Louise for her mother’s death.  Louise wants to quit but Graham asks her to stay on and help raise his young son.

Years pass and David visits from Canada.  He continues to spurn Louise’s ceaseless advances.  She tries once again to quit her job.  Instead, Graham asks her to marry him.  Although she tells him she doesn’t love him, she agrees to the match.  But David takes to hanging around and soon is seeing the now 20-year-old Carol.  He feels for her what he never felt for Louise.  And so begins Louise’s further descent into madness.

She begins seeing and hearing things and becomes convinced she assisted Graham’s wife to suicide.  In her desperation, Louise launches a chain of events that eventually lands her in a strange city babbling to strangers.

Joan Crawford is completely over the top but it suits Louise’s bizarre character perfectly.  My main trouble with the movie was that it seemed to be asking for sympathy for her plight and painting the man as the villain of the piece and I just couldn’t buy it.  Instead, Louise comes off as an early stand-in for Glenn Close’s character in Fatal Attraction and I felt sorry for David.  If the plot and star appeal, this is certainly a well-made entry in the small noir/melodrama/woman’s picture genre.

Joan Crawford was nominated for an Oscar as Best Actress for her performance in Possessed.

Trailer