Last night's movie was "So Long at the Fair"(1950), a period piece mystery set in 1889 at the Paris Expo. Jean Simmons stars as "Victoria Barton", a young Englishwoman traveling to Paris with her brother "Johnny" (David Tomlinson). They're excited to be staying in a hotel facing the newly completed Eiffel Tower, and they plan to take in the Expo in all it's modernistic glory.
After arriving, Johnny helps Victoria get settled in her room, then turns in for the night himself in the room across the hall. The next morning, she can't find him, and is told by the manager that she must be mistaken. "You checked in by yourself, madame". Ahh, the old Gaslight Game. Victoria isn't falling for it, however. She sticks to her guns and accosts other hotel employees to demand they reveal the whereabouts of Johnny. When that doesn't work, but she goes to the Paris police chief to demand action, and finally to the consulate's office to talk to the British ambassador, all to no avail.
These officials are of no help because they believe the story of the hoteliers, which is that Victoria checked in alone, and therefore must be delusional or suffering from exhaustion.
Victoria later recalls a man she met in the lobby, right after she and Johnny checked in. "George Hathaway" (Dirk Bogarde) is a fellow Englishman, also on holiday at the fair, who is squiring two ladies (a mother and daughter) around the city. In the lobby that first night, he stopped Johnny to ask for change for a large bill. Victoria's got to find him. Hopefully he's still at the hotel. If he is, he can vouch for Johnny's presence. Since we began watching British films, we've seen a lot of Dirk Bogarde and I've become a big fan. Part of the reason is that he keeps you guessing. In many of his roles, he uses his looks and considerable charm as a wall to hide behind. With early Bogarde, you often see him playing a cad or a bad guy, so you have to give him a length of rope before you trust him, but in this film he does turn out to be a good guy, and as the plot progresses, he inserts himself into the mystery of Johnny's disappearance and goes to great lengths to help solve it for Victoria. He discovers that the number on Johnny's room was switched during the night he and Victoria checked in, and that another room next to it has been walled off.
But why? Are the French hoteliers running some kind of extortion or kidnapping ring? And if so, why has there been no ransom demands? Or could robbery be the motive, stripping a foreign guest of his cash and jewels, then killing and "disappearing" him, and claiming he never existed? This makes no sense either. While Johnny and Victoria arrived well dressed, neither wore expensive jewelry. They didn't bring much baggage and both are far from wealthy. It's a perplexing situation, and I'm going to leave it to you to discover the rest of the details.
"So Long at the Fair" was produced by a mid-century British studio called Gainsborough Pictures, and like the paintings by it's namesake artist Thomas Gainsborough ("Blue Boy"), it's movies featured lush production values. The photography is gauzy, the sets elaborate, and the bearing of lead actors Bogarde and Simmons is mannered and genteel (even when Victoria is demanding to see Johnny). Their shared screen presence is a thing to behold; she was just 21 at the time, he 29. Try to find two actors of this caliber and class at such a young age now, and good luck to you.
I loved "So Long at the Fair". On top of a vexing mystery, you get taken away to another place and time. Two Big Thumbs Up and a strong recommendation. The print is razor sharp. /////
The night before, I watched "The Haunted Strangler"(1958) starring Boris Karloff. About halfway through I realized I'd already seen it, which also means I may have previously written a review. If so, please forgive the repeat. Boris plays "James Rankin", a novelist investigating the case of the Haymarket Strangler in Victorian England. A man named Edward Styles has just been executed for the crimes. Rankin thinks they strung up the wrong guy and sets out to prove it, working alongside a police superintendent named "Burk" (Anthony Dawson).
They come to the conclusion that, if Styles was innocent, then there must be someone else closely connected to the murders who is the actual killer. Noting that in addition to being strangled, several of the victims also have stab wounds, Boris and Burk measure these and determine they were made by a very sharp instrument. Hmmmm.......well, the only other person connected to all five bodies is the medical examiner, a physician named Tennant. He performed the autopsies on each of the murder victims. They try and fail to locate him. Boris then begins a search for his scalpel. Surely it could have bloodstains or other telltale signs of being the murder weapon. But where would this instrument be found?
Boris thinks Tennant might've buried it with his last victim, so he takes it upon himself to make an exhumation of the grave, and.......(drum roll please).......it turns out he was right. There is a scalpel in the coffin, on top of the body.
This is where the movie changes tone, from mystery to revelation. I'm gonna give you a major spoiler, so read no further if you don't wanna know, but it's okay to reveal it in my opinion because it begins the true plot of the movie. What happens is that Boris picks up the scalpel and is transformed. We watch as his arm atrophies, his face contorts into a palsied snarl, his eyes narrow and he goes insane.
Suddenly we realize : oh my goodness! It is he! Boris himself is the Haymarket Strangler! He's Dr. Tennant! Why didn't he know this? Because his wife didn't want him to know. She hid him away in an asylum for many years after his first murder, for which he was found not guilty by reason of insanity. His brain was washed in the nuthouse, he was given a name change from Tennant to Rankin, and he had no awareness of his other, crazy self. After he was rehabilitated and released, he decided to become a writer, encouraged by his wife, who is still holding on to the secret.
This is some weird, sinister stuff. Once Boris realizes he's Dr. Tennant and therefore the Haymarket Strangler, he feels guilt that an innocent man - Edward Styles - was hanged for his crimes. The trouble is that he can't get anyone to believe him. He tries telling the police he's Dr. Tennant, and that Styles was not the killer, but they just scoff. "Mr. Styles was found guilty by a jury of his peers". He then tells his own doctor. "Please, you've got to believe me! I'm Tennant, and I'll kill again on the next full moon"! In this respect, the story is similar to that of "The Wolfman" (written by our Reseda pal Curt Siodmak), wherein Lon Chaney Jr. pleads with authorities to lock him up before he goes all lupine on them during the next full moon.
As with our first movie, I'll leave the remainder of the plot for you to discover on your own. As noted, this was my second viewing of "The Haunted Strangler" and by now I consider it a minor classic and one of the best performances of Boris Karloff's career. Just the way he twists his face up to "become" Dr. Tennant is impressive, in that no makeup appears to be used. Also noteworthy is that the movie has been restored by Criterion. That alone gives an indication of it's merit, and you know the print is razor sharp.
Two Big Thumbs Up. A must-watch this Halloween season. ////
Finally, I have a third film, "The File on Thelma Jordon"(1950), a classic Hollywood noir starring Northridge's own Barbara Stanwyck. In addition to being a great overall actress, she was one of the queens of film noir ("Double Indemnity", "The Strange Love of Martha Ivers", et al), and though I'd never seen her in "Thelma Jordon", I didn't know a print was available until the other night. It's the kind of big budget movie you wouldn't expect to be available on Youtube, but there it was in my recommendations, directed by Robert Siodmak no less, which makes it a Northridge and Reseda Trip this time around.
At 99 minutes long, it's an extended watch by our current standards. Isn't it funny how, in the Old Days, i.e. before Covid and movies on Youtube,, a one hour and forty minute movie would have been considered standard length, or even a Shortino compared to some of the 2 1/2 to 3 hour epics that were (and still are) regularly released?
At any rate, a synopsis is in order. One night, Stanwyck, playing "Thelma Jordon", walks into the office of a big city district attorney to report a series of burglaries at the home of her rich Aunt. The DA has gone home but his assistant Wendell Corey is still there, getting drunk at the prospect of spending another night with his wife, with whom he's rapidly becoming estranged. After Babs lays out the details of her complaint, Corey asks her out for a drink. At first she declines, then accepts to humor him, and she appears to be a straightforward woman, self-assured and wanting her case to proceed. But for some reason she continues to see Wendell Corey. He's got a weak willed charm that appeals to her, and she falls for him, even though he's always on the verge of falling down drunk. For the first 40 minutes, the movie focuses on their romance. You're kind of wondering, "where's the noir"? Stanwyck knows Corey is unhappily married, but you're wondering what the rub is, and in that respect the plot is slow to develop. But when it does, it goes dark in a hurry.
Barbara turns out to be married also, to a lowlife hustler named "Tony Laredo" (Richard Rober). She gives Corey a B.S. story about barely knowing him. "He conned me into it", she says of their marriage. "I was vulnerable at the time".
It's a lie. Even though she has real feelings by now for the drunken assistant DA, we discover that her relationship with him was planned in advance by Laredo, to set up an alibi in the robbery of her Aunt, who has a safe filled with emeralds. The script also mentions a lifetime annuity that gets lost in the dialogue. This is another of those screenplays in which some of the details are driven right past the viewer, who is paying attention to the chemistry of the actors in a given scene, while too much dialogue is being recited. That's why you miss details in some plots, when the conversation is not properly slowed down.
Don't get me wrong because this is a hell of a noir and as hard-boiled as they come, once the plot gets rolling. It's just that, in my opinion, way too much time is given to developing the romance between Stanwyck and Corey. It takes up nearly half the movie. so by the time the crime plot kicks in, you're playing catch-up. You find yourself concentrating on their relationship, because you don't yet know about Barbara's double dealing, and you have to rewind because you wonder "What did she say about her Aunt in the previous scene (or three scenes ago)? I forgot, because I was enthralled by the romance".
This is where the fine points of direction and screenplay mesh, where dialogue must either be cut down or slowed down so that the audience remains fully involved. I'd love to start a film school based on the idea of Audience Concentration on the story, where Style doesn't have to take a back seat, but where lines of dialogue can never be allowed to pass by unnoticed, because of an actors' too rapid enunciation or a director's focus on production values or the need to move on to the next scene.
Story is everything, and storytelling is the method that gets you there. I mention all of this in my review of "The File on Thelma Jordon" because, while in the long run it's an above average picture which turns out to have the darkest finish of a big budget film noir that I can remember, it also had the potential to become an all time classic. Far be it from me to cast an eye at Robert Siodmak, but dragging out the romance between Barbara Stanwyck and Wendell Corey led to a confusion of plot.
Still and all, the finish is so bereft of hope - and therefore a bleak noir in the truest sense - that I have to give the movie Two Big Thumbs Up for having the courage to see the story through, with no showbiz shine. My complaints are due to flaws in the formatting of the film, which could have been sequenced much better, or intercut.
Nevertheless, Two Big Thumbs Up for "The File on Thelma Jordon". Like our other movies in this blog, the print is razor sharp. It's a noir that's one notch short of being an All Time Classic, which isn't too shabby, and is highly recommended despite the complaints. ////
That's all for tonight. Hope you had a great day. See you in the morning and I send you Tons of Love as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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