The Seventh Victim.

Review #2431: The Seventh Victim.

Cast: 

Tom Conway (Doctor Louis Judd), Jean Brooks (Jacqueline Gibson), Isabel Jewell (Frances Fallon), Kim Hunter (Mary Gibson), Evelyn Brent (Natalie Cortez), Erford Gage (Jason Hoag), Ben Bard (Mr. Brun), Hugh Beaumont (Gregory Ward), Chef Milani (Mr. Jacob), and Marguerita Sylva (Mrs. Bella Romari) Directed by Mark Robson (#1797 - Home of the Brave and #1931 - Valley of the Dolls)

Review: 

"It had a rather sinister quality, of something intangible but horribly real; it had an atmosphere. I think the actors and the director had to believe very strongly in the possibilities of disaster: that something was there. We believed it ourselves. We talked ourselves into believing it. We had a kind of fidelity to that feeling. We had the characters speak throughout in a deliberately quiet, polite and subdued manner, engendering a very calculated undercurrent of possible disaster."

This was the fourth of nine movies produced by Val Lewton in what you might call his horror cycle, all for RKO. The movie was written by Charles O'Neal and DeWitt Bodeen. The movie was to be directed by Jacques Tourneur, but he had other plans that saw the promotion of Mark Robson to direct. The Montreal native had actually studied at UCLA and Pacific Coast University School of Law but found his first work in film with the prop department at 20th Century Fox. But he did not settle there, later going to RKO Pictures that saw him start training in film editing. It was here that Robson served as an assistant to Robert Wise on the editing of Citizen Kane (1941), among other things. He then became a main editor for RKO that saw him work on, well, the Lewton features you probably would guess with Cat People (it was Robson who accidentally came up with that one particular sequence involving a bus) and so on. Robson would direct a handful of movies for RKO (which included four for Lewton) before going to various studios for a career that ultimately spanned over three decades. You can probably guess that this movie had a few phases before becoming what you see today: for one, there was initially a pitch involving a murder plot in oil wells before Lewton's supervision saw it go to, well, a cult in the Village, with Bodeen claiming to have based it on a real thing he saw in New York (the movie title refers to Jacqueline, as she is the seventh person condemned for betrayal in the history of the cult-although the cult does not go around killing people, they goad them instead). This was the third of four Lewton-connected movies released in 1943 (with this being released in August), with the others being I Walked with a Zombie (April), The Leopard Man (May), and The Ghost Ship (December). The movie was a flop with audiences at the time, with one cinema worker joking that they must've been the eighth victim. Of course, time has treated it differently (according to Robson, he was asked about the movie by the Boulting brothers who used to bicycle around London a print of the film, which was thought to be "an advanced, weird form of film-making").

I really wished I liked the movie more. But if you are into movies that might tangentially remind you of the dread found in later movies involving cults in one's wake such as, well, Rosemary's Baby (1968), this may be up your alley. The movie was shot in the course of 24 days, but the editing process (as overseen by Robson and John Lockert) was probably more crucial to, well, how things play out. A handful of scenes were cut from the film that relate to certain events in the film and the ending itself was trimmed to basically just end right after one certain sound is heard. It is a slow web to untangle for 71 minutes that probably is akin to actual life in not exactly going the way you think it will unfold for some sort of eerie feeling. That or basically one is watching a noir more than a straight horror film, but I suppose your taste (or patience) may vary. People come and go in the movie, since Hunter (in her film debut) probably is in the movie more than Brooks, although each do pretty well with what the movie shades out in wayward people looking for the way back (okay one is looking to die, but at least she knows where everybody goes anyway). The movie only really seems to gel into fascination in its latter half for me, mostly because it actually stops introducing people and shows what I guess is something about cults that claim to be big on the Devil (notice how they aren't actually stopped at the end, you just see some folks recite the Lord's Prayer at them - good thing they weren't doing anything like killing goats or evading their taxes, oooh!). I guess what I want to say is that it only vaguely holds my fascination because it has that same problem that I ended up having with Rosemary's Baby: get to the damn point, although at least you could almost watch this movie (71 minutes) twice in the time it takes to finish Rosemary. I want to feel like there is more of a looming threat than just a bunch of folks playing house because heaven forbid they go to a church or a bar to find "worship". At least the ending does do one thing right: it simply just ends, because even a thud works for effect. As a whole, it follows along the line of the prior Lewton-connected movies in fine quality with eye-catching titles and interesting imagination with the eerie things that come to lurk in everyday life, whether that involves loneliness or cults or the unknown.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Underworld (1927).

Review #1325: Underworld.

Cast: 
Clive Brook ("Rolls Royce" Wensel), George Bancroft ("Bull" Weed), Evelyn Brent ("Feathers" McCoy), Fred Kohler ("Buck" Mulligan), Helen Lynch (Meg), Larry Semon ("Slippy" Lewis), and Jerry Mandy (Paloma) Directed by Josef von Sternberg.

Review: 
"Shadow is mystery and light is clarity. Shadow conceals--light reveals. To know what to reveal and what to conceal and in what degrees to do this is all there is to art."

Sometimes you just need a crime film to wind you up for entertainment. This was the film that helped to serve as a template for gangster films to develop that would come along in the next decade, while also helping to deliver its director and writer to further projects over the next several years. It should only make sense to cover a film from Josef von Sternberg, who forged a career in the latter parts of the silent era with his directorial efforts that were characterized by his expressive camera work. He had gotten his start in film in 1919, working with silent directors such as Roy William Neill and Emile Chautard, with his first film credit being for The Mystery of the Yellow Room as assistant director. He had his debut as director in 1925 with The Salvation Hunters, which he also wrote and co-produced. It subsquently recieved a private viewing at the home of Charlie Chaplin, which led to being tasked to direct a film starring Edna Purviance named A Woman of the Sea (1926). A preview screening did not fare well with Chaplin, who decided to not release the film, which later had its negatives burned seven years later in order to note it as a loss for tax reasons, although production stills survive. He had signed by Metro Goldwyn Meyer, but he left the studio after troubles on both The Exquisite Sinner (soon re-shot by Phil Rosen) and The Masked Bride over his vision. He was hired in 1927 by Paramount Pictures "technical advisor for lighting and photography". He was tasked to reshoot scenes and recut footage for Frank Lloyd's Children of Divorce (1927) when executives determined the film was not releasable in its current state. The success of his revision led to him being tapped to direct this film.

One can see various gangster tropes fairly quickly into the film, namely with its maverick criminal lead, a messy love triangle, memorable nicknames, and of course a shootout for the climax (really half of these could be culled for a Western). It all ends up to make a breezy 80 minute experience. Style is a thing that can fit for any decade, and this is one is certainly bold enough to keep up with such demands from its director. The cast do well with the material, such as Brook, who

certainly has the eyes to sell a down-and-out drunk without needing to swagger in hysterics. Bancroft certainly seems bold enough to play an eccentric heavy, devoted to his work, loyalty, and women that provokes attention whenever on screen. Brent plays out the main triangle fairly carefully. The rest of the cast fill out quite well, and the film is relatively engaging without complicating itself in too much detail. It captivates the curiosity in ways that would play itself out further for future films when it came to a focus on criminals and what made them tick, for which von Sternberg does with bold confidence.

The writing for the film was done by journalist and playwright Ben Hecht, who earned an Academy Award for Best Original Story (awarded until 1957) at the very first Academy Award ceremony in 1929 (the award window would not be tightened up to honor just the preceding year until the 1935 ceremony). Hecht became one of Hollywood's go-to people for screenplays, while von Sternberg found success with various studios before his last film in Jet Pilot (1957). He had his conflicts with studio executives over the years when it came to trying to compromise his artistic vision, but he managed to pull off a noted career with the style that came through on screen, with this film being a key piece of his legacy of shining entertainment.

Next Time: The Jazz Singer.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.