Repeat Performance

I was given a copy of this film on 16mm and watched it with great curiosity for years without really knowing what it was. Why it has not been put onto DVD I don't know, but hope that it will soon. The premise of a woman wishing she had a year to live over again is not new, but is given a poignant treatment here, and is quite believable. Richard Basehart as a poet is really a fine performance, even an heroic one. Top it off, the music is written by George (Ballet Mecanique) Antheil, an idol of mine that I had no idea had scored this film--and it is quite a nice score at that, with a pounding climax that must have had everyone on the edge of their seat.

REPEAT PERFORMANCE (Eagle-Lion Studios, 1947), directed by Alfred L. Werker, became this independent studio's initial attempt on a major motion picture. Taken from a 1941 novel by William O'Farrell, and starring Louis Hayward and Joan Leslie, REPEAT PERFORMANCE has often been compared to an earlier release of IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (RKO Radio, 1946) starring James Stewart and Donna Reed, in a story set on Christmas Eve revolving around a man getting his chance to see how his life would have been had he not been born. For REPEAT PERFORMANCE, set on New Year's Eve, the central character here wants to relive her previous year so to amend any mistakes made resulting to her tragic outcome.

Opening with an off-screen narration (reportedly by John Ireland) who provides viewers what to expect: "The stars look down on New Year's Eve in New York. They say that fate is in the stars, that each of our year is planned ahead and nothing can change destiny. Is this true? How many times have you said, "I wish I can live this year over again?" This is the story of a woman who did relive one year of her life." The story begins minutes before the strike of Midnight for the New Year of 1947. Gun shots are heard and a woman, identified as Sheila Page (Joan Leslie), an actress of the Broadway play, "Say Goodbye," is seen standing in over her victim, Barney (Louis Hayward), her husband and drunken failed playwright, now deceased. With pounding on the door, the frightened Sheila runs out the back way into the crowded street of New Year's celebrators. Entering a crowded restaurant, Sheila comes to the table of her friend, William Williams (Richard Basehart), leaving his guests to be told elsewhere what she had done. As they leave for the apartment of Sheila's friend and producer, John Friday (Tom Conway) for assistance, Sheila makes a wish to herself wanting to relive 1946 all over again. Suddenly, Sheila finds herself transformed back in time, this time knowing what to expect yet hoping to prevent any mistakes leading to her husband's murder. Others in the cast are Virginia Field (Paula Costello, playwright); Natalie Schafer (Eloise Shaw, a socialite); Ilka Gruning (Mattie, the Maid), and Jean Del Val (Tony, the Waiter).

Often classified as a "film noir" with ingredients of murder and flashback, REPEAT PERFORMANCE is a different type of film noir where flashback isn't played for the benefit of its audience but the central character. This style could be labeled "fantasy noir" without the fantasy elements attached to it. This new premise is good enough to hold interest throughout its 93 minutes.

Regardless of Louis Hayward heading the cast, REPEAT PERFORMANCE is Joan Leslie's film from start to finish. Type-cast as girl-next-door types for Warner Brothers Studio (1941-1946), REPEAT PERFORMANCE was the sort of role Leslie needed to prove she could play mature roles with conviction. Though labeled by many to be her finest screen performance up to that time, her subsequent roles, often forgettable, failed to give her this same opportunity again. Interestingly, Leslie got to appear in its 1989 made for television re-title remake of TURN BACK THE CLOCK starring Connie Sellecca, with Leslie having a cameo playing a party guest. Louis Hayward makes due as her boozing playwright husband who falls clutches to another playwright (Virginia Field) of the theater. Tom Conway resumes his droll suave character type he had done for RKO Radio in the "Falcon" mystery series (1942-1946), while Richard Basehart (in movie debut) nearly steals the show as Leslie's closest friend and poet, William Williams. It is his character, who later realizes he's also living 1946 all over again, to be the one to come up with the result whether if destiny can be changed or will the outcome always remain the same?

Though REPEAT PERFORMANCE did have numerous commercial television broadcasts dating back to the 1950s, particularly New York City where it last played in June 1978 on WNEW, Channel 5, the film in itself did have limited cable television showings (Arts and Entertainment) in 1986 before disappearing from view for many years to come. With no known availability on video cassette, thanks to Turner Classic Movies cable for giving REPEAT PERFORMANCE its long overdue revival (TCM premiere: December 28, 2019) on its weekly series, "Noir Alley" as hosted by Eddie Muller with his very interesting insights on the movie and actors before and after the movie, with hope with future revivals or repeat performances to make this a better known product from the "film noir" genre. (***)

This one is a real sleeper from Eagle-Lion. If you get a chance to see this on TCM or on Amazon please see Repeat Performance by all means. It's a melodramatic fantasy about a Broadway actress who is given a chance to live the last year of her life all over to see if she can avoid the terrible way she ended the year.

What Joan Leslie did is no less than shoot her husband, playwright Louis Hayward on New Year's Eve. But while running to tell her friend and producer Tom Conway of the tragedy when she opens the door she realizes quickly enough that it is last New Year's Eve, but she knows how the year is to end. Or does she? Can she avoid the oncoming tragedy of her killing her spouse?

Louis Hayward is someone whose work is worthy of a second look that he's not likely to get. He freelanced and didn't have the benefit of a major studio building him up as they did for Tyrone Power and Errol Flynn for example. But Hayward got to play a variety of parts that their studios would never let Power or Flynn play. Hayward did the swashbucklers as well as Power or Flynn, but did considerably more. He's wonderful as the dissolute husband of Leslie.

Richard Basehart made his screen debut here as the friend and confidante of Joan Leslie. Had this been made today Basehart's character would be most definitely gay. He's a poet and he acquires a patroness in rich Natalie Schaefer.

It certainly isn't Schaefer's fault, how could she know that she would wind up playing THE millionaire wife 20 years later taking a cruise on the SS Minow. But seeing her I wonder if this was how she was spending Thurston Howell's money. She's different here than the rich patroness of the castaways.

Virginia Field plays another playwright who starts paying attention to Louis Hayward and puts the Hayward/Leslie marriage on the rocks. This role is the typical Gail Patrick/Helen Vinson part of the other woman and Field plays it with gusto.

Repeat Performance is a great sleeper of a film and absolutely catch this one if broadcast.

Repeat Performance needs urgent rescuing from the black hole it has somehow fallen into. A superior Poverty Row production from Eagle-Lion Studios, it's imaginatively scripted, played with gusto and never less than fascinating – a curio, film noir in a sci-fi time loop.

On New Year's Eve, 1947, Joan Leslie shoots and kills her husband, Louis Hayward. She wishes she hadn't, and her wish comes true – suddenly she's back in New Year's Eve, 1946. This proves to be no mere shuffling around of the narrative; she's been given the year to live over again in hopes of a happier ending. But of course the gimmick serves as a flashback, too, retracing the sequence of events that led (or will lead?) up to the shooting.

The title also drops a clue about the picture's fang-and-claw milieu, New York's theater world. Leslie's a star on the Rialto, having come to prominence in one of her husband's plays. He turned out to be a one-shot wonder, however, resorting to the bottle in resentment of his failure and his wife's success (there are parallels to A Star Is Born and to All About Eve). Other characters in this backstage story include Leslie's producer, Tom Conway; Virginia Field, as a haughty English playwright; Richard Basehart (looking, in his debut, like a young Harrison Ford), as an unhappy poet but loyal friend; and Natalie Schafer, as a viperish patroness of the arts.

When Leslie suddenly finds herself in last year's gown, she tries to renegotiate her way through the year, this time in possession of an advance copy of the script, gingerly avoiding its fatal pitfalls. She comes to learn (as do we all) that destiny writes in cement. Luckily for her, it hasn't quite hardened.

On the first New Year's Eve, Howard's resolution not to drink doesn't even make it to midnight; he turns sullen and abusive. A spring sojourn to sunny California, while shopping for a new vehicle for Leslie, doesn't improve his moods. Her next prospect comes from the pen of Field, and Howard browbeats her into accepting it; he, meanwhile, takes up with its author. Basehart finds himself in the clutches of Schafer, who ends up having him committed to an asylum, while Howard suffers a drunken fall that paralyzes him. As the year winds to its close, Leslie desperately tries to extricate herself from what she knows is to come....

Despite being an unlikely hodge-podge of noirish, soapish and paranormal elements, the movie never seems stretched or thrown together. The less than luminous cast rises to the occasion, with each member allotted a place in the spotlight. Accept the flaw in the warp or weft of the fabric of time, and Repeat Performance zips along smoothly and convincingly. It's buried treasure – proof, albeit obscure, that rough magic could sometimes occur even on the outer fringes of the movie industry.

Interesting noir that issues from an imaginative premise-- suppose we had a year that we could live all over again. So who wouldn't want that opportunity. Naturally, we could change our own actions to better optimize outcomes, but what about others-- would their actions have to change too.

The premise may even require the entire world to live that same year over so as to fit into the changes that ripple out from our own changes. Conceptual questions aside, the premise is simplified here into a rather clever soap-operish plot— namely, can sympathetic Sheila (Leslie) avoid killing her louse husband (Hayward) a second time around. That is, can she maybe just ignore his many provocations, given a second chance.

Instead of playing up occult aspects, the screenplay concentrates on revolving relationships among sophisticated show-business types. It's a good cast, especially an agreeably addled Richard Basehart. However, I'm not sure the sweetly gentle Leslie has the gravitas for a difficult role, especially for the wronged woman part. Still, she certainly wins our sympathy. Director Werker films in noirish style lending the visuals a suitably twilight quality. The ending too is appropriate, without obvious cheating on the premise.

The movie seems more obscure than deserved and I'm not sure why. It certainly made an impression on me on first viewing many years ago. I suspect the obscurity is because of a B- movie cast-- no matter how accomplished—and a non-studio pedigree. But whatever the reason, the film remains a thought provoking 90-minutes even this many years after.