Whispering City

This is a very good Canadian film. On the face of it, one would expect a strictly routine lady reporter investigating some unusual doings, but it's much more than that. I won't spoil the intricate plot, but it does take concentration to follow. Paul Lukas is, of course, his usual magnificent self The camera work is especially good and the backdrop of a city that most Americans didn't see very much of on the screen is quite good. The classical tone set by Helmut Dantine's character's composition, The Quebec Concerto, is very impressive.

One realizes who the villain is from his first appearance and yet the movie achieves not quite Hitchcockian suspense by the end. This is indeed an unjustly overlooked film.

Whispering City's locale is Quebec City, that odd European fortress set high over the St. Lawrence River; it comes to Gallic life more fully here than in Alfred Hitchcock's I Confess, made a few years later.

The death in an auto accident of a long-retired actress spurs crime reporter Mary Anderson to work up a feature story; the woman was sent to a sanitarium years before for insisting that her fiance's death was actually murder. Pursuing a lead, Anderson interviews a prosperous benefactor of the arts (Paul Lukas), who seems curiously bothered by the visit. Currently, Lukas serves as the patron of an impoverished young pianist/composer (Helmut Dantine; the two actors both appeared in Watch on the Rhine). Dantine is working on something called The Quebec Concerto; an oddly scored work, its orchestra features a Sousaphone rearing its brassy bell.

An overcomplicated but still compelling plot involves Dantine's disturbed shrew of a wife, who's dependent on injections to make her sleep; the discovery of her suicide, which is made to look like murder (well, it seemed to work once); a blackmail scheme to engineer another murder; and a faked death made to look like yet another murder. (Eagle-Lion was not known for the elegant simplicity of its plots.)

Oddly, it all works, if a bit creakily. Mary Anderson suggests two-thirds Teresa Wright and a third Bonita Granville; the latter impression no doubt derives from her sleuthing around in a jaunty tam, like Nancy Drew. She has the distinction (as does the director, the short-lived Fedor Ozep, as he's credited here) of helping to make the best Nancy Drew mystery ever released. That's faint praise, but praise nonetheless.

This unusual Quebec production from 1947 presents good acting in a thriller context, but unfortunately goes overboard in the final reels with unbelievable, even silly plot twists designed to keep the pot boiling. That turns a serious effort at an alternative to the dominant Hollywood films into just a B-movie curio.

Mary Anderson, who was featured notably in Hitchcock's ensemble cast thriller "Lifeboat" is strong as the female lead. She's a crime reporter for the Quebec newspaper who digs her teeth into a cold case that ultimately gets her into trouble with the murderer, still on the scene, who got away with that old crime.

She gets romantically involved with a pianist/symphony composer, nicely underplayed by Helmut Dantine and has an adversary, a powerful lawyer played by Paul Lukas. Supporting cast is weak, except for Joy Lafleur, flamboyant as Dantine's ailing wife.

Anderson's serious pursuit of the crime story is well developed, but as the villain manipulates events, the screenplay becomes strained and leads to a ridiculous climax scene. Some serious rewriting could hae saved this movie.

The early parts of this movie were terribly confusing to me. True, the print I saw was terrible. It looked like 8 millimeter. However, I hung in because of its interesting cast and indeed, it picks up: Mary Anderson was a very appealing actress. Too bad she never became a star. Helmut Dantine was very handsome and his acting is very good, too. And of course, top-billed, we have Paul Lukas. Only four years after his Osacr-winning performance in "Watch on the Rhine," here he is at Eagle-Lion. Talk about the curse of the statue! From its introduction, the music is exceptionally good. The Dantine character is a composer. He has written a piano concerto, which we hear in pieces and then in performance. (Not all of it is performed but it looks like a real orchestra really playing it.) I can't think of a better piece written for a movie except the Korngold cello concerto for the deliriously wonderful "Deception." I love that movie and I love his music. That piece, stripped of the name of Claude Rains's composer, Alexander Hollenius, is now performed and often recorded by major orchestras, as the Korngold Cello Concerto.

Once this movie finds its footing, it's very intriguing. But till then, it's really pretty bad.

Just as it was in Alfred Hitchcock's I Confess the old world look and charm of Quebec City in French Canada is a major reason to see Whispering City. One only wishes that it were done in color for preservation. especially for the key scenes in Montmorency Falls.

This was a joint project of the cross the pond shortlived Eagle-Lion studios to boost the Canadian film industry. Helmut Dantine, Paul Lukas, and Mary Anderson came from the USA to star.

Dantine is a classical composer with a shrewish wife who gets herself killed and reporter Mary Anderson looks a bit too hard at rich patron Paul Lukas. He wants Anderson to be killed and like Robert Walker blackmailing Farley Granger in Stranger On A Train, Lukas blackmails Dantine.

That's a rough idea, it's a bit more complicated than that. The great Hitchcock never overplotted his films as this tends to be.

Still it's good, just not Hitchcockian great.