Grund zur Aufregung

"Cause for Alarm" isn't a great film but it captures the noir cinematic scene of the postwar period fairly well. Loretta Young's frenetic pursuit through hot suburban California streets to retrieve a dangerous missive is well done. Is anyone really convincing in a story of a WWII pilot working in the insurance industry and detouring into paranoia while stricken with a cardiac condition? Nah, probably not. But the movie is a nice visit back to the fifties.

Early in the film Loretta Young walks out to her driveway and encounters - a celluloid ME. Attired in the exact same garb I wore in '51, a black cowboy outfit with two six(cap)-guns and riding a trusty trike, a not particularly adept child actor passes himself off as the one-and-only Hopalong Cassidy (as we grew older he became "Hopalong Catastrophe" but in the early fifties he was our unsullied hero). This kid even has the same toy I remember treasuring.

All that nostalgia aside, this short film is diverting albeit not the finest example of noir cinema. Loretta Young was as beautiful as she was talented. Barry Sullivan is appropriately nuts and most of the rest of the cast give dependable color to their roles.

This film definitely belongs in any noir retrospective.

There are several things wrong with Cause for Alarm, all of which contribute to a less than satisfying experience. Loretta Young is, to put bluntly, completely unconvincing as the wife of Barry Sullivan. Her attempts at portraying panic and something approaching a nervous breakdown just make her seem weak minded and vague. This is a role that would have suited a noir queen like Ida Lupino who can sustain a level of acting and intensity entirely suitable to this kind of plot. Sullivan, by contrast, gives his usual excellent performance - as far as it can extend given the inadequate script.

Another problem with this film is the storyline. Sullivan's descent into paranoia is too abrupt, too blunt to be really convincing or effective. During the flashback there are hints of a darkness in his soul and a cruelty, one which his future wife Eleen is entirely unaware of. Suddenly we are asked to attribute his mania to an overdose of heart medicine. This inconsistency is illogical, detracting from the menace established by his character in the early scenes.

On the plus side, a noir set in and around the home (and especially the home that isn't that of a policeman, as in say The Big Heat) is a good idea, with a lot of potential. The kitchen or the living room can be just as dangerous and claustrophobic as the mean streets outside. It's a shame that the Jones' home is not made more of as a source of menace. Sullivan's suspicions initially seem promising but he dies too quickly and make his accusations to easily to really satisfy.

The standouts in the cast is Irving Bacon as the pedantic postman. His beautifully fussy performance, a finely honed affair of self importance and wariness, almost make the rest worth sitting through... In short Cause for Alarm is no real cause for celebration. A shame, especially as Garnett also directed the classic The Postman Always Rings Twice.

The film deals with a husband who believes his wife with the help of his doctor are trying to kill him. The wife was a nurse at a veterans hospital where they met and fell in love. The doctor was an old friend of the husband. The husband is so convinced of their plot that he writes a letter to the District Attorney stating all the facts and evidence pointing to the murder plot. The wife not knowing the contents of the letter gladly mails it for her husband who is confined to a bed. The entire story deals with her trying to recover the letter which implicates her and the doctor in the husband's death. This film moves at a good pace and most likely is one of those overlooked films because it lacks the flash and glaze of a big Hollywood film. Great little film that accomplishes what it intended. Lastly, you begin to feel sorry for the wife.

In addition to a really good performance from Loretta Young as the increasingly desperate Ellen Jones, I give great credit to director Tay Garnett for the very effective build-up of suspense, which shifts gears partway through the movie but doesn't miss a beat in doing so. As Ellen, Young is playing a woman trying to nurse her gravely ill husband back to health. Unfortunately, George Jones' poor health has led him to become increasingly paranoid, and he's come to the conclusion that Ellen and his doctor are in love and trying to murder him. Ellen tries her best to "put on a happy face" as she deals with her increasingly difficult spouse, and then discovers that a letter she mailed for him was actually directed to the District Attorney, and accused her and the doctor of planning his murder. (As an added complication, George actually dies after the letter is sent.) The movie then shifts from George's paranoia to Ellen's desperation, as, after George dies, she frantically tries to get the letter back before it reaches the DA, but with every more desperate attempt to get the letter she seems to set herself up as more guilty. Where and how will this end?

It's a very well done movie, with a lot of little things that gave it a feel of authenticity: the nosy neighbours, and the neighbourhood kid who pretends to be Hopalong Cassidy showing up at Ellen's house looking for cookies. The opening scenes, explaining how George and Ellen met and their mutual relationship with Dr. Graham, went on perhaps a bit too long. Then, at the end, there is an expected twist (because you always expect a surprise twist in a movie like this) but the expected twist wasn't the twist I was expecting, and it provided a somewhat humorous (and perhaps, therefore, slightly out of place) ending to an overall very enjoyable film.

Loretta Young was 38 when she made "Cause for Alarm" and the actress, who started in silent films, was a couple of years away from beginning her highly successful television series. Because Hollywood back in the golden era didn't have much use for actresses over 30, and no use for actresses over 35, Young, like many of her counterparts, had descended into B films by the time the '50s hit. This is one. Her costar is Barry Sullivan, who plays her bedridden husband. Ill with a heart condition, the troubled man has given into his paranoid instincts and become convinced that his best friend, a doctor, and Young, who was once his nurse, are trying to kill him. He writes a letter to the district attorney and gives it to his wife to mail. When he later tells her what's in the letter, she spends the rest of the film trying to get it back. Irving Bacon is quite funny and irritating as the talkative, whiny postman.

The beautiful Young is over her head in this drama - she's totally hysterical and the character as essayed by her can't keep control over her panic for two seconds. It's an annoying performance rather than being a sympathetic one. You just want her to calm down. Loretta Young's greatest asset during her career was her great beauty, fashion sense, and the gentle, lovely quality she brought to many roles, such as in "The Bishop's Wife." Playing a frantic, middle class housewife just wasn't her thing.

Sullivan's role is not well drawn; the story had more potential than was able to be explored even in the hands of a fine director like Tay Garnett. All in all, pretty routine.