Noche en el alma

Beautifully mounted recreation of 19th century New York, which is not surprising since this was RKO's golden age of set design and art direction. Those wall encased aquariums that line the main hall are shrewdly suggestive that anything might happen in such an exotic old mansion. Note too, the constant presence of snow on the sidewalks, a realistic and atmospheric touch unusual because of the expense.

The opening scenes foreshadow dangers to come-- the locomotive plowing through flooded tracks, the odd "birdlike" passenger who intrudes with her strange story. All of this had me thinking the movie would be special. Indeed, the first half is intriguing as the doctor (Brent) delves further into the mysterious death of the birdlike woman. However, the second half flattens out into a rather static drawingroom drama that fails to generate the kind of edge-of-the-seat climax that's needed.

George Brent was never a charismatic leading man, bland at best. Here, however, he blends right in as the stolidly responsible doctor who can be believed. The trouble is that the script follows him around for almost the entire time, and since he's seldom privy to events with the boy, we don't get much sense of the menace surrounding the boy that should drive the suspense, but doesn't. La Marr, of course, looks exquisite as the script requires; nonetheless, her skills as a besieged wife are considerably less than those of Ingrid Bergmann in the remarkably similar Gaslight (1944). Then too, Paul Lukas lacks the kind of conniving charm that the part calls for, making the showdown less a revelation of his true character, than a simple extension.

On the other hand, the movie has the great Albert Decker as a maverick sculptor who breathes real life into the proceedings, along with a terrific explosion and fire that's a real grabber. However, I'm still puzzling over that awkward epilogue involving the cop at movie's end. Was that to satisfy Code requirements that nothing gets past the police since there is an element of deception that would otherwise be left hanging. Anyway, whatever the movie's shortcomings, it remains unerringly pictorial throughout, a tribute to the artistic eye of director Jacques Tourneur and the RKO art department.

Atmospheric account of a chance meeting on a train that leads a doctor (George Brent) into the strange world of a young woman (Hedy Lamar) and her much older husband (Paul Lukas) . The opening takes place on a night time train ride to New York through cascading rainfall, and the inclement weather conditions continue on into a snowy and cloudy New York of the early 1900's. A story of a rich and jealous older husband with a lovely young wife, whom he had groomed in Parisian salons to enter society, and now feels insecure when she's enjoying the very society that he paid thousands of dollars to educate her to be in, who grew up in Austria and became laden with guilt and who now is so damaged that he can't see clearly enough to recognize his own good circumstances, and thus ruins everything. Director Jacques Tourneur dissects this pathological family (they have a son whom they keep in a bedroom which is up a spiral staircase) with great attention, creating some believable menace in true psychological suspense style. The need for a hero figure (Brent) to rescue the pretty Lamar and her innocent young son and provide a suitable conclusion, and Lamar's rather distracted and distant acting style are legitimate quibbles, but the overall tone is intelligently dark and serious.

Jacques Tourneur directed this RKO historical melodrama that has a good cast, excellent director, and atmospheric cinematography by Tony Gaudio, so the money spent definitely shows on the screen. So what's wrong? The wordy, tortuously slow script that is all talk and no action and tries to echo "Gaslight".

When there's finally a confrontation between the good and bad guys, they yap forever before there's any action. Director Tourneur and his cast do their utmost, but they just can't redeem the script. They do make the film watchable and intermittently fascinating. In the end, Gaudio's cinematography and the performances are better than the script deserves.

It is an interesting factoid that Cary Grant and Gregory Peck were both scheduled to play George Brent's role but both dropped out. It might have been a better film had one of them been in it.

Jack Tourneur knew how to build an ominous atmosphere :remember the scenes at the pool in "cat people",the meeting on the moor in "circle of danger" and almost everything in " night of the demon".

The meeting with the old Clarissa on the train,the station where she leaves the hero ,and the way she says goodbye (actually farewell) is almost supernatural.Then the extraordinary beauty of Hedy Lamarr and her picture add to build an eerie atmosphere ,sometimes recalling as user has pointed out ,"gaslight" .

The script,however ,does not always make sense ,and lacks focus ,unlike the three other works I mention.But just for the atmosphere ,this is another Tourneur you should not miss.

George Brent while traveling on a train back to New York meets nice but frightened spinster lady Olive Blakeney and they strike up an acquaintance. He accepts her invitation to visit her posh home in Manhattan and then finds that she's died rather suddenly. That's enough to intrigue Brent, but when he meets the family head Paul Lukas and his beautiful wife Hedy Lamarr that's more than enough to keep him interested in the Bederaux Family.

Hedy Lamarr was now away from the really big studios and on a downward slide in her career that was interrupted somewhat by Samson And Delilah. But she was still putting out some good product as Experiment Perilous demonstrates. This drama set during the Henry James/Edith Wharton period in New York is one creepy movie that presents Lamarr as a frightened, but self controlled woman not knowing what her millionaire husband will do next. A poet George Neise with whom she had an affair has already been done in and she's rightly scared. She reaches to Brent like a drowning woman for a life raft.

Lukas is fresh off his Oscar from 1943's Watch On The Rhine and for a while and really for the rest of his career that Oscar guaranteed him some better character roles. He certainly wasn't a traditional leading man, but he notched above his fellow character players for the rest of his life.

Director Jacques Tourneur kept the atmosphere murky, moody, and creepy not necessarily in that order. Experiment Perilous did get an Oscar nomination for Art&Set Direction for a perfect recreation of turn of the last century New York. And he got great performances out of his three leads and the ensemble cast RKO assembled.

If you are a Hedy Lamarr fan this is one of her major films.