El crimén del museo

Crack-Up is directed by Irving Reis and collectively written by John Paxton, Ben Bengal and Ray Spencer from Fredric Brown's story Madman's Holiday. It stars Pat O'Brien, Claire Trevor, Herbert Marshall, Ray Collins, Wallace Ford and Dean Harens. Music is by Leigh Harline and cinematography by Robert De Grasse.

Art curator George Steele (O'Brien) believes he has been in a train crash, but he's told that no such crash has occurred. Is he cracking up, or the victim of something sinister?

I'm not trusting anyone this week.

Out of RKO, Crack-Up is an above average film noir that is apparently under seen. It thrusts George Steele on a crusade to prove he is not losing his mind and on his way to residency at Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital. As he trawls around the city with a foggy head, his thoughts still remembering his service in WWII, he tosses off sarcastic quips and evades tricky situations with guile and ingenuity. Who can he trust though? If anybody?

I'm outta my head. I drive around in cars picking up psychopathic killers.

His journey encompasses a number of locations that are expertly born out for noirish purpose. Smokey steam train, dimly lighted station, a ship of many murky corners, the harbour as well, a penny arcade and of course many damp streets at night that are ripe for conversations; both hushed and threatening. With Reis (The Gay Falcon) and De Grasse (The Body Snatcher) using chiaroscuro effects, the atmosphere is suitably eerie, dovetailing perfectly with George's psychologically paranoid funk.

About as smart as cutting my throat to get some fresh air!

Set to the backdrop of the art world, the narrative has an opinion on art styles and snobbery while wrapping the plot around the crooked line of forgeries. It's not wholly successful for dramatic worth or intrigue, and in fact the visual presentation and very good performances of O'Brien and Trevor deserve a more cohesive story and a motive revelation of the crimes considerably stronger in substance.

However, with its technical attributes most positive, some very well constructed scenes (the train crash sequence is excellent) and noir staples in place (amnesia, shady characters, sleuthing for truth et al), Crack-Up is well worth checking out. 7/10

Pat O'Brien is typically known for playing priests, the level-headed foil for James Cagney's explosive gangster. In other words, he's usually the least-interesting character in the film. 'Crack-Up (1946)' marks a welcome change-of-pace for the actor. No longer is O'Brien the calm, collected cleric, but a confused art critic at the end of his rope, doubting his own sanity as he battles murder and conspiracy. He perhaps isn't perfect for the role – the film's lurid moments would have been even more lurid had the lead actor been able to act more deranged – but O'Brien receives good supporting back-up from Claire Trevor, Herbert Marshall and Ray Collins. Director Irving Reis (best known for his "Falcon" series, though he also co-directed the annoyingly manipulative 'Hitler's Children (1943)' with Edward Dmytryk) does well to develop the film's mood, not afraid to dabble in a bit of surrealism to help translate the mental confusion and degradation of his main protagonist. There's also a little Freudian psychoanalysis in there, as was popular at the time, but the distraction it causes to the story is only an afterthought.

The role of WWII in shaping the film noir style should not be underestimated. In 'Crack-Up,' combat veteran George Steele (O'Brien) remarks that his greater fear in the trenches was that his mind might unexpectedly snap "like a tight violin string." These combat-related fears are here transcribed into a society ostensibly recovering from the war, suggesting that the shadow of the twentieth century's most costly campaign was still bearing over America, a sinister spectre of uncertainty and disarray. The film's undisputed centrepiece, though it is never adequately explained, is Steele's recollection of a train crash, a sequence that almost suggests an episode of "The Twilight Zone." As Steele watches the blazing beams of an oncoming train, time appears to stand still. He sits transfixed, calm and emotionless, a deer in the headlights. In classic film noir fashion, both he and the audience know what is about to happen, but all are powerless to stop it. The train barrels towards its predestined fate, a blistering collision of light and flames. Or does it?

Perhaps drawing some inspiration from Lang's 'Scarlet Street (1945),' this film noir concerns itself with the art of art fraud and forgery. The filmmakers' approach to the topic is strictly populist. At the beginning of the film, art critic Steele gives a lecture that openly denigrates the booming popularity of surrealism and "modern art," dismissing the style as being of use only to snobbish social-climbers {an unfair view, since Hitchcock had employed the services of Salvador Dali just one year earlier for 'Spellbound (1945)'}. It is these very same snobs who have planned an elaborate scheme to replace masterpiece canvasses (titled "Gainsborough" and "The Adoration of the Kings," respectively) with worthless replicas, before destroying the copies – not for monetary gain, but because they're snobs, and would like to have the classic works of art all to themselves. If all of 'Crack-Up' was as lurid as the opening sequence and train-wreck flashback, then Irving Reis would have had a masterpiece on his hands. As it is, we are left with an entertaining if occasionally stodgy thriller.

There is a scarifying nightmare undercurrent to this postwar thriller that makes it a cut or two above the average. Pat O'Brien is an art curator who gets involved with some unsavory highbrow types, and suffers what may be either a mental breakdown, a train wreck, or both. It was directed by the very able Irving Reis, though Eddie Dmytryk or Robert Siodmak might have handled the suspense scenes somewhat better. John Paxton, who often worked with Dmytryk, co-authored the script. There are a couple of Orson Welles-Mercury alumni in the cast (Ray Collins, Erskine Sanford). O'Brien is oddly cast, and very good in his emotional scenes, though I might have liked this better had Dick Powell played the lead. Claire Trevor is solid as the romantic love interest, yet Gloria Grahame would have done just as nicely. Herbert Marshall plays what had become by this time a Walter Slezak part. The movie is in other words good but could have used a little more fine-tuning and slight adjustments in casting. As it stands it's okay. The payoff isn't nearly as good as the build-up, unfortunately, but there are two lengthy scenes involving O'Brien on a late night train that would have done Lang or Hitchcock proud.

Pat O'Brien is a war veteran and art expert who may just be on the verge of going nuts in "Crack-Up," also starring Claire Trevor, Herbert Marshall, Ray Collins and Wallace Ford.

After breaking down the door at the museum where he works and smashing a statue, George Steele (O'Brien) is knocked out. When he comes to, he believes he was in a train wreck.

A man on mysterious business at the museum (Marshall) convinces the police (Ford) to release Steele and watch him. Steele investigates matters and begins to undercover some dirty work at the museum.

This is an okay noir that has good performances, atmosphere, and a decent plot. O'Brien is a character man who is not usually the lead in a film; it's possible that "Crack-Up" would have been stronger with a true leading man, perhaps Van Heflin, who certainly would have been believable as an art expert and had some panache as well.

O'Brien, a solid actor, nevertheless pulls off the role and gets strong support from Marshall and Claire Trevor as his girlfriend, who add the sophistication that befits the high-brow museum plot.

"Crack-Up" could have used a little more spark, but it's entertaining.

The title of Irving Reis' Crack-Up sums up two elements of its plot: the wreck of a train carrying Pat O'Brien and the psychotic episode he throws in its aftermath. He gives lectures at a New York museum, demystifying art for the masses, who obligingly moan reverently at Monet but hoot derisively at Dali. When a phone call (sick mother) summons him upstate, he boards a train on which he freezes like a deer in the headlamp of a renegade engine hurtling straight at him. Oddly, he survives, but upon his return hurls a fire extinguisher through the gallery doors, assaults a policeman, and babbles incoherently about the accident. Trouble is, Mom's in fine fettle, and there was no crash.

The movie joins him in sorting out the dramatic turns his life has taken. Helping him is Claire Trevor, a fixture in Manhattan art-snob circles. Herbert Marshall purports to help, too, but he keeps his cards close to his vest. Quite candidly not much help are the museum's board and its snooty benefactors, among them Ray Collins, who were never keen about the democratic spirit O'Brien breathed into their mausoleum and use his erratic behavior to halt his series of light-hearted talks. The police, too, have a stake; O'Brien did, after all, throw that punch....

One of the felicities of Crack-Up is that it takes its canvases seriously, putting them at the core of the story. (A similar respect for art, music and theater, and for audiences assumed to have some acquaintance with them, routinely elevated films of the 1940s; times, plainly, have changed.) Of course monetary rather than esthetic value drives the villains here, as O'Brien slowly uncovers an international art scam, which is why he was derailed in the first place.

The train crash itself – a very scary sequence, brilliantly handled by Reis – emerges, in the final wrapping-up, as the weakest point of the movie, a baroque twist too far-fetched to convince. Because of this contrivance, the movie cleaves to the over-plotted mysteries of the 1930s and early 1940s rather than to the emergent noir cycle that, in its look and many of its devices, it otherwise resembles. But then there's the always toothsome Claire Trevor, whose ensembles take inspiration from the uniforms of the just-won war; festooned in military braid and berets, she tilts the scales towards noir. Either way, Crack-Up offers some suspenseful fun spiked with a surprising note of sophistication.