Muro de tinieblas

The excellent German director Curtis Bernhardt made this powerful, brooding noir film complete with some expressionist lighting effects in the aftermath of the War. In it he expressed as well as anyone the trauma of the brain-injured returning war veterans, whose presence haunted America in the late 1940s. Robert Taylor gives a fine performance as a former colonel whose brain injury has returned, giving him headaches, partial amnesia, and violent mood swings. In this state, he returns home to find that his wife, a war bride, has become the mistress of a creepy religious publisher played to perfection with his most urbane and fastidious menace by Herbert Marshall. He falls into a rage and may or may not have strangled his straying wife. He wakes up, having collapsed, and confesses to the police. He is tormented by the death of his mother from the strain and the psychologically traumatised state of his son. He needs an emergency brain operation, and then is confined to an insane asylum for examination before being put on trial for murder. At the asylum, there is a touching portrayal of a pathetic inmate named Mr. Slocombe by H. B. Warner, the English actor who became one of Hollywood's best character actors and here surpasses himself. Into this mix comes the incomparable Audrey Totter, who added distinction to every film she was in. Here she is allowed to be a good girl rather than a bad girl. Anyone who has seen her work of two years later, 'Tension' (1949), knows she was capable of frying the audience with the passion of her acting. She plays a psychiatrist, with crisp efficient movements and a studied matter-of-factness which conceals her underlying passions. There is a wonderful uncredited cameo by Frank Jenks as a character named Pinky, who plays a character with a pivotal role in the inspired script. Will the truth be known? Can the hero be saved from someone's evil scheming? This is one of the more harrowing and nail-biting of such dramas. It is sophisticated and satisfying, and highly to be recommended. 'They don't make 'em like that any more.'

The former WWII pilot Steven Kenet (Robert Taylor) is captured by the police after driving his car off the road into a river with his deceased wife. He confesses that he killed his wife and is sent to a psychiatric hospital for medical evaluation. Kenet has a brain injury from the war that provokes amnesia and the justice department needs to know whether he may be charged of murder or not. Dr. Ann Lorrison (Audrey Totter) is assigned to treat him and offers a surgery to cure him but refused by Kenet. When Kenet is visited by the super of the apartment building where the boss of his wife lives, he insinuates that Willard I. Whitcombe (Herbert Marshall) killed his wife in his apartment. Now Kenet wants to recover his memory and accepts to be submitted to a treatment by Dr. Lorrison.

"High Wall" is a film-noir combined with melodrama and romance. The lead story is not bad, but the romance of Kenet and Lorrison has no chemistry and is hard to believe. The black-and-white cinematography is wonderful and the happy-ending is acceptable. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Muro de Trevas" ("Wall of Darkness")

High Wall is directed by Curtis Bernhardt and adapted to screenplay by Sydney Boehm and Lester Cole from the play by Alan R. Clark and Bradbury Foote. It stars Robert Taylor, Audrey Totter, Herbert Marshall, Dorothy Patrick and H.B. Warner. Music is by Bronislau Kaper and cinematography by Paul Vogel.

Suffering from a brain injury sustained during the war, Steven Kenet (Taylor) is further rocked by the realisation that he may have strangled his wife during one of his blackout episodes. Committed to a county asylum, Steven responds to treatment by Dr. Ann Lorrison (Totter) and comes to believe he just might be innocent of his wife's murder. But can he convince the authorities? Can he in fact get out of the asylum to find proof?

By 1947 film noir had firmly encompassed the plot strand involving returning veterans from the war. Plot would find them struggling to readjust into society, they would be battle scarred, emotionally torn or suffering some form of injury, such as a popular favourite of film makers of the time, the amnesia sufferer. High Wall is one of the better pictures from the original film noir cycle to deal with this premise. Where except for a daft method used to bring the story to its conclusion, it's a well thought out and intelligent picture.

The pairing of Taylor and Totter is one of the film's strengths, they are helped no end by having parts that requires them to veer away from roles that they were accustomed to. Bernhardt and Vogel dress the picture up superbly, the camera glides eerily around the asylum, throwing impressive shadows across the drama, and the camera technique used for Kenet's flashback sequences proves mood magnificent. Out of the asylum the visuals still remain beautiful whilst still exuding a bleakness befitting the unfolding story, with rain drenched streets the order of the night. While Kaper drifts a suitably haunting musical score across proceedings.

It's unhurried and cares about attention to details, and even though some of the ethics involved in story are dubious, this is a smart entry in the psychological film noir canon. 7.5/10

This is probably Robert Taylor's first real film noir. He is revered in some circles for work a decade later such as Nicholas Ray's "Party Girl." I think he is excellent in "High Wall." He plays a decorated war vet who is accused of murder. Not just accused of murder but also but into a psychiatric hospital. Yikes. No fun at all. Except that the hypnotherapist assigned to his case is a beautiful woman who kind of likes him.

Cast in the role of the psychiatrist is one of the great staples of film noir, Audrey Totter. She is as always good. Better than good. What's intriguing here is that she is cast not as a femme fatale but as a career woman who is in every sense on the right side of the angels and the law.

Herbert Marshall turns in a superbly creepy performance also. I won't say much about his role other than that this is not really a whodunit. We know the answer to that very early.

It's an unusual, brave movie. It has flaws but is nevertheless very good.

Robert Taylor in High Wall finds himself accused of wife Dorothy Patrick's murder. A head injury resulting from service as a pilot in the China-Burma-India Theater has rendered him susceptible to blackouts. When Patrick is strangled Taylor is a prime suspect, especially after he's caught racing from the crime scene.

It's a legal conundrum he's in. That head injury may just make him temporarily insane and Taylor's committed to a mental institution. There he meets psychiatrist Audrey Totter who's committed to rehabilitating him and loving him, not necessarily in that order in a given time in the film.

Though the story tends to go into the melodramatic the cast, especially Taylor give fine performances. I'm sure Taylor's background in the Navy during World War II helped him appreciate the plight of returning veterans like himself. Look also for great performances by Herbert Marshall as Patrick's boss and Vince Barnett as a blackmailing janitor with arthritis.

High Wall was Taylor's second film upon returning to MGM and it marked a step up from his first film Undercurrent. It still holds up well today.