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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 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" is an Eagle-Lion production that was made in Quebec. It's the story of an evil lawyer (dare I be redundant?) who is also quite mentally imbalanced. One of his supposed friends and clients is in trouble--his wife is also very imbalanced and has been making accusations that the husband has been trying to kill her. But the husband is innocent--and his life has been hell due to this crazy lady's erratic behaviors and hateful disposition. He goes to this lawyer to talk about this--not knowing that the lawyer (Paul Lukas) has an incredibly evil plan. And, when the unstable wife kills herself, the lawyer hides all the evidence that would exonerate the husband and makes the man think perhaps he DID kill his wife! Then, the lawyer springs his trap--he announces that he will get his 'friend' acquitted--provided the friend first murder someone for him! Can this innocent man be driven to kill? And, does he even realize he's not guilty, as the lawyer got him very drunk and has been trying to convince him that he really has already killed? And, if the innocent man goes to the authorities, what will happen? After all, the evidence does point to him being guilty.

Despite having an overly complicated plot (and I've omitted a lot of it in the above paragraph), this is a dandy thriller. Despite its humble origins, the film is very well acted, tense and exciting. However, it's very likely you won't find it unless you download it for free at archive.org, as the film is quite obscure and in the public domain.

WHISPERING CITY is that rarity: a Canadian film noir, and from the 1940s to boot. Director Ozep does a reasonable job, helped by the great background music (André Mathieu's Quebec Concerto), the lovely city of Quebec, and the Montmorency Falls landscape, but the real quality comes from the superior acting of the sinister Paul Lukas, who had already made a classy villain in Hitchcock's THE LADY VANISHES (UK 1938).

In fact, WHISPERING CITY appears to have had some impact on Hitchcock: he proceeded to pick up on the idea of traded murders by turning Patricia Highsmith's book, Strangers on a Train, into a film in 1950, and subsequently directed I CONFESS in Canada.

Unfortunately, Helmut Dantine and cigarette chain smoker Mary Anderson are rather weak actors, and I was only truly interested in the action whenever Lukas reappeared.

WHISPERING CITY is a watchable film noir, despite the script's over-elaborate twists and turns.

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.

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.

Whispering City is a 1947 film starring Paul Lukas, Mary Anderson, and Helmut Dantine, directed by Fyodor Otsep.

Mary Anderson is Mary Roberts, a reporter in Quebec who goes to a hospital to interview a dying actress. The woman tells her that her wealthy, well-known fiance did not die in an accident but was murdered.

Her editor doesn't think it warrants a story, but later, the woman's diary is sent to her. She then becomes a threat to the murderer, attorney Albert (Lukas).

Knowing how miserable his composer client Michel (Dantine) is in his marriage, he fakes the spouse's suicide, which is exposed as murder. He offers to alibi Michel if he will kill Mary.

Well, this movie is no Strangers on a Train or the Quebec-set I Confess, but it's okay. I always thought Mary Anderson was so pretty and graceful; she's lovely here. Oscar winner Paul Lukas makes a good villain, and handsome Dantine acquits himself well.

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.

If not for the confusing beginning which made it seem like either a badly done flashback or two different plots combined into one. Just bad editing, maybe.

ANOTHER PUBLIC-DOMAIN ORPHAN,,,IGNORED EXCEPT BY QUICK-BUCK EXPLOITERS...CANADIAN -ZEITGEIST-NOIR

1947 Was a Seminal Year, a Time when the Film-Noir Zeitgeist that Manifested "Out of Nowhere", an Unplanned Spontaneous Combustion that Fused Elements from Films and there "Artistic Styles".

The Foundations of Film-Noir were Always There, but an Unseen "Force" was Working some Kind of Movie-Magic-Manipulation Manufacturing from Singular Ingredients (Lighting & Shadow for example), and Creating a Natural Evolution from the Existing Elements Blended Together to Form a New Film-Format and Genre.

Slowly Accumulating Artistic Flourishes from Movie-Art and Style, "Borg-Like", it Existed, Costantly Creating "Itself" Since the Beginning of Cinema, Waiting for that "Moment-in-Time" when a "Birthing" Would be Forthcoming Without Fanfare and a Singular "Pinned-Down" Date is Elusive. But with Little Descent Among Film-Buffs and Critics,

The "Eye of the Hurricane" that, Years Later would be "Titled" Film-Noir, by French Film Critics, was at it Most Prolific and Purified, Refined and Defined as Clearly as Possible for an Artistic-Style that Defies Distinct Definition, was the Period from about 1944-1950...1947, was Perhaps Film-Noir in its "Glory-Year" in its "Glory Days".

This is a Rather Unknown, Neglected, and Abused Movie that Happened, by Coincidence, to be Released in '47, a Canadian-Russian Production set in Quebec. A Low-Budget Studio "Eagle-Lion" Gives it Strong Backing.

With On-Location Shoots, a Full Orchestra On Set Providing the Significance to Carry and Enhance a Good-Part of the Plot and Story...

Strong Acting by All, and a Dense Story-Line Layered with Many Bona-Fide Film-Noir Tropes Providing the Interesting, Well-Established Thrills, Twists, and Surprises One Expects with an Entertainment by way of Film-Noir.

Deserves More Love Movie-Fans and More Attention and Respect from the Film-Noir "Community"

I'd give every point of comparison with Whispering City to Hitchcock's film. Use of locales, actors, script--everything. Helmut Dantine doesn't seem fully engaged with his part, and he's the hero. Mary Anderson played small roles in some good films, she can't carry a lead role. Paul Lukas was an engaging villain in many films but here seems a little stiff, as though he'd done it too many times before. I Confess is the one to see.

This was the last film directed by the Russian director Fedor Ozep (i.e., Fyodor Otsep), who had been the husband of Anna Sten. (He had directed THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV in 1931, Stefan Zweig's AMOK in 1934, etc.) As a Quebec production set in Quebec City and at the spectacular Montmorency Falls, this film has a strange history, because it was first shot in French in the same year under the title of LA FORTERESSE, and then re-shot in English with a different cast. The English version is 98 minutes long and the French version 99 minutes long (perhaps because the French speak less fast?) Two French Canadian actresses carried over to the new cast, though in minor roles. In this second version, Paul Lukas does an excellent job of portraying a suave art-lover, music-lover, and cultural philanthropist who is secretly a psychopathic killer. Pert young girl reporter Mary Roberts (Marie Roberts in the French version), played by the charming Mary Anderson, who had been discovered previously by Hitchcock and appeared in LIFEBOAT, does an excellent job of beguiling us and everyone else with her girlish smile as she tries to expose Lukas as a murderer. Lukas's musical protégé of the moment is a handsome young pianist and composer played by Helmut Dantine, who is a creative but tortured soul married to a hysterical wife, who is played by Joy Lafleur. (In LA FORTERESSE, this part had been played by Mimi D'Estee, who in the English language film is given a small part of a dying woman, which, however, she brings off with style.) All of these people do a very good job, and the direction and atmosphere are excellent. The film is notable for the use of a modern piano concerto by the Canadian composer Morris C. David, and with the piano played by Neil Chotem. So classical music and orchestras figure largely in the story. Canada was not known for its feature films at this time, and Canada in American minds was then thought of as a thin strip of land separating the northern border of the United States from the Arctic Circle, populated largely by polar bears and Esquimaux. So this was an early attempt by an infant Canadian film industry to assert itself, to prove that Canadians actually existed and even had their own cities, even though it was all done with a borrowed Russian exile as a director, a Hungarian exile as the bad guy, a Viennese exile as the good guy, etc. But it works. The Canadians can and should be proud of it. I wonder what the original French language version was like, with largely home talent speaking Quebec dialect. The film has a great deal of intensity and is a genuine film noir, which proves, I suppose that whatever that mysterious substance known as 'noir' really is, it does not freeze at the higher latitudes and can survive the northern climes with its vitality intact.

Intriguing thriller in Quebec involving all kinds of suspense tricks including old murders and new, fake murders and phantoms, haunting memories and romance, suicide and a poor brilliant pianist working on his debut under the terror of his intolerably intolerant wife. The intrigue is difficult to follow as it develops all the time with surprising turns into upside down turbulence, but it nevertheless sticks together and adds up in the end. If you regard the piano concerto ('the Quebec concerto') as the hub around which everything evolves, you'll find it a rather masterful composition of intrigue, cinematography and music - in brief, nothing is actually missing in this intricately spiced stew of a very complicated but exotic repast. It's even worth watching again for enjoying the details.

Fyodor Ozep's last movie feels like a Russian novel, with its themes of retribution and conscience. And music. There's a great Romantic concert that plays with the denouement, and if it were more Russian, it would have made my point too clearly for any subtlety. Ozep was a Russian film maker who had left the Soviet Union in the early 1930s, but while in his homeland, he had done startlingly original work, in Germany and France and the United States, he drew his works from the Russian novelists: Tolstoy and Dostoevski and Pushkin.

It all begins when news reporter Mary Anderson is assigned a brief story. Mimi D'Estee had once been a well-regarded actress. However, when her husband was killed in what appeared to be an accident, she retired and has spent the rest of her life saying it had been a murder. Now she has been struck by a car and is in bad condition. Miss Anderson next approaches local philanthropist Paul Lukas, who is busy arranging for Helmut Dantine's premiere of his concerto. Dantine's wife is driving him batty; he can't work. Eventually he leaves and Miss Anderson comes in. Lukas is sympathetic. After she leaves, he calls the hospital and discovers Miss D'Estee has died. He calls his friend, John Pratt, Miss Anderson's editor, and suggests there's no point in raking up ancient scandal. Pratt agrees, but Miss Anderson is going to continue her investigation.

So far, there's nothing to indicate.... well, anything. Nineteen minutes of the movie have passed before Miss Anderson goes to Miss D'Estee's apartment and barely misses Mr. Lukas, who has broken in. Since she will not give up the story, Mr. Lukas will just have to convince Mr. Dantine to kill her.

Ozep has directed the script to his actors' benefit. People -- aside from the increasingly deranged Lukas -- behave the way people behave. Their conversation sound real. The reactions sound real. The nuns gliding by on the street look real -- the movie was shot in Quebec. There are lovely moments, like the paternal manner of John Pratt towards Miss Anderson, the way a florist's delivery boy waits for his tip, Mr. Dantine's embarrassment at the flop house he is staying at, even the way Miss Anderson stares in horror at Mr. Lukas, come to murder her. People always remain people in this movie, even at the most bizarre moments, and Ozep's handling emphasizes that. Moments like those are far more cinematic to me than the most involved Busby Berkeley visual extravaganza and this movie has plenty of them. They do things and we, the audience, infer. That draws us into the story and the characters far more surely than a three minute exposition.