The Long Dark Hall

This is a pretty interesting mystery. It's not really suspenseful but it's done with style.

However, I wonder what purpose it was meant to serve for the public relations of its star Rex Harrison. His friend Carole Landis, a charming star of generally minor films, had killed herself a few years before this came out. As a result, his therefore rising box office appeal had plummeted. Indeed, the brilliant "Unfaithfully Yours" had the bad fortune to come out right after Ms. Landis had died. No one wanted to see Rex Harrison killing a woman over and over -- even if it was in his imagination. "Unfaithfully Yours" was not a success, despite director Preston Sturges's career as Hollywood (apparent) golden boy. Sturges really did not survive this failure commercially.

So, here we have a decent man accused of murdering a pretty young woman. Like the star himself, the character is married to (the very appealing) Lilli Palmer. I don't want to give away the plot. Let's just say that this is a movie that comes out against quick decisions in tabloid cases.

Can this have been a coincidence? Maybe it was. I don't know anything about its history. However, I sincerely doubt that it was.

The plot is not original...Mistress is Murdered,Married Man accussed...Wife stands by him. But Sir Rex Harrison makes you believe in the story. Harrison gives an extremely fine and brilliant performance which raises the film from a typical pot boiler into the story of a regretful innocent man. Lily Palmer (at the time..Mrs. Harrison) is also in fine form as his on screen wife.

Rex Harrison and Lilli Palmer star in the British "The Long Dark Hall," from 1951.

Harrison plays Arthur Groome, who stands trial for the murder of a showgirl, played by Patricia Wayne. Actually, the person who did it is a man who has killed before (Anthony Dawson), which we see in the beginning. However, thanks to some circumstantial evidence, Groome, who was involved with Rose, stands accused.

His wife Mary (Palmer) knows he couldn't have killed the woman, no matter what, and stands by him.

This evidently was an attempt to cash in on the suicide of Carole Landis in 1948. As the story goes, Harrison, who was married to Palmer at the time, refused to divorce her and marry Landis, which is said to have driven Landis to suicide. She left two suicide notes, one of which was for Harrison, and Harrison destroyed it and claimed he knew no reason for her suicide. This was long ago, and I imagine many stories have sprung up and been embellished, so it's hard to know what happened. It is known that Landis knew by 1948 that she wasn't going to have the career she wanted; she was 29, and by the time you were a female aged 30 in Hollywood, you were done playing the kind of role she did. Palmer stood by Harrison during the scandal and attended Landis' funeral with him.

Now, why these two would have agreed to do this film is beyond even my wild imagination, except both of them might have been trying to prove something.

It's an okay movie with one problem. We are taken through the criminal's first murder and his murder of Rose; the arrest of Arthur; the trial; the testimony; his alibi witness guilty for not coming forward; the verdict. And then, one minute before the film ends, we are told the whole rest of the story. It seemed a little abrupt to me, as if the money ran out or something.

The acting is very good, Harrison a great pro and Palmer, lovely and elegant. Though she and Harrison did not divorce until 1956, she left him in 1954 and made films in her native Germany, though she continued to make American films.

A Broody, Moody Movie that is a slightly better than Average British Thriller that makes up for its slim Story and vapid Ending with Atmospheric touches and strong Characters. It has a striking Noirish beginning with very dark streets inhabited by a Serial Killer that resembles a sewer rat.

One of the Victims has a cheating Husband as a Lover and He is falsely accused of Her Murder. The middle becomes a Courtroom Melodrama with cross examinations and suspect Witnesses. This all leads to a confrontation between the real Killer and the Accused Man's Wife that is edge of your seat Suspenseful.

This Movie has a Sleazy Look and a Downbeat Tone that aside from the aforementioned Wrap Up, places it in the Realm of Foreign Film-Noir and has a Creep Factor that is exploited by the truly unsettling Murderer and dingy surroundings. Slightly underrated.

When Arthur Groome (Rex Harrison) finds his girlfriend murdered at her Earls Court flat and becomes stricken with grief and fear, he promptly runs from the scene of the crime. Questioned by the police about the crime, Arthur, a married man, in panic denies all knowledge of the girl. Soon, however, he finds himself charged with murder and inexorably drawn towards the gallows...

Directed by Anthony Bushell and Reginald Beck, it is adapted to screenplay by Nunnally Johnson and William Fairchild from Edgar Lustgarten's novel. Harrison's real life wife at the time, Lilli Palmer, plays his loyal spouse here, while Benjamin Frankel scores the music and Wilkie Cooper is the cinematographer.

Largely ignored and underseen these days, due in the main that some critics of the time noted it has uncomfortable parallels to the real life Harrison and Carole Landis suicide affair - plus Harrison himself quickly denounced the film as dreadful - it's actually a decent wrong man court case picture often filmed in gorgeous film noir styles.

There is no mystery element here, for we know Arthur is innocent, and in fact we know who the killer is. We are given two murders in the first twenty minutes, each a year apart, the first is photographed on the outside in shadows, gaslights and upon a moist cobbled alleyway. The second, where the object of Arthur's lovelorn attention (Patricia Cutts) resides, is stifling in its cruel intensity.

It's a sly story of obsession, circumstantial devilments, manipulation and somewhat oddly, loyalty. The suspense is ramped up as Arthur gets ever deeper in the mire during the court case (look how Cooper photographs the critical sequences in court), while his loving wife is being befriended by the real murderer (a wonderfully rat faced Anthony Dawson) who has his own distorted motives that he wants to bare out.

Viewing it now the police work due to the writing comes off as being very shoddy, and the finale is just a bit too much leftfield to wholly satisfy. Yet this is a very tidy Brit-Noir styled suspenser that comes recommended to fans of leading man and noirish visuals. 7/10