Whispering City

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.

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.

"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 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.