Le secret d'argile

If, like Ben Mankewiecz the other night, I were to extol the tragic, shamefully HUAC truncated career of writer/director Cy Enfield, this agressively ordinary murder/espionage mystery with way too much dull narration and a rather flat acting job by lead William Gargan would not be my first choice as evidence. Think I'd go with either "Zulu" or "Hell Drivers" instead. Still, it's always nice to see the future June Cleaver get clocked and Enfield brings the thing in at under seventy minutes, which is almost always a plus in these kinds of el cheapo Saturday matinee type deals. C plus.

The Babel of foreign and regional accents in The Argyle Secrets seems too exotic – overdone – until you learn that Cy Endfield directed this short, cheap thriller from his own radio play. There, probably no more than four actors took the many and generic parts, distinguishing them with funny voices. Movies can't get away with that, so a roster of character players – several of them familiar from ‘50s television – was rounded up to fill out the cast. Since the stars are William Gargan (a couple of seasons as Martin Kane, Private Eye) and Marjorie Lord (Make Room For Daddy), with Barbara Billingsley (Leave It To Beaver) visible to those who don't blink, viewers should know better than to expect The Big Sleep.

Actually, The Maltese Falcon is the better template, of which The Argyle Secrets resembles a fifth-generation knockoff. The object in demand is a book called The Argyle Album, a detailed list of war profiteers that's being used for blackmail. A famous investigative columnist, in hospital, tells his younger colleague Gargan about it shortly before he expires, either of poison or a scalpel plunged into his pajamas. In tracking down the album, Gargan meets up with and fends off a motley of grotesques, including femme fatale Lord.

By no stretch of hyperbole can it be called good – it's coarse and jumpy – but now and again it shows flashes of talent (Endfield, two years later, would direct the much better The Underworld Story). There are some neat shots of the waterfront at night (the city's unspecified, but Boston comes to mind) and a tense and well-photographed sequence where an acetylene torch burns through a metal gate behind which Gargan has locked himself for safety.

Alas, Gargan is foisted off as an energetic young turk of the fourth estate, even though at the time he was 42 and looked at least 10 years older. He had started in movies in 1917, chalking up a more than respectable list of credits, but what charisma he may have once displayed had long since dissipated. Sad that the Indian Summer of his career would be spent in those lesser mediums of radio and newfangled TV. But he earns praise for spending the last years of his life, following a laryngectomy, working for the American Cancer Society.

As I was boxing up some old films for an upcoming move, I stumbled across THE ARGYLE SECRETS, a film I must have watched a decade ago. I didn't remember anything about it and even thought it starred Tom Conway (!!), but I must have been thinking of another film. So THE ARGYLE SECRETS seemed new to me, and I was VERY impressed by it. Yes, there are some similarities with THE MALTESE FALCON, but many detective/crime films were influenced by that classic. I have not heard the radio play on which this film is based, but taken on its own, this is--like many of the releases from the fascinating "Film Classics" company, an outfit that specialized in very low-budget but quirky and atmospheric crime and detective and late noir films--a moody and distinctive film that is surprisingly good. William Gargan (close your eyes while he is speaking and see if you don't think that his speech rhythms are reminiscent of George Raft) is always an excellent hard-boiled leading man, and here he plays a journalist who is entrusted with some vague information about something called The Argyle Album, which supposedly contains all kinds of incriminating information about WWII traitors and collaborators and profiteers. He is framed for the death of the man who gave him the information, and thus he is being pursued by both police and international crooks. There are a number of hair-raising sequences where he is about to be caught or killed (one scene where he sneaks into an apartment where a policeman--an almost unrecognizable Robert Kellard-- and his mother live, and the cop has a newspaper with Gargan's face on the cover, but insists on looking at the sports section first, but is always ABOUT TO look at the front page) is very cleverly done, and there is a very creative hallucination montage after Gargan is beaten up by the bad guys. There's also an undercurrent of suggested brutality in the film that is disquieting. Gargan beats a woman who asks him to so that she will have bruises on her and thus she can claim he escaped after choking her; Gargan strong-arms a woman into submission; and there's a scene with an acetylene blow torch that is quite effective and would be considered a classic if it had appeared in , say, THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI. Writer-director Cyril Enfield was responsible for some excellent and creative mysteries in the late 40s and early 50s--THE SOUND OF FURY (aka TRY AND GET ME) is an amazing film with a strong liberal message, and THE LIMPING MAN is a wonderful mystery with a switch ending that has to be seen to be believed. Endfield is superb at creating a sense of dislocation, of disorder. A surprising credit for Assistant to the Producer is famous silent-film archivist and entrepreneur Raymond Rohauer. The film is produced by Sam X. Abarbanel, a writer and producer responsible for some of my favorite guilty pleasure such as the Spanish crime films THE NARCO MEN starring the late Tom Tryon, and THE SUMMERTIME KILLER with Chris Mitchum. Also, there are a number of juicy supporting performances--Ralph Byrd as the police inspector who isn't sure about Gargan and appears in the final scene of the film which is hilarious (and which I won't give away), and Jack Reitzen (who was in a LOT of grade-c crime films in the late 40s), doing a florid Southern accent and chewing the scenery. There are many distinctive little touches in this film--for instance, when Gargan is being interrogated by Ralph Byrd, we see a few shadows of men with hats hanging suspiciously outside the opaque windows of the office. When Gargan leaves the office and walks off screen, about five seconds later we see these shadows head in his direction. Maybe using shadows allowed the producer to use non-actors to play the roles and save money, but the effect works for whatever reason it may have been done. I will undoubtedly watch this film again soon and show it to some like-minded friends who appreciate low-budget, indie crime films of the post-World War II era. Check it out if you get a chance--it will be worth your time if you find the above description interesting.

Framed for the murder of a colleague, a reporter has to evade both the police and international criminals while trying to learn the truth about an album that contains "a fortune in blackmail" information in this noir thriller from 'Zulu' and 'Jet Storm' director Cy Endfield. Released shortly after the end of World War II, the film intimately ties itself to the aftermath of the war with the album featuring the names of those who profiteered from the war, those who were traitors and those who cut deals to advantage themselves no matter which side won. War connections aside though, this is a pretty typical noir entry with an unremarkable slate of shady supporting characters. The idea of having to elude police and antagonists alike is hardly fresh or original and as others have pointed out, the film is too reminiscent of 'The Maltese Falcon' for its own good at times. The movie has some pretty neat touches of its own though including hypnotic spiral effects and swirls after the protagonist is knocked unconscious. Leads William Gargan and Marjorie Lord also certainly try to get the most out of their characters and clocking in at just over an hour, the film at least avoids outstaying its welcome.

Very rare low-budget film from director Endfield (Zulu) plays like a not-bad student film version of The Maltese Falcon-- the supporting performances aren't always convincing but there are nice touches of visual imagination and good pacing.