The Guilty

Decent noir that captures Cornell Woolrich's world of isolated, tortured men and the women over whom they obsess. Love the fact that it's all shot at night since nothing weakens this genre more than too much light, literally and otherwise. Congrats to cinematographer Henry Sharpe. And I must say I did not see the denouement coming until it was almost upon me, so congrats to scenarist Robert Presnell, as well.

Problems center around the rather languid pacing, for which director John Reinhardt must take the fall. Too much of the film, undoubtedly trying to communicate Woolrich's sense of moral deadness, itself feels half dead. And Don Castle, the "poor man's Clark Gable" who is actually more like Lee Bowman's kid brother, is, to put it mildly, not a skilled enough actor to enliven the somnolent proceedings. I will say, however, that Bonita Granville does a credible job of portraying a femme poised between fatale and decent. And Regis Toomey's somewhat smarmy cop is so good that I wish he'd been in the film more.

Bottom line: I've seen a lot worse noirs. Give it a B minus.

Don Castle is sharing a cheap room with his ex-lieutenant from the army, Wally Cassell. Castle is studying on the G. I. Bill. Cassell drinks a lot. Each is dating Bonita Granville, but it's all right, since she's twins in this movie. One is nice, the other is nasty. Then the nice one gets murdered, and detective Regis Toomey is on the case.

This being derived from a Cornell Woolrich story, it's surprising the guys aren't twins also; it would have saved on actors' salaries, although the process shots might have eaten up the difference. Miss Granville -- soon to become the wife of Jack Wrather, the producer of this movie -- is doubled by showing the back of another actress, or having her voice come from offscreen.

Of course, many odd possibilities arose in my mind. Did one sister kill the other, and then masquerade as the victim? What is John Litel doing in the cast? I started out confused, and even after the ending, I was still confused, because this was directed by John Reinhardt, who liked to throw in every film noir trope whether it should be there or not. Always watchable for the sake of Woolrich's sick symbolism, it's not one of the best noirs I've seen.

Army buddies Mike Carr and Johnny Dixon are roommates after the war. They get involved with twins Linda and Estelle Mitchell (Bonita Granville). When Linda dies, suspicion falls on Johnny who was dating her. Alex Tremholt is the fatherly longtime renter at the Mitchell home. Detective Heller investigates. In the present time, Mike is narrating the story while discussing it with a bartender.

This has classic noir construction. One twin is good and the other is bad. It's a B-movie. It's stripped down. The actors are functional. Bonita Granville is doing both twins. They could differentiate the twins a bit more. I wonder if they should put on a wig for one of them. It's not the best acting nor the worst. There is some big over-acting. It has overwrought noir style although the camera work is mostly perfunctory. The story has plenty of turns which functions well and I like the final twist which is meant to overturn the audience's expectations. The filmmaker is able to execute this classic twist by underplaying him. It's well done.

Bonita Granville was an extremely talented younger actress, as was clear from 'The Beloved Brat' (1938) and the four Nancy Drew films she made, for instance. She had a special charm and directness which was most refreshing. Here she is, somewhat older, playing identical twins in an extremely low-budget noir thriller produced by her husband Jack Wrather. The sets are so cheap, it seems as if a puff of wind would blow them down, and they are bleak as well, perhaps on purpose to make the atmosphere one of desolation. She is certainly cast against type, since the main twin whom she plays is a bad girl, and Bonita was famous for being a sweetie pie. However, it works, and she proves she can be as sultry and venomous as any gal if she wants to, and she does want to. The two guys are Don Castle and Wally Cassell, which reminds me that Louis Ferdinand-Celine wrote a novel the English title of which is 'Castle to Castle', not bad for this situation, if we change it to 'Cassell to Castle', as one twin passes between the two guys. This is a very powerful and effective noir story with its twists and grisly side. As it is 1947, there is a guy suffering from serious shell-shock, holding his face in his hands and saying: 'I'm going to crack up completely again, like I did the first time'. There are desperate undercurrents of insane jealousy and passion, a disappearance and murder, seething resentments and kisses that are more like football touchdowns, they are so rough. For something made for ten dollars, this is a really good thriller. The voice-over narrative works extremely well, and the whole thing is a knockout if you can forgive the fact that somebody along the way forgot about the need for production values. Anyway, there's Bonita, and you even get two for the price of one.

Both somewhat dull and weirdly fascinating, the flick starts with a long voiceover and lengthier flashback to explain how two army buddies, later roommates, (one incapacitated by PTSD, the other attending night school to better himself) get mixed up with a pair of twin sisters of opposite character (Bonita Granville). When one of them suddenly disappears, the investigation begins. Don Castle plays the straight upstanding veteran beside Wally Cassell's nervous wreck, and the two find ways to ward off a cloud of suspicion over their possible involvement in the disappearance. This is a rough-and-ready B movie but all the more authentic for that. Shot entirely in the gloom of night, it's dreary, rain-soaked and confined to about three locations - but the strange relationship between the ex-soldiers and the twins keeps one engaged, as does the whodunnit aspect, which turns out to be overly convoluted. A palpable sense of ennui, existential angst and cynicism runs through the film which, with some excellent use of shadow and light, elevate this low-budget Monogram movie into something very watchable. There's plenty to like here.