L'ora scarlatta

I really don't understand why this Michael Curtiz film is so hard to find. And since so many years. A rather good film noir, in the Warner Bors tradition, except that this time it was produced by Paramount Pictures. And like some other late Curtiz's films, there are no really great stars in this movie. Actors as we could have seen in B pictures. But this is definitely not a B picture.

The usual topic of the triangle: Wife, husband and lover. The gal wants to get rid of her husband with the help of her lover. Characterization, music score, sets by night, everything is very interesting in this authentic and - I repeat - rare gem. Don't miss Nat King Cole singing "Never Let Me Go". A charming movie which reminds me my childhood.

But it is not a masterpiece although.

Revered director Michael Curtiz (The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Sea Wolf, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Casablanca) could tackle successfully just about any genre. In this late film of his (he also produced, the last of only five films where he got that credit), he brings home a typical noir plot (at least on the surface) of a love sick dupe of a man who gets dragged into a crime scheme by a manipulating femme fatale. But there is more going on than is immediately revealed. Pauline (Carol Ohmart) is unhappily married to real estate tycoon Ralph Nevins (James Gregory). She is carrying on a hot affair with her husband's top seller, "Marsh" Marshall (Tom Tryon). He is head-over-heels for her but Pauline wants a monetary cushion before leaving her husband. While necking in a car on a mountain road one night, the couple overhears some men plotting a jewel robbery at a nearby home of some rich people who are on vacation. Against Marsh's better judgment, he agrees to pull a hijack and rob the robbers. What could possibly go wrong? Well first, there is a jealous husband who is on their trail. And what about the secretary back at the office (Jody Lawrance) who seems to have a Thing for Marsh? What does she know? And who is the well-dressed gentleman who planned the robbery in the first place? Interesting script full of surprises from three credited writers including Frank Tashlin, better known as a director of comedy films. The only element I feel that could have been bettered are the lead players. This was the film debut of both Ohmart and Tyron. Ohmart attempts to put a little fire into her character even though she can't quite get there. Tryon, on the other hand, even though his career lasted into the 1970s based on his square-jawed classic leading man looks, was always a pretty dull actor. Supporting players Jody Lawrance, James Gregory, and Elaine Stritch show us how it should be done. Recommended late noir from the late output of an important classic film director.

The Scarlet Hour is directed by Micahel Curtiz and written by Rip Van Ronkel, Frank Tashlin and John Lucas. It stars Carol Ohmart, Tom Tryon, E.G. Marshall, Elaine Stritch, Jody Lawrance and James Gregory. Music is by Leith Stevens and cinematography by Lionel Lindon.

It has been a hard to locate film noir for may a year, which when you consider it's directed by such a titan of classic cinema comes as a surprise. The plot dynamics are very familiar to noir fans, and coming as it does late in the original film noir wave it does lack a bit of freshness, but there's little deviations in the shenanigans of the principals to at least give this its own identity.

We essentially have an abused wife (Ohmart) having an affair with one of her husbands (Gregory) employees (Tryon). They plan to run away together but need money to do so. As it happens, during one of their love sessions in a parked car they over hear crooks planning a jewelry robbery and she convinces her man to hold up the thieves so as to take the jewels for themselves. In true noirville form this becomes a road to nowhere and danger lurks on every corner, with dodgy alibis, unrequited passions and a few twists and turns to keep the narrative perky.

This is no shoddy production either, it comes out of Paramount and the presence of Curtiz shows you that the studio wasn't merely making a contract filler. Though the absence of chirascuro from Lindon is a shame, we do get some nifty sequences such as violence enacted that we only see via shadows. There's moments of humour as well, while there's also a musical surprise as Nat King Cole turns up to croon Never Let Me Go. Cast are fine, Ohmart has classic fatale looks and legs from heaven, but her character trajectory is a little muddled in the writing. Tryon plays the dupe competently, Lawrance sparkles in a secondary role, as does the scene stealing Stritch.

I'd stop at calling this a hidden gem, as some other amateur reviewers have, though it does rather depend on how many other similar noirs you have seen previously. This doesn't come close to Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice or Thérèse Raquin, but that doesn't stop it being a good film, because it is and for sure it's well worth noir fans tracking it down. 7/10

This is a superb film noir directed by Michael Curtiz, which has never been officially reissued in video or DVD format. The film introduces three new lead players, Carol Ohmart, Ton Tryon, and Elaine Stritch, who here all appear in their first feature film. This was clearly a conscious decision by Paramount to try and create new stars. They took an excellent script and entrusted the project to the capable hands of Oscar-winner Michael Curtiz, who is of course most famous for directing CASABLANCA (1942). Carol Ohmart is the femme fatale. She has a low dusky voice and moves, speaks and acts like Barbara Stanwyck. Stanwyck was twenty years older than Ohmart, and perhaps it seemed time to try and reinvent her. Ohmart does an excellent job and there is nothing to complain of about her performance except for one thing, and that is that she did not possess the natural magic of a true star. In this film she is highly effective, but we are not entranced. What is there that makes one woman spellbinding and another not? We will never know the answer. Young Tom Tryon as the earnest, love-crazed male lead is very good, though at that age he looked a bit weird, and he was much more effective and better looking when he was older and had developed a bit of gravitas, as for instance in THE CARDINAL (1963). Elaine Stritch is given a substantial supporting role, and she makes the most of it, stealing plenty of scenes (though apparently without meaning to do so) and showing what stuff she is made of, as the decades which followed have proved. Michael Curtiz does his usual excellent job of directing, and the story really does have some surprises and twists. This is no B picture, it is the real thing. Ohmart is a gold-digger who has married a rich older man (played by James Gregory) for whom she has no affection whatever. But then, her affection is reserved for herself. She does however have a mad passion for Tryon, and must have him. 'I want you,' she says to him repeatedly, like a Roman Empress deciding to conquer Cilicia before the week is out. They can't keep their hands off each other, and their mouths are glued together and they simply can't tell whose arms are which. A slight problem! Tryon works for the husband. Also, the boss's secretary, played with doe-eyed devotion by Jody Lawrance (who retired from acting only 12 years later at the age of 38, and died aged only 55 in 1986), is hopelessly in love with Tryon, who does not notice. This film is notable for an appearance by the singer Nat King Cole, who sings an entire song, 'Never Let Me Go' (composed specially for this film), standing and smiling in a nightclub into which Ohmart briefly goes before slipping out on one of her sinister errands of passion. The film begins with Ohmart and Tryon sitting in an open convertible on a warm summer night on the hills overlooking the lights of Los Angeles. They have been necking passionately and suddenly two other cars drive up nearby, which do not see them. Men get out of each car and a rendezvous takes place, in which a jewel robbery is planned, and the couple overhear all the details. Who is the mysterious and genteel man who is organising it? Later in the film we get a real shock when we find out who he is. (No, it is not Ohmart's husband. Try again. Give up, you could never guess.) Ohmart wants to run away with Tryon, who 'has no money' (at least not enough for her), so she browbeats him into robbing the robbers and taking the $350,000 worth of jewels from them as 'running away money'. When Tryon protests, Ohmart ruthlessly scorns his comparative poverty, and says 'I've been poor before.' But of course, this being a film noir, things go terribly wrong. And go on going wrong. And go on going even more wrong. And everything becomes impossibly tense, so that sweat practically breaks out upon the celluloid itself. And then more surprises come, and yet more tension. The screenwriter has no mercy on us. And Ohmart is relentless, as greedy and passionate as Stanwyck in DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944), a role on which she clearly modelled her own performance. This really is a good one. I would say don't miss it, but first you have to find it, and that is even more difficult than solving the plot. Type it into Google with the word 'buy'.

Warner Brothers 30s 40s director Michael Curtiz was well past his prime when he made this lower tier work rich in both mood and atmospherics for Paramount. Grazing in Billy Wilder Double Indemnity territory it lacks the first string line-up of Stanwyck, MacMurray and Robinson but the second team acquits itself well enough to make this a pretty suspenseful piece.

"Marsh" Marshall (Tom Tryon) and his boss's wife Pauline are having some illicit recreation at a local lover's lane when they overhear three men planning a major heist. Pauline, the spine in the relationship concocts an idea to rob them after they pull the job. The pliable Marsh (mellow?) blinded by Pauline's sexiness and passion reluctantly goes along.

Well paced Scarlet Hour runs on deception and betrayal with plenty of double cross along the way weaving in the thieves subplot to the major theme of the adulterous leads seamlessly as fatale Pauline must manipulate three men to her grand plan.

Tryon and Ohmarht are fine if inconsistent at times while a supporting cast of hang dog looking pros (James Gregory, EG Marshall, Edward Binns, Elaine Strich, Rene Aubuchon, James Lewis) add sober gravitas.

Special mention goes to the camera work of Lionel Liddon who keeps us in the dark (a majority of the film takes place in the evening) with some bold chiaroscuro compositions that up the noir tenor and elevate Scarlet Hour to an impressive overachiever.