Una rosa bianca per Giulia

Usually I laugh only while watching comedies but this "thriller" had me in stitches often! Laughing, that is, when I wasn't groaning in disbelief. Ignore the weighty "analysis" by the film noir experts--this movie, despite Robert Mitchum's best efforts to keep a straight face, is laughably bad. Without wasting a moment his character ditches his understanding and classy fiancee (played by director Farrow's wife, Maureen O'Sullivan) for a trashy suicide case. He soon gets hit pretty hard on the head and announces (he's a doctor, so he knows these things!) that he's got a concussion and he's going to be disoriented a lot and eventually end up paralyzed. So we're supposed to believe that he's led down this dark and dreary path by the "femme fatale" 'cause he's had a bad knock on the head--but he's already demonstrated a total lack of common sense and we've lost any identification we might've had as an audience with him. Incomprehensible, really.

The film starts with Mitchum telling stories to young patients, a likable and caring doctor. So why does he fall in love with this mad woman? 'Cause there wouldn't be a movie if he didn't. The film has nice black-and-white photography, good production values...hard to believe this much money was spent on such a lame-brain story.

In Mitchum's last RKO film, he plays a doctor who saves a young woman from a suicide attempt. The young woman, played by Faith Domergue, is very mysterious. She gives the hospital a fake name and address, then later sends Mitchum a telegram asking him to meet her. Mitchum does and he finds himself entranced by her beauty. Then, I'm guessing some time has passed, because all of a sudden he's meeting her at a club, greeting her with a romantic kiss. She asks him if he loves her, says she loves him. I'm thinking, "it's only been a couple days?" Regardless, like many old Hollywood films, they seem to fall in love rather quickly. Then Domergue drops a bombshell, she and her elderly father are leaving that night for the Bahamas. Then she bails.

Mitchum drowns his sorrow in half a dozen coconut cocktails and decides to go to Domergue's home to plead with her to stay. Because showing up at your girlfriend's home, drunk, expecting to meet her father, will go over well. Anyway, Mitchum shows up at the house, meets Domergue's father, Claude Rains. He quickly learns that all is not what it seems.

Claude Rains and Maureen O'Sullivan are third and fourth billed, respectively. Their combined screen time is maybe 10 minutes. I assume that O'Sullivan was there because her husband, John Farrow, was the director. This film didn't need someone of her caliber for the part of Julie the nurse. Any actress could have played that part. Like in many of these classic films featuring doctors and nurses, the nurse is in love with the doctor. It takes the doctor dating someone else for him to realize that he too, loves his nurse.

Mitchum was fantastic, per usual. Domergue was okay as the femme fatale. There wasn't really anything special about her performance. She definitely paled in comparison with Mitchum and Rains. I can't help but wonder what someone like Jean Simmons would have done in this role, but somehow I think that at this point in time, all casting decisions for actresses at RKO came down to Howard Hughes and who he wanted to date.

Robert Mitchum is such a sensible, caring and well-adjusted doctor in the beginning of WHERE DANGER LIVES that it seems incomprehensible that he would stumble into the trap that Faith Domergue sets for him. After getting involved romantically and telling him that she's afraid of her domineering father, he finds out that her "father" (Claude Rains) is really her husband--just the first of a web of lies and deception waiting for him. And this, despite the husband's strong warning.

As improbable as the story is, it has a certain fascination due to the film noir quality of the story-telling with Mitchum and Domergue on the run after the husband's death. Much of the flavor comes from Mitchum's strong performance. He manages to make his character fully believable despite the script shortcomings. Faith Domergue is photogenic but sullen and frozen-faced in her role of the psychotic heroine. Her performance has all the real-life dimension of a mannequin without the little nuances that would have made her a believably disturbed woman. As it is, Domergue offers nothing more than a superficial portrait.

Claude Rains has one scene of menace that he plays magnificently but has no more than a brief cameo role. Maureen O'Sullivan could have phoned in her role. She graces the brief role of a nurse in love with Mitchum, but the role has absolutely no significance in the plot and merely allows her to appear in one of her husband's films. (Hubby is John Farrow, father of Mia).

If you like film noir, this will do nicely although it's hardly one of the best of the genre. The real drawback is Miss Domergue who is unable to give more than a blank stare to most of her more emotional moments. Without Mitchum, there would be no conviction to any of the proceedings. For Mitchum fans, this is a good one.

Where Danger Lives was supposed to launch Faith Domergue's career as yet another of Howard Hughes's discoveries. Beauty she had with a good dose of slink eyed attractiveness that stood her in good stead in her role in this film. In support Hughes gave her RKO's number one leading man, Robert Mitchum and a good cast in support.

Mitchum plays a doctor here who falls big time for Domergue the minute she gives him a come all glance. Problem is that she's slightly married to Claude Rains a rich older guy who's kind of used to her philandering, but not thrown in front of his face. Which is what she does with Mitchum and when Mitchum struggles with Rains he thinks that he's killed Rains. So Bob and Faith go on the run.

A respected doctor and society woman you wouldn't think are good candidates to be fugitives. But they do all right for themselves up to a point despite many people looking to take advantage of them. My favorite is Tol Avery as one bottom feeding used car salesman with a most annoying laugh.

They also do all right considering Domergue is not playing with a full deck, I think a whole suit of thirteen is missing from her 52. Add to that Mitchum has an untreated concussion which also slows them up a bit.

Where Danger Lives is a decent noir film from the studio that made noir a fashionable genre. Too bad Claude Rains had to be killed right away, any film is made better with his presence. Director John Farrow's wife Maureen O'Sullivan has a brief part as a good girl Mitchum deserts for Domergue. Of course if Faith gives you the come on few could resist.

According to the Lee Server biography of Robert Mitchum, the fall down a flight of stairs you see Mitchum do was really him and not a stuntman. Normally studios protect the high profile derrières of their stars, but when you've John Farrow directing who may have been the biggest directorial swine in Hollywood it's different. Farrow would challenge Mitchum's masculinity and that wasn't something Bob would back down from. But one take was definitely it.

Where Danger Lives is a nice one from Mitchum's RKO salad days.

I taped Where Danger Lives when BBC 2 screened it in the early hours recently.

A doctor and patient fall in love with each other, the doctor not aware of her being a mad woman. After he thinks he kills her husband by accident, they go on the run and head for Mexico but face plenty of obstacles on their way including a car crash and getting caught up in a small town's carnival of some sort. It's here where they get married and eventually, we learn what really happened to the woman's husband...

Shot well in black and white, this movie is fast paced and very atmospheric throughout, helped by the music score.

Joining the great Robert Mitchum (Night of the Hunter, Cape Fear) in the cast are Faith Domergue (This Island Earth, It Came From Beneath the Sea), Claude Rains (The Wolf Man, The Invisible Man) and Maureen O'Sullivan (Jane from some of the Weismuller Tarzan movies).

See this if you get the chance. Brilliant.

Rating: 4 stars out of 5.