Tensão

Tension is neat little noir thriller from MGM where some of their second line players get a chance to show their stuff without any of the big marquee names to take the audience's attention.

Richard Basehart stars as a meek pharmacist whose wife Audrey Totter has been seeing loudmouthed liquor salesman Lloyd Gough and she's not even keeping it a secret. After Basehart gets slapped around he conceives of a plan to murder Gough involving hthe creation of a second identity. But then at the last minute Basehart can't go through with it. In my favorite scene in the film he tells Gough you can have the tramp, she's your problem now.

But then Gough is killed and the cops Barry Sullivan and William Conrad go looking for the man who doesn't really exist. More I cannot say this one has more twists than your small intestine.

Totter is one nasty slattern of a woman. In contrast to neighbor Cyd Charisse who Basehart has fallen for. But at the moment he and Totter are trapped by circumstances.

Even the detectives aren't quite what they seem. Barry Sullivan has some unique investigative methods that I'm sure the LAPD would not approve of.

You'll like how this one goes down. I'd check it out.

Putting glasses on the very versatile Richard Basehart and sticking him with a drugstore and a faithless trophy wife (Totter) is almost inspired. His Warren Quimby is such a timid, dependent little guy, and when wife Claire thrusts out her ample chest at any well-dressed man who walks by, we feel for the put-upon pharmacist. He's working day and night trying to please her, but she could care less, especially when she hooks up with the flashy Barney Deager (Gough) and rubs Warren's nose in it. Or rather it's Deager who does the nose-rubbing in the sands of his Malibu beach house. Now Warren may be no Clark Kent, but he's finally had enough humiliation, and there is an alter-ego waiting to break out of that timid soul. The alter-ego is named Paul Southern. He doesn't wear a red cape, but he does sport a very unWarren-like checked jacket and no glasses. More importantly, he's got a plan, a nifty plan for revenge on his two tormentors. In the meantime, he's picked up a new girl (Charisse) who admires the forceful Southern style. So now Quimby-Southern is ready for a new life with his new girl once his nifty revenge plan succeeds.

I just wish the second half succeeded as well as this riveting first half. But the focus shifts abruptly over to wise-guy cop Bonnabel (Sullivan) and we lose the compelling thread of humiliation and revenge. It's almost like the script didn't know what to do with Basehart following the Malibu showdown. The remainder of the film plays out in kind of fuzzy, not very believable fashion. It's like a screenplay in two very unequal chapters. The movie is another of Dore Schary's attempts to bring sunny MGM into the post-war world of noir. Like many of the others, the effort here only partially succeeds. There's some good location photography and an excellent cast. However, director Berry adds little to the erratic script, and I'm tempted to say that neither he nor the studio had a feel for this kind of RKO material. Nonetheless, that compelling first half remains.

This is in a category of its own. The central role of a bad, bad girl is played by Audrey Totter with such spectacular power and intensity that you would think it would break the projectors in the cinema. She was like an earthquake on screen. She was also well supported by superb performances from Richard Baseheart as her husband, Barry Sullivan as a sardonic detective, and the elegant Cyd Charisse who exerts her powerful charms in a non-dancing role. This film does not conform to any strict formulae of noir construction, is almost quirky, but is a genuine classic of the genre by breaking so many of the rules. There is no murder for absolutely ages, but we forget that we are waiting for it, so mesmerised are we by Totter. The balance of attention shifts from character to character, and there is a lot of misdirection of attention to keep the audience guessing. This is absolutely not a film about a murder, which in itself is incidental. This is a powerful psychological study of extreme character types. There are absolutely superb minor touches of direction throughout, and John Berry, the director, would have had a future as one of the top directors in Hollywood after this if he had not been blacklisted. William Conrad (later 'Cannon' on TV for 102 episodes) was just as fat a cop then, and Barry Sullivan actually pulls a bag of popcorn out of his hand, gives it to a passing stranger, and pats Conrad on his bulging stomach to admonish him. The film is full of little things like that which are creative embellishments added by a director with his imagination and his eye both in top gear. The best touch of all is the stretching of a rubber band throughout the film by Barry Sullivan, who says 'everybody has his breaking point', and snaps the band. In the scenes with the greatest tension, the band comes out and gets stretched and stretched. In one amazing scene, Sullivan and Totter even stretch the rubber band together with their fingers both entwined in it absentmindedly, while the psychological tension builds. This use of the rubber band throughout the film as a motif actually works, because it is done so well and with such extraordinary subtlety. All the suspects are under tension bigtime, hence the title. There are many good lines, such as Sullivan saying to Totter: 'I've got a file on you going back as far as you can remember and into the future as far as you dare imagine.' They end up kissing. This film positively reeks of classic noir elements, while being put together in an original manner. We have irrational passion, greed, amorality, lust, love, betrayal, selfless devotion, murder, as well as an inability to kill despite wanting to. It's all there. Just add DVD and stir.

Why is everyone here comparing this (unfavorably) to Hitchcock? Apples and oranges! What this is is a damn good little B mystery lifted to art by the estimable, underrated Audrey Totter and an evocative score by Andre Previn. He reused the theme here years later in the much more well known Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Parenthetically, can anyone think of a movie that wasn't bettered by the presence of the fabulous Miss Totter? Let's file belated criminal charges against M-G-M for misusing this dream girl!

Underrated, somewhat obscure B mystery/noir film about a mousy drugstore manager married to a beautiful woman who uses him and plays the field while he works nights. Things heat up as the woman leaves her husband for another man, he goes to get her, gets beat up by the hulk of a guy she is with, and then he decides he will invent a whole new identity on the weekends and kill him. Richard Basehart does a really good job playing the mild-mannered Warren and then the more realistic Paul Southern. Basehart just doesn't stereotype either role but gives life to each. The director John Berry creates many suspenseful scenes and does all those film noir things we come to expect from a good noir thriller: lots of odd camera angles, excellent use of lighting and shadows, a narrator telling us information after the fact, and a group of players of dubious character. Audrey Totter plays Warren's playful wife to perfection - she really gives the role some depth despite it being so outwardly two-dimensional. The rest of the cast is very effective with Barry Sullivan pulling extra duty as policeman and film narrator doing a very credible job, William Conrad adding humour as his partner, Tom D'Andrea being a voice of reason, and lovely Cyd Charisse as Paul's object of affection. Tension is one of those diamonds in the rough you find when you least expect it. The film doesn't boast a huge budget or marquee stars, but it can hold its weight with many of the films of similar subject matter in its era. Another great plus is the terrific score used throughout by Andre Previn. It almost assumes the role of another character with its ubiquitous presence shadowing the proceedings throughout. If you like good old-fashioned mysteries, then you should not be at all be disappointed with Tension.