Double Exposure

A Real Charmer From The old Days. I thought of this movie as a classic Comedy/Romance and Very good looking for it as well. A well Casted Ballot Filled With Entandrable Roles Filled With Funny Lines and Fine Arrangements. Really A Good Looking Movie Being From Its Era It Stands up Nicely With The Times. Although A Bit Short Of Script With A Run time: 1:02:24 It Appropriates With The Era. What I Most Remember About This Movie Was The Dialog Was Short And Sweet. I think It Moved The story Along Quite NIcely. The Productin company was Production Company: Pine-Thomas Productions an Ample Comany to Take On A Project Like This. A Remake Might Be In store For This One?!

Nancy Kelly shines as a smart photograph reporter in this fast paced quick moving amusing screwball comedy.

Chester Morris is the editor of Flick - a photo journal looking for new stories who hires Nancy Kelly as a photographer after seeing a picture she's taken of an airplane crash. What he does not know is that the picture is a fake - just what his boss - a healthy obsessed Richard Gaines who delivers carrots to all the magazine staff - has ordered him to avoid.

From the beginning the film moves fast. Chester Morris delivers a great performance that fits him like a glove as fast talking quick thinking Flick editor. This screwball comedy has many bright moments, modern style touches (i.e. Characters break the third wall by speaking directly to the audience), and surprising twists. Fast, well-written dialogues, simple but really effective script, incredible rhythm and not a boring moment.

Shake all this ingredients together and you have a bright, inspired screwball comedy with an added whodunit mystery and a surprising ending all packed in one hour of frantic energetic entertainment.

Highly recommended.

Chester Morris stars with Nancy Kelly, Philip Terry, and Jane Farrar star in "Double Exposure" from 1944.

Chester Morris as Larry Burke works at a picture magazine called Flick, and he's not above faking a shot to get a good cover. The company needs photographers, so when his boss sees a plane crash photo done by one Pat Marvin, he has Larry hire him.

When Pat arrives, he's a she, and a very attractive one at that. Pat has left behind a boyfriend, Ben (Terry) to come to New York, except that he shows up. She tells Larry that Ben is her brother. Larry gives him a job as well.

Larry assigns Pat and Ben to a fictional murder mystery case that will involve photos. Pat has attracted a millionaire who is on his sixth wife or so and is going to Reno to divorce him. He gives Pat the keys to his apartment. So she and Ben set up the murder scene there.

To their surprise, there is a murder at the apartment later - and the pose is exactly like Pat's, face down on the divan. Naturally the police arrive. They believe Pat photographed the murdered woman after killing her, so she's indicted and is stuck in jail. Larry loves the publicity, but he realizes the murder has to be solved to get her out. So he goes to work.

Funny, fast-moving film with some wild characters, including the crazy boss who makes his employees do calisthenics and passes out carrots. Morris and Kelly have good chemistry.

I especially loved the photo faking which included a lot of cutting, pasting, and white-out. Just think, with Photoshop it would have been nothing.

What starts off looking fairly formulaic for movies of the period, turns into an interesting flick with some different twists. I won't say more because much of the enjoyment is seeing the twists unfold. While Paramount was part producer and distributor of this film, it's obviously of a lesser grade – B or something else. The cast doesn't have any big names. The technical quality is low-grade, and the writing and directing could have been much better.

But, the acting is mostly quite good with a plot that soon develops beyond the usual fare. So, I'm surprised that Paramount couldn't build this one up a bit more. Still, it was the middle of World War II and many of the top actors, writers and technicians were off at war. There was a lot of interest about this time in stories about the war, so the studios can be excused for not putting their all in many of their smaller films.

I do think that labeling this a comedy as well as a crime film is misleading. The comedy is so little and quickly overshadowed by the mystery. But, it's fine as a drama and crime or mystery flick. The quote in my heading is a line from the film.

Chester Morris is Larry Burke, fast-talking editor of Flick, the picture magazine "that's always there when it happens." Short on energetic staff photographers, he recruits and hires Pat Marvin, a photographer from way out in Iowa, on the strength of a syndicated newspaper photo that appears to capture a crashing plane right as it hits the ground! Larry is somewhat taken aback, when Pat arrives in his office, to discover that Pat is a female—but decides to give her a shot. Has she got glub?

–Thus begins a wacky tale in which we encounter a jealous boyfriend posing as a brother; an amorous millionaire who casually ditches old wives and selects new ones; the magazine's health nut owner, who comes into the office every morning handing out carrots and leading calisthenics; and a fairly neat little murder mystery thrown in for good measure. --Oh, and Chester explaining that "glub" is an acronym representing four things you've got to have to get ahead in the business—you must be a Go getter, Lucky, Up and at 'em, and a Bunko artist at heart. G,L,U,B. "No woman could possibly have it," he explains to Pat—who naturally (and to Chester's delight) sets about proving him wrong.

Nancy Kelly is Pat, the girl from Iowa looking for a big break. The back-and-forth between her and Morris is excellent—snappy, affectionate, sometimes silly—and their relationship is the center of the picture. Morris is at his frantic best; Kelly is a match for his quickness, while her character's earnestness counters his flipness.

Among other bizarre moments, the picture features more than one shot where a character pauses on the way out of a scene and speaks an aside right to the camera—including the loser boyfriend who hilariously turns to the audience to complain about getting kissed on the cheek again.

Good dialog keeps things moving; a couple of truly surprising plot twists charm and delight as well.

Funniest exchange—magazine owner Richard Gaines explaining to editor Morris how to solve a murder: "First you question the suspects." Morris: "What suspects? Pat's the only one." Owner: "Well, find some!"