Étrange mariage

Check out that unsettling scene in the lonely police waiting room. Little guy Houser (Lubin) sits on one side and vulnerable newly-wed Millie (Hunter) sits on the other with a big empty space between. It's a great visual metaphor for the danger facing our young stranger in the city. A hostile world appears on one side and poor Millie all alone on the other. Even little things work against her in the big, impersonal surroundings—the unhelpful news guy, streetlights suddenly going out. Then too, those spare sets from budget-minded Monogram fairly echo with undefined menace.

From such atmospheric touches, it's not hard to detect the influence of Val Lewton's horror classic The Seventh Victim (1943). At the same time, the movie's director William Castle was a moving force behind the brilliantly unconventional Whistler series from Columbia studios. So the many imaginative touches here, like the lunging lion's head that opens the film, should come as no surprise.

Despite the overall suspense, I had trouble following plot convolutions—who was where, when, and why. But then the screenplay did have four writers, which is seldom an asset. Still, the mysterious husband (Jagger) and Millie's suspicions does generate core interest. In my little book, the main appeal is in the players and the atmosphere, such as the winsome young Hunter, a virile young Mitchum, and the jazzy Harlem nightclub. All in all, the sixty-minutes remains a clever little surprise from poverty row Monogram.

Castle's third feature is an interesting case of talents in the bud. Previously he had been responsible for a bright Boston Blackie series entry with Chester Morris, and the less successful Klondike Kate (1943) with Tom Neal. When Strangers Marry (also known by the less accurate title of Betrayed) shows the director's increasing confidence as he ventures into the territory of the new film noir genre. He was also lucky in securing the services of a good cast: Kim Hunter, Dean Jagger and, in his first co-starring role, a young Robert Mitchum. One of the greatest noir stars, Mitchum is slimmer and perhaps more tentative here than he would be in later films, but still has enough presence and skill to make an impact, especially in the sweaty closing scenes. Already an experienced hand, Dimitri Tiomkin provided the music, and the result was an above average production from Monogram.

Having said that, there's a certain peremptoriness to the film, making it not entirely satisfactory. The noir style, which thrived on inexpensive sets and the economic use of shadow, cheap location shooting and the like, is evoked by Castle rather than expressed in any thorough fashion. Castle's next film The Whistler (1944), on yet another miniscule budget, was much more effective in evoking a continuous mood of paranoia and doom from the haunted Richard Dix. Some successful scenes apart, (Millie's first night in the hotel, her Lewtonish night walk, her innocent suspicions in Paul's apartment), the present film rather clumsily bolts noir elements on to a standard suspense plot - one vaguely reminiscent of Hitchcock's Suspicion of three years before - rather than to let them arise naturally from situation and character. An example is Millie's night of disturbed rest in the hotel. Husbandless in her neon sign-lit room, drowned in shadows and fear, she is distracted by the repeated blaring of nearby dancehall before taking a fraught phone call from Fred (Mitchum). This scene has no real plot purpose except to show her loneliness and distress, and the expressionist images seem over emphatic. On its own it is startling and dramatic, but nothing more, a pool of hard noir in a more naturalistic film. Even less convincingly, as if it had never happened Millie then makes no move to change her room later the next day, and the music never occurs again (it would have made an excellent punctuation for any later confrontation with Fred, for instance). As an actress, Kim Hunter makes an effective noir victim, even if her trusting fragility needs a willing suspension of disbelief. Powell and Pressburger obviously recognised such sensitivity even in a poverty row product like this, for they shortly cast her in such films as A Canterbury Tale, of the same year, and then in A Matter of Life and Death (1946).

A more serious plot flaw resides in the character of her husband Paul (Jagger). His personality and motives are shrouded in mystery throughout the film and, sadly, are not much clearer by the end. For a while this enigmatic man provides the narrative with a lot of useful suspense. The lack of resolution to his drama, while supplying the necessary twist as the truth is revealed, leaves the viewer with just too many questions to be comfortable. One misses even the rudimentary psycho-analysis which appeared in some noirs from this time, supposedly explaining the aberrant personality. Either elements of helpful exposition were jettisoned in the course of filming on a tight budget, or the writers (who included the excellent Philip Jordan, of Dillinger, Detective Story, Big Combo fame) thought they could get away with such a lacuna. The result is to reduce a happy ending to one where a married couple must still live on unresolved tensions, their determined contentment notwithstanding.

For those interested in trivia there are some private jokes in the film. A 'Mr King' is paged at the hotel (the film was produced by the King brothers). More amusingly, Millie hands over a deliberately misleading picture to the investigating detectives, saying 'This is the man you want'. It is director Castle. Such gallows humour, and self-publicity, would manifest itself in a series of gimmick films for which he is better known, starting in the 50's...

Like My Name is Julia Ross, another quick-and-dirty damsel-in-distress movie, When Strangers Marry helped lay down the blueprints for what would come to be called film noir. Kim Hunter has just wed a patron (Dean Jagger) of the restaurant where she waited tables without knowing much about him; off on a vague business trip, he asks her to meet him at a New York hotel. His evasive actions are enough to raise suspicions even in a naive Ohio gal like her -- he makes her wander the streets of wartime Greenwich Village at night (as she did a year earlier in Val Lewton's The Seventh Victim). An old man-pal (the very young Robert Mitchum) happens to turn up to keep an eye on her strange marriage in the big bad city. But there are recurring links to the silk-stocking murder of a businessman in Philadelpia a few days before.... William Castle, best known as a 1950s schlockmeister (13 Ghosts, et al.) shows himself to be a keen apprentice here: There's a scene involving a glass-paned hotel mail chute that is almost Hitchcockian.

When Strangers Marry (AKA: Betrayed) is directed by William Castle and written by Philip Yordan and Dennis J. Cooper. It stars Dean Jagger, Kim Hunter, Robert Mitchum and Neil Hamilton. Music is by Dimitri Tiomkin and cinematography by Ira H. Morgan.

A compact William Castle noir that finds Hunter marrying a man she barely knows (Jagger), only to find he may be a murderer. Robert Mitchum is on hand for help and advice…

Well put together by Castle who keeps things brisk and simple whilst keeping the mystery element high, that in turn does justice to the decent script. There's plenty of noir touches, from expressionistic photography and up-tilts, to cool montages and feverish scenes. Some odd characters add to the psychological discord, while Tiomkin blends jazzy dance strains with "he's behind you" type rumbles.

Cast performances are more solid than anything spectacular, but Mitchum serves very early notice of what a presence and icon he was to become. Some sequences look cheap, which for a Monogram cheapie is to be expected, and this type of pic has been done far better by others, notably Hitchcock and Lewton, both of whom Castle doffs his cap towards. But this never outstays its welcome and there's plenty here for the noir lover to get hooked on. 7/10

William Castle would of course go on to become best known for his gimmicky horror films; an oeuvre which includes the likes of House on Haunted Hill, The Tingler and Homicidal - but before then, he made a series of film noir/mystery thrillers; and When Strangers Marry is one of those. The film is only just over an hour long and I wouldn't be surprised to find that it was made as a 'B' feature for some bigger movie. However, in spite of that; the production values aren't bad and the cast all do well also. The plot is rather unlikely and focuses on the idea of a man and a woman getting married without really knowing each other. Millie Baxter is the female half of the equation; and she has been called, by her husband, to New York in order to meet with him. However, upon her arrival; he's not at the hotel, but by chance she is greeted by her old friend Fred Graham, who clearly carries a torch for her. Fred agrees to help her look for her husband and the pair begin tracking him across New York...but it soon becomes clear that there's something sinister surrounding his disappearance.

This was an early film appearance for Robert Mitchum, and it's clear that the producers knew he was going to be a star, although his role here is a secondary one. He leads the film from the back and William Castle never misses a chance to give the actor a close-up. It's not the actor's best performance by a long shot, but it shows some early promise. Kim Hunter is the female lead and her role gives her a chance to retread some of the same ground of her debut feature, Val Lewton's masterpiece The Seventh Victim. As you would expect considering the length of the film, the story is very tight and there is little in the way of diversions from the main plot line. The main plot itself is just about good enough to hold interest for the duration of the film, although I can imagine it would become more than a little tedious if the film were longer. The ending features a twist in the story; and for my money it's a rather convenient one that doesn't really make sense. There are some attempts to explain it and the holes it creates could be patched up...but it requires the viewer to suspend some disbelief. Still, there's worse ways to spend an hour and this is a decent film.