Nocturne

Tough and dogged detective George Raft investigates a composer's death. It was ruled a suicide but Raft doesn't buy it. Despite being ordered off the case, he continues to look into it and tracks down some of the women the composer had "relationships" with.

George Raft gets a lot of flack for being stiff or playing the same role over and over, but I happen to like most of his movies that I've seen. He had no pretenses about being a Shakespearean actor. He knew what he was good at playing and worked with it quite well. His earlier WB successes in gangster movies and the like were always fun. Here he's playing a film noir detective, which isn't too far removed from those older roles come to think of it. He's quick with a snappy comeback and doesn't back down from anybody. It's a part Raft plays with ease but that shouldn't be taken as a put-down, as is often the case. Several tough female roles in this one. Lynn Bari and Virginia Huston (in her film debut) get the juiciest parts but honorable mentions should go to Myrna Dell as a wisecracking maid and Mabel Paige as Raft's mom, who helps him with his investigation.

Good script with some punchy noir lines, interesting characters, and a good ending. A nice fight scene, too. By the way, the film's title refers to the song the composer writes for his latest conquest. The guy wrote songs for all the women he screwed. They had a classier kind of douchebag in the old days, I guess.

There are some nice touches in this noir if you can get past Raft's non-acting. For a cop obsessed by a murder, he really needs more than one frozen expression. It doesn't help that the script sticks this 50-year old man with a 60-year old mother (Paige), even if she can wisecrack with the best of them. She's a hoot, but he still looks more like a brother than a son.

That opening sequence, however, is masterful and a testament to RKO's artistic team. A night-time camera swoops down from high above the Hollywood hills into a swank, ultra- modern glass house where a handsomely attired man noodles on a piano while a mystery woman sits in the shadows-- and the plot sets up from there. It's done in a single take and is quite riveting.

So who did kill the noodler (Ashley). Maybe it was his bad piano playing. More likely it's one of a hundred women who've visited that swank bachelor pad. Anyway, detective Warne (Raft), after viewing the glamour photos on the wall, is obsessed with finding out. His sleuthing takes us on a entertaining tour of LA area hotspots, circa 1946, including a ship that never sails. The attraction really isn't in the whodunit, which proves difficult, anyway. It's in the characters and the settings and some nice touches. There's the brassy blonde "housekeeper" (Dell) who assures us she sleeps alone, the fashion photographer who can't stand his model, the hulking gorilla (Hoffman) who KO's Warne amusingly off-camera. Most of all, there's Mom who may make you rethink nice old ladies. Then too, I like Joe Pevney as the moody, laconic "Fingers"; his smokey joe seems just right.

All in all, it's an interesting, if uneven, movie with some good dialogue, but with a wrap-up that sounds like it was thrown together on the way to the studio.

A spectacular aerial nightscape of Los Angeles opens Nocturne, finally gliding down over a cliffside house and zooming right into the living room. There, a playboy songwriter sits at the piano while giving the brush-off to the latest in his string of lady friends. (She's veiled in black, but get a load of her instep.) A shot rings out....

Nocturne has a great, hard look; coupled with a nice feel for its milieu (piano bars, courtyard apartments, photography and movie studios), it adds up to one of the more vivid L.A. movies, especially when the dry winds rattle the leaves and stir up the rubbish. If in the end Nocturne doesn't quite redeem its promise, it's not for want of trying.

Part of its problem lies in its star, George Raft, as the police detective assigned the case. A 40ish bachelor who lives with Mom (scene-stealing Mabel Paige), he has a sharp eye for willing women, including his suspects. No one ever mistook Raft for a great actor, but sometimes he fits, sometimes he doesn't. Here he's so-so, a smart-mouthed Dapper Dan who leaks not a clue as to why he's always in hot water for insubordination and excessive force (it would have been a terrific Dick Powell part).

Raft's sleuthing takes him through the dead man's stable of exes (all of whom, for reasons that stay unexplained, he used to call `Dolores'). Among them Raft meets up with a sister act: hard-boiled brunette Lynn Bari and sweet blonde Virginia Huston, who sings in a night spot where Joseph Pevney (later to direct Shakedown, Meet Danny Wilson and Female On The Beach) entertains from a rolling piano, muscled from table to table by big, dumb Bernard Hoffman. But Raft keeps following false leads and encountering dead ends....

One of the chief pleasures of film noir must also be counted among its drawbacks: all too often, there's a lot more style than sense. With Nocturne, that's hard to overlook, so it falls just short of being a classic installment in the noir cycle.

Nocturne is directed by Edwin L. Marin and adapted to screenplay by Jonathan Latimer from a story written by Roland Brown and Frank Fenton. It stars George Raft, Lynn Bari, Virginia Huston, Joseph Pevney, Myrna Dell and Edward Ashley. Music is by Leigh Harline and cinematography by Harry J. Wild.

When Hollywood composer Keith Vincent (Ashley) is found dead in his swanky abode, the police feel it is a clear case of suicide. But there is one exception, Joe Warne (Raft), who feels it just doesn't add up. When it becomes apparent that any number of lady friends of the composer could have killed him, Joe drives himself onwards in pursuit of the truth.

Comfort food noir. Nocturne is a Los Angeles based detective story that doffs its cap towards Otto Preminger's far superior "Laura". Raft is in suitably understated hard-bitten mode as Joe Warne risks more than just the wrath of his bosses when he becomes obsessed with finding a woman called Dolores. He is convinced she has committed a murder and the gap on the wall where a row of ladies photographs hang only fuels his obsession still further.

As director Marin ("Johnny Angel") balances the opposing lifestyles of the principal players, taking us for a trip through the varying haunts of Los Angeles, the dialogue is pungent enough to overcome the failings of the script. A script evidently tampered with by Raft and leading to a rushed and not entirely satisfying finale. But as a mystery it works well enough as the acid tongued dames are dangled in the narrative to keep the viewer as interested as our intrepid detective is.

Marin does a grand job of mixing suspense with action, even opening the picture with a doozy of a plot set-up that is born out by some lovely fluid camera work, and while Wild's ("Murder, My Sweet") photography and Harline's music barely break the boundaries of mood accentuation, the tech credits are admirably unfurled to ensure the picture remains in credit. It helps that the support cast is a roll call of strong "B" movie players, and Raft fans get good value from an actor who was desperately trying to get away from the thuggish characters he was by then becoming known for. 7/10

This neat little noir thriller is a rare find. The dialog is witty and clever. The acting, mainly by a second-line cast, is better than in many bigger budget movies. I was especially impressed by Myrna Dell's performance. Plus she had some of the best lines in the flick, i.e., "He was a lady killer. But don't get any ideas. I ain't no lady." Another line, "Who ever heard of a detective wearing a hat," is uttered by a dance hostess instructing Dt. Joe Warner (George Raft) who is trying to squeeze information out of her about the suicide (the audience knows it is murder)of composer Keith Vincent (Edward Ashley). Such witticisms are scattered throughout the film.

Many critics rate George Raft's performance in "Nocturne" as poor at best. But actually he plays the part fairly well as the director, producer, and writers intended for Joe Warner to be. He is a mama's boy (40's and still living with mom). He is definitely a Hitchcockian lead character - producer Joan Harrison comes in to play here. Hitchcock would take this image to its utmost realization with Norman Bates. As critics have pointed out in other IMDb reviews Joe Warner's mom (Mabel Paige) has some of the best scenes in the movie. Since he is living at home and obviously supported by his mother, Joe can afford to indulge in going his own way. He does not have a family to support. One reason he is so interested in the case is his love for music. He and his mom both play piano. In one scene he talks about spending much of his spare time attending the opera. So music and murder intertwine. "Nocturne" is appropriate as a title, not only because it is the name of the murdered's composer last composition which he had not quite finished when shot to death, but nocturne also connotes L.A. nightlife where much of the action in the film takes place. Nocturne can also be used to describe the tangled minds of many of the frequenters of the clubs and hang-outs in the film.

Some critics have mentioned that no answer is given as to why the womanizing murdered composer called all his girlfriends Delores. The writers were attempting to point out that like most womanizers, Keith Vincent was only interested in women as sex objects. A woman had no existence in his mind beyond her genitalia. He wanted sexual conquest, not commitment or any kind of romantic relationship. So to him all women had the same name. Why he chose Delores is left to the viewer to decide. Again, the influence of Joan Harrison manifests itself. Hitchcock left much to the viewer's imagination. How did James Stewart get off the roof from which he was dangling in "Vertigo?"

If you have not seen "Nocturne," you are in for a treat, one of the lost treasures of the 1940's.