Strange Impersonation

First off, I practically fainted at seeing a Republic Picture that didn't star John Wayne and wasn't one of their few big-budget movies. That studio turned out some excellent films and they are rarely seen. (This even though till about ten years ago our ABC affiliate showed one, sometimes two, every Saturday night.) The movie itself is not Mann at his best but it's very good. He's been given a fabulous cast. Brenda Marshall is a great favorite of mine. Ruth Ford did more on stage, maybe, than on screen. William Gargan was handsome before he moved into character roles. And Hillary Brooke! Wow, what a performance she turns in here! Lyle Talbot is also on board. He's somewhere between his days as a leading man and his time with Ed Wood. He looks a bit pudgy here.

When we first meet the three principals, they're all wearing glasses. You see, they are scientists.

In a parking garage on her way home from work, Marshall accidentally backs her car into the inebriated Ford. And that's all the plot I'm giving.

Brooke is given a very meaty role. It seems like the typical best-friend part. She seems like a low-budget Eve Arden at first. But oh no! That changes. And she is up to every twist and turn of the plot.

The movie is a little bit soap opera, a little bit noir. But it's both highly entertaining on its on and a must-see for fans of the great Anthony Mann.

Scientist, Nora Goodrich (Brenda Marshall) has developed a revolutionary anesthetic. Rather than bother with years of trials, she simply uses it on herself, in her apartment.

The new drug works very well. In fact, too well, since Nora's conniving assistant, Arline Cole (Hillary Brooke) has plans of her own, and takes full advantage of Nora's comatose condition.

Tragedy ensues, altering Nora's entire life!

STRANGE IMPERSONATION has elements of noir, revenge, and even a bit of sci-fi thrown in. While the ending is somewhat of an eye-roller, the rest is good enough to recommend it...

Plot-- After restorative surgery, a disfigured research scientist tries to regain her former status under an assumed identity. And that's despite a scheming rival, an unethical lawyer, and a blackmailing vixen.

About two-thirds of the way through and I was boggling at the implausibles. Okay, I'm usually pretty indulgent about these things; after all, Hollywood itself is pretty implausible. But then came the ending and all the stretches suddenly made weird sense. Not that this is a good film. It's just a programmer from cowboy-oriented Republic that RKO's noir unit might have made memorable. Then too, I agree with reviewer robert temple: why would two attractive women connive over a lump like William Gargan's Dr. Lindstrom. If there was a subtle point being made, I guess I missed it. Instead, it looks like a glaring piece of miscasting.

What the 60-minutes does have is a fine central performance from Brenda Marshall as the afflicted Nora. But most of all, it's a chance for the Hillary Brooke fan club to watch a favorite spider women do her thing. Catch the way her eyes suddenly reveal a hidden inner demeanor. That subtle inner dimension is crucial here, but as the expert actress knows, not to be overdone. Yet, why is she missing from that final scene. Her presence there would seem required in order to complete the circuit with the pivotal earlier scene. But since when did Golden Age Hollywood compromise their blissful fade-outs, regardless of logic.

Anyway, I expect a few years later with a more seasoned Anthony Mann and a more appropriate studio, the idea could have achieved genuine noir status.

This film literally illustrates that without expressionist shadows or dark, dreary streets, a film noir plot turns out more like a soap opera, no matter how dark the plot is. That doesn't take away from the nightmarish quality, however, as things go horribly wrong: betrayal, blackmail, disfigurement, murder. It is only because of this that the female lead becomes our heroine but her fairytale rebirth into beauty cannot erase her "guilt" of independence - as someone has already mentioned, the post-war message was encouraging women to return to the home. However, the film cannot indulge in grim fatalism either, preferring to be prescriptive rather than prohibitive, so it displays a 'whatif?' scenario, allowing for an upbeat ending. Philosophically it falls between the more contemporary sci-fi "Dark man," and the recent spanish fantasy "Open your eyes;" perhaps today these genres are the heirs of film noir.

The third noir from director Mann – after THE GREAT FLAMARION (1945; which I haven't seen) and the minor but not unentertaining TWO O'CLOCK COURAGE (1945) – also has some very welcome horror/sci-fi trappings that should endear it to fans of those kind of movies as well. Lovely blonde, bespectacled scientist Brenda Marshall (who, in real life, was Mrs. William Holden at the time) keeps postponing her marriage to colleague William Gargan because of her all-important experiments in anaesthesia, until one night her jealous assistant Hillary Brooke contrives to overdo the mixture causing an explosion in the vicinity of Marshall (who is out cold) that leaves her facially scarred. More treachery from the two-faced Brooke manages to bar Gargan from visiting the hospitalized Marshall which leads to their breaking off the engagement. A slight traffic accident on the night of the explosion has also put a blackmailing woman and a snooping lawyer in Marshall's path but, seeing the former fall to her death from the apartment window after a tussle, gives her a new lease on life which enables her to change identities with the dead woman and perform plastic surgery (courtesy of surgeon H.B. Warner). Adopting the facial features of the blackmailer (including shedding her glasses and dying her hair black), she introduces herself to Gargan and Brooke as her own school-friend from chemistry class and is soon employed by the former as his personal aide! In the meantime, Brooke starts looking into this intruder's past and, confronting Marshall with her contradictory findings, is shocked when her new rival reveals she is the old one in disguise, after all. On the other hand, the obnoxious lawyer is still on Marshall's trail and, in fact, almost gets her convicted for her own murder when Brooke refuses to corroborate her story about who she really is! The climatic interrogation sequence is where Mann lets all the expressionistic stops out…until the unexpected (and unwarranted) end revelation that it has all been the heroine's nightmare!! That the film succeeds as much as it does in spite of the meager cast, inexistent production values and cop-out finale is a tribute to the mastery of a film-maker who is just finding a firm footing in a genre he will be making his own in the following year or two.