Fatalité

Super-aggressive Joe Morgan tries to take over impresario Frank Leonard's ice show and his girl, for good measure, resulting in some strange consequences.

With all the interest in 40's noir, I'm not sure why this genuinely exotic little number is too often overlooked. Maybe it's because its pedigree is not the best, (cheap-jack Monogram), or because its cast is non-movie star, (Sullivan, Belita, Dekker), or the fact that it doesn't turn up on cable (to my knowledge). Nonetheless, in my book it's one of the best examples around of the lost art of b&w cinematography.

Consider, for example, what Belita's surreal, death-defying skating number would look like in color, or that distance shot of the noirish mountain bowl where Frank stalks his prey, or the big neon panel blinking through the fog. In fact, consider the values that would be lost if the entire film were in color. I think one reason many of us return to 40's noir is because of those dream-like shadings,(among other values), that simply can't be duplicated in reds and greens, etc. Then too, these b&w shadings are a perfect complement to the ambiguities pervading the best noir.

But it's not only the photography in this movie, it's also the art direction (Paul Sylos) and the set decoration (George Hopkins). Thanks to them, the spooky ice rink plus the cavernous apartment and lodge interiors achieve real visual distinction with their attention to artistic detail. And even after multiple viewings, I haven't figured out how they did that eerie mountain bowl with its rink at the bottom. That tableau remains unlike anything I've seen in film. All in all, these elements add up, in my book, to a superior slice of visual exotica from noir's golden age.

To me, the most notable part of the story itself is how basically unsympathetic Joe (Sullivan) is with his overweening aggressiveness as he cuts in on everything Frank (Dekker) owns or values. At the same time, I don't buy the climax that looks like some version of the Hollywood Code in action, even if only in diluted form. Nonetheless, it's a great cast from the gimlet-eyed Sullivan (he doesn't look like anyone else in movies) to the commanding Dekker to the froggishly likable Palette. And must not forget Belita's eye-catching wardrobe or the deglamorized Granville getting jilted every five-minutes. And please tell me when ace screen-writer Yordan ever drew a breath away from the typewriter since his name pops up on just about everything from this period.

Anyhow, in my book, the movie remains a real sleeper and visual treat, and TMC would do well to slip it somewhere into their evening schedule.

1946's "Suspense" was another step toward respectability for Poverty Row's Monogram Pictures, soon upgrading its higher budgeted films with the new Allied Artists emblem. Moving up the Hollywood ladder (his eighth feature), Barry Sullivan is well suited for the part of sleazeball Joe Morgan, who lucks into a managerial position for an ice show run by Frank Leonard (Albert Dekker), starring Leonard's beautiful wife Roberta (top billed Belita). Morgan immediately takes an interest in Mrs. Leonard, and when her husband finds out, tries to shoot his rival in the snow covered mountains of the High Sierras, resulting in an avalanche that seemingly buries Mr. Leonard. Although seemingly widowed, Roberta is reluctant to continue the ice show, convinced that Frank may not have died after all (only his cap and gun were found in the snow). Belita, whose career was unfortunately brief, proves herself a capable actress, and would again co-star opposite Barry Sullivan in a similar title, "The Gangster." Eugene Palette completed a Western for Republic ("In Old Sacramento") before retiring from Hollywood, while former Nancy Drew Bonita Granville threw in the towel after six more films, confining herself to television thereafter, going on to produce the popular LASSIE series ('Bonita' is Spanish for 'beautiful'). Other familiar faces abound- George E. Stone, Leon Belasco, Nestor Paiva, George Chandler, Byron Foulger, and 7 year old Billy Gray ("The Day the Earth Stood Still," FATHER KNOWS BEST), in one of his earliest roles. Definitely a noir, occasionally slowed by its numerous (if well done) skating scenes and romantic entanglements, a curious non horror title to appear four times on Pittsburgh's Chiller Theater: Mar 14 1970 (followed by 1969's "It's Alive!"), May 8 1971 (followed by 1967's "Those Fantastic Flying Fools"), Apr 22 1972 (preceded by 1965's "The Eye Creatures"), and May 18 1974 (followed by 1965's "Night Caller from Outer Space").

The was the biggest budget film ever for Monogram Pictures and it is evident in this very well produced nightclub noir from 1946. British skating star known as BELITA was the queen of Monogram for a few years and the money spent on her 40s musicals LADY LET'S DANCE and SILVER SKATES proved what an asset she truly was. The reviews for LADY famously declared: "Mega budget time on poverty row" - with half a dozen extravagant big band music sequences with herself zipping about in all sorts of incredible costumes. SUSPENSE made in '46 is almost the same story as GILDA made the same year at Columbia. However Rita couldn't skate and Belita wasn't Rita. but, in it's own way SUSPENSE is an excellent thriller with some of the most bizarre and creepy scenes I have seen in a 40s noir drama. The best of which actually occurs in a dance-skate number which I can only describe as: set imagery from Salvador Dali mixed with a quite obvious S&M costume design (spangly scimitars on Belita's bosom, black hot-pants, cape and stockings (!) and a horror stunt involving a doorway of jagged wiggly iron swords (yes the jaws of death) that our gorgeous lead actress must skate towards and jump through..... backwards! All to a pulsating kettledrum gonging away. Imagine being in the front row for that! Producers, King Bros were rewarded at Monogram by massive ($4m+) USA rentals from DILLINGER in 1945 and the head office put up a handsome budget for this film. It cost $1.1m, a record spend for Monogram and put the studio in the A league for a while. Following a stream of noir successes like THE GANGSTER Monogram stepped up a few rungs on the Hollywood ladder and changed their name to ALLIED ARTISTS. They used these strong profits to make IT HAPPENED ON 5TH AVENUE, FRIENDLY PERSUASION in '56 and in the 70s, went on to produce CABARET and THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING. The skating dance shows in SUSPENSE are very spectacular and it is a quite a surprise how big and crowded the nightclub sets are. the penthouse scenes are 10 years ahead of Forbidden Planet in their snazzy moderne style. This is a good film, unjustly neglected. And Belita deserves to be rediscovered before she skates off into the sunset: apart from being a genuine astonishing beauty, she can act, skate and give lip service in that most attractive slovenly way that saw Bacall snare Bogey. Belita can do that and skate too. What a doll! For fans of all things kitsch, the nightclub is the same one seen in 1980 in XANADU ooooooo-h-oooo.

Just the title alone should tell you that you won't see anything like a Sonja Henie movie. Great Britain's answer to Henie, Belita stars in this noir thriller about the star skater caught between two men.

Peanut vendor Barry Sullivan has some ideas that catch the attention of ice show owner Albert Dekker and he promotes him to the show management. Sullivan also gets ideas about Belita as he rises the ladder of success.

For a Monogram Picture this one looks like a few bucks were spent on it. The ice sequences match anything in a Sonja Henie movie.

Bonita Granville has a real adult role and acts real adult. The juvenile tattletale in These Three and the screen's Nancy Drew, Granville plays the scorned other woman in Sullivan's life and does well.

Suspense was Eugene Pallette's farewell performance. Mr. Pallette retired after this film and went to live in the wild country in Oregon's more rural area. He was a man of strong rightwing convictions and was sure that we could expect atomic war from the Russians. I wonder if when he died in 1954 he was disappointed.

For a Monogram film this noir is not a bad one with an unusual setting.

Suspense doesn't promise to live up to its generic title until its last half-hour, when director Frank Tuttle (This Gun for Hire his only other noir) turns up the voltage and generates some, yes, real suspense. A Monogram release with a big budget (for Monogram), the movie casts the unlikely Belita – an ice-skating 'novelty' star like Sonja Henie – against Barry Sullivan; they would reunite the next year in The Gangster. Albert Dekker and Bonita Granville fill out the other principal roles.

Dekker's the impresario of The Ice Parade, a revue in which his wife Belita stars. A peanut vendor (Sullivan) offers a suggestion for sprucing up the act (a ring of swords through which Belita will jump) and gets offered in turn a management job. Dekker can't help but notice the sparks between his wife and his new hire, especially when Sullivan turns up uninvited at their mountain lodge. When they're off frolicking in the winterscape, he takes at shot a Sullivan but triggers an avalanche, which buries him.

Or does it? Back in her Los Angeles penthouse, Belita senses his presence. Sullivan, meanwhile, copes with another specter from his past – Bonita Granville, whom he ditched in Chicago (he has an unsavory background which she threatens to divulge – though never to us).

What with all this baggage, the romance sours, and Belita begins to suspect Sullivan of having killed Dekker, if in fact he's still among the living....

With Suspense, you have to take the bad with the good. The skating numbers, while eye-popping (a left-handed compliment), bring the action to a halt every quarter-hour or so. On the other hand, Tuttle anticipates by a year Anthony Mann's basement light in Desperate, swinging like a pendulum from glare to shadow. Still, he plays fast and loose with a key plot point – Dekker's reemergence. The dance of the seven veils he performs adds a supernatural touch to the spooky atmosphere, but it falls short of success: there's information missing that by every right ought to be included.

One last note: Suspense marks the last movie, out of well over two hundred, for portly, bassoon-voiced Eugene Palette, a welcome – and all but unavoidable – presence through the 1930s and early 1940s. In this, his swan song, he shows himself once more to be every pound the pro.