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Fear in the Night (1947)

This is one surprising film. It's not "great" for several reasons (it's not even very good), but it has great, bizarre, creative, daring aspects for a commercial film. In fact, its brilliance is only the more tragic relative to its drawbacks (a clumsy plot and some mediocre acting, unfortunately). But the special effects, dream sequences, and just plain surreal imagery are all worth the look.

There are a couple of deep flaws in the plot--like a group of four people drive up to a house they've never been to and because it's raining they go inside and make tea and take a nap. And the characters are kind of just going through the motions sometimes to get to the next step. Decidedly low budget. But you know how a low budget can inspire makeshift solutions--here we have room of mirrors, some hypnosis, a murder that the murderer can't remember, crazy dreams, and a brother-in-law who is a tough detective.

The two leads are Paul Kelley (rather good, the strength of the cast) and DeForest Kelley (solid, too, and later to be Dr. McCoy in Star Trek, yes!).

Very decent noir thriller that is just that little bit different. Difficult to describe without giving everything away and I have to say that at a certain point about two thirds into the movie, I guessed what was going on. I doubt views in the 40s did though and this remains a most unusual movie with some very real scary moments. Not a lot or tearaway action but plenty of mind games and surreal goings on. The opening is spellbinding and an absolute thrill, the acting with DeForest Kelley and Paul Kelly is fine, even if the latter struggles now and again in what is a very difficult role. Clearly made for nothing, written and directed by Shane, this is a great example of what can be done in cinema with just a bit of imagination and a decent story.

As I prepare to launch another film noir marathon, I thought I'd get back into groove with something small, offbeat and quickly sketched, but authored by a guy who was one of the preeminent creators of noir: Cornell Woolrich.

His Deadline by Dawn would make my list of 10 favorites in the genre, it captures the chimeric noir world on the deepest level.

Noir is all about the hallucination, the anxious narration causally tied to the world of the film. This structure is probably more explicit here than in any other noir film, including Lang's: the film starts with the narrator having a nightmare where he kills a woman in a mysterious octagonal room with mirrors, but when he wakes up in his room he finds traces of the murder.

Over the course of the film, bit by bit memory seeps back into his narration. A storm leads him back to the fateful house. A cop brother- in-law and his girlfriend act as conscience, escorting him on the journey of atonement. It's all about guilt, memory and mishaps of fate. But the execution is slapdash, the actor doesn't have any tragicool charisma. It's off.

But how about this as explication of noir dynamics? What we see and the protagonist experiences in the opening scene as the noir nightmare was very much real, but at the same time illusory for him in the moment of experience—double perspective. And how about this as the deeper cosmic joke of the prankster gods of noir? There would be no problem for our guy if only he didn't wake up that morning with the memory. So it wasn't the killing, but memory that causes stuff—being conscious of the nightmare, it acquires reality. Superb Woolrich.

So this is a miss, but right off the bat we have some expert delineation of the noir universe.

Noir Meter: 3/4

This is a sadly forgotten, but fantastic film noir gem released in 1947, and based on a story by the renowned author Cornell Woolrich . The opening is an amazing and surrealistic dream sequence up along with, say, Polanski's dream sequence in Rosemary's Baby. Straightforward plot, good though perhaps not great actors, and decent directing. It was a low budget production which is apparent, albeit not a nuisance.

A remake was made by the same director nine years later. The original had a tenser atmosphere which corresponded well to the surrealistic formula. On the other hand, the remake had Edward G. Robinson starring in a supporting role.

An unnecessary detail in the remake was a musical ingredient that was extended to the protagonist being a musician. The upbeat jazz music, absent in the original, actually interfered with the tense atmosphere. However, this was the style in the mid-fifties cf Hitchcock's remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much (also released in 1956) that featured one of this year's greatest hits, Que sera sera.

Contrary to Hitchcock's successful remaking, Fear in the Night surely didn't need one, and the remake - Nightmare - isn't more of a classic today than its original version.

Deforest Kelley has a nightmare in which he kills a man. He can't go in to work, so he goes driving with his sister and girl friend and brother-in-law Paul Kelly... to the house in which he dreamt the murderer.

It's a film noir from a story by Cornell Woolrich, so you know up front that it's going to be overwrought. It's also Kelley's first feature, and screenwriter Maxwell Shane's debut as director. Given the poor condition of the copy I looked at -- plenty of hiss on the audio track, as well as looking as if it was made from a 16mm. TV print -- I was not able to evaluate cinematographer Jack Greenhalgh's visuals, so important for a movie with extensive dream sequences.

Even with those handicaps, I was able to see the basic competence of this Pine-Thomas production. There's little that's fancy about the production, but the ripeness of the source material, the solid actors (Ann Doran has a solid role, and old Demille hand Julia Faye an uncredited bit) make this an agreeably disagreeable noir.