Le cauchemar

Kevin McCarthy stars as a musician who wakes up one morning to find tangible evidence of something he thought he'd done in a dream. Things really gets going when good old Edward G. Robinson appears as the musician's brother-in-law who also just happens to be a police detective. There's just something about Eddie G. that compels us to watch him, whatever he's in.

McCarthy's character, Stan, thinks he may have committed a murder, and is tortured by the fact that he has no recollection of doing so, except in his "nightmare".He can't reconcile what he knows as reality with what he remembers from his dream and the evidence he found afterwards. (Intriguingly, a button and an odd-looking key.)

Oh, there's also a few female characters, none of them of the fatale variety. One of them is just a pick-up in a seedy all-night bar (interesting and kind of fun scene, though), the other two are his sister and his "girlfriend". I put girlfriend in quotation marks because Stan doesn't seem to have much regard for the poor girl, who's a jazz singer and devoted to him. Poor Gina, Stan has not the least interest in confiding his troubles to her, or in fact talking to her at all, as far as I could tell. He's always telling her he'll get back to her later, when he's straightened some things out.

Some noirs have a smart and sympathetic girlfriend or secretary (who of course later becomes the girlfriend) who helps the main character sort out his troubles, but Nightmare isn't one of those. It's all about Edward G. and his crime-solving abilities. But who's complaining when Edward G. solves or even commits a crime in any movie?

The story is set and filmed on location in New Orleans, which is a major strength of the film. There's one scene where Stan goes on a desperate search through the nightclubs and all-night bars of the city, trying to find a musician who's heard the mysterious melody he heard in his nightmare. I love all the neon lights flashing on and off, proclaiming the alluring names of the nightclubs - scenes like this are what noir is made of.

Another memorable scene is when Stan, the long-suffering Gina, and Edward G.Robinson and his wife (Stan's sister) go on a picnic and get caught in a rainstorm. They take refuge in a deserted house, where they light a fire and make themselves tea ! It just struck me as funny that they were making themselves so much at home in a complete stranger's house. Now, there is a reason for this, but that would be spoiler territory.

In the late 1940s, director Maxwell Shane made a very low budget psychological thriller called Fear in the Dark -- about a man waking from a nightmare that he's murdered a stranger, only to find it to be true. In 1956, Shane decided to remake it as Nightmare, with a name cast (Kevin McCarthy -- Mary's brother, for the record -- as the luckless dreamer, Edward G. Robinson as his brother-in-law the homicide cop). It's a very close remake, not as pointlessly literal as Gus Van Sant's cloning of Psycho, but with little changed except a better and more integrated jazz score. In sum, Nightmare boasts better acting and better production values, all of which serve to point up the basic cheesiness of the plot. The earlier version, looking a lot like a nightmare itself, lends its own low-rent integrity to Cornell Woolrich's bizarre vision.

If you can get past the improbable key to the mystery, the rest of the movie has some good, strong points. The first twenty minutes plunge us into McCarthy's nightmarish events that may or may not have actually happened. We don't know for sure and neither does he, but there are the scratches on his arm. Did he kill those people or not. The surreal effects are impressively done.

McCarthy delivers a gripping performance, as good as Invasion of the Body Snatchers (also 1956), and much better than expected for a B-movie. In short, he makes us believe that his dilemma, however improbable, is real and not just a story construct. Without that intensity drawing us in, the movie would, I think, amount to little more than a mildly interesting walk-through.

The New Orleans locations provide a clever anchor to the real world, and a good setting for the colorful jazz scenes. However, a 63-year old Robinson is at least 10 years too old for the brother-in-law part even though he manages the cop role well. And can we really believe the chance occurrence onto the scene-of-the-crime mansion in all that unfamiliar backcountry. Unfortunately, the script requires more than just an ordinary suspension of disbelief. Too bad the script couldn't work in more bayou scenes. Those coming at the end are really creepy and nightmarish in their own right. Too bad also that the excellent McCarthy made so few films, preferring, I gather, stage productions instead. All in all, an interesting if regrettably flawed little movie.

Maxwell Shane remakes his own 1947 film Fear in the Night but with a better known cast and more money. Adapted from Cornell Woolrich's novel, story has Stan Grayson (Kevin McCarthy) as a New Orleans clarinetist who dreams he has committed a murder in a heavily mirrored room. Upon waking he finds clues that suggest he actually may have killed a man and frantically turns to his police detective brother-in-law, Rene Bressard (Edward G. Robinson), for help. But it doesn't look good for Stan...

Fear in the Night is a good film, and so is this, but if you have seen the earlier version then this feels very much perfunctory. The opening titles are superb, as melted candle wax plays host to the roll call shown in moody dissolves. We jump into Grayson's dream, again this is very well constructed on noirish terms, and from there on in it's a competently crafted visual film noir picture with good tension and splendid jazzy interludes.

However, nothing else makes it stand out, it just sort of exists as an exercise in late noir cycle film making, a pic that doesn't want to even try to push boundaries. The cast are dependable in performances, but nothing to really grab the attention, though Shane does work near wonders to cloak the characters in various levels of paranoia or suspicious machinations. New Orleans locales are a bonus, with cinematographer Joseph Biroc excelling at sweaty close-ups and the utilisation of shadows as foreboding presence's.

It all resolves itself in a haze of improbability, but as most film noir fans will tell you, that's actually OK. Yet this is still a film that's far from essential viewing for the like minded noir crowd. More so if you happened to have seen the 1947 version first. 6/10

I had a feeling of deja vu as I watched this, and I soon realized it was a remake of Fear in the Night, a 1947 film starring DeForrest Kelley.

This film stars Edward G. Robinson, Kevin McCarthy, Virginia Christine, Connie Russell.

A young New Orleans jazz musician Stan (McCarthy) dreams that he's involved in a murder. He wakes up holding a button, a key, and he has blood on him. He's convinced he committed murder without realizing it. He approaches his brother-in-law Rene (Robinson), a police detective, who brushes it off as a nightmare.

One day, while on a picnic, Stan, Rene, Rene's wife (Christine) and Stan's girlfriend Gina (Russell) are caught in a rainstorm. Without realizing how he knows, Stan directs them to a house. There's a mirrored room as in his dream, and the key fits a closet.

Rene realizes that somehow Stan was involved and accuses him of lying and demanding to know the whole story. Stan swears it was all a dream, and he doesn't know what happened. When the sheriff comes along and tells them there was a murder in the house, Rene wants more information, believing Stan is a killer.

Neat story by Cornell Woolrich, who wrote "Rear Window." Edward G. Robinson is great as always as a man determined to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Kevin McCarthy, who worked until he died at 96, is adorable in this.

Some fantastic singing by Connie Russell -- it's worth watching the film just to hear her -- in what would be her last film. After a long career on stage, films, and clubs on two continents, she retired when she became a mom.

Very entertaining. The end is wonderful, and really puts it a cut above "Fear in the Night."