Du sang sur le tapis vert

Although Gordon MacRae was signed for musicals by Warner Brothers, Jack Warner like the rest of his fellow Hollywood moguls did not believe in keeping players idle. With no musical properties at the ready, MacRae starred in Backfire about a World War II veteran trying to locate a friend whom the police suspect of murdering gambler Richard Rober.

The friend is Edmond O'Brien and MacRae thinks so because he got a woman visitor with a mysterious foreign accent while he was still all doped up on anesthetic from a final operation. The visitor turns out to be Viveca Lindfors and MacRae despite warnings from police captain Ed Begley is on the hunt, aided and abetted by his nurse Virginia Mayo who took a real liking to MacRae while in her care.

Backfire is not a mystery as such because the more MacRae looks, people get bumped off right and left. When MacRae is finally closing in on solving the mystery, the suspect is rather obvious.

For the most part however Gordon MacRae confined himself to musicals of varying quality and later on left the Hollywood scene altogether for nightclubs. Still he did show he could handle a straight acting job in Backfire and Warner Brothers did give him a strong supporting cast. Backfire still holds up well for today's audience.

I thought "Backfire" was an engrossing story, a noir told in flashbacks. The script was literate and had some snappy repartee customary of the genre. It was genuinely mysterious as injured war vet Gordon MacCrae searches all over Los Angeles for his missing buddy Edmond O'Brien. He comes across several dead ends and there seems to be no apparent answer for his predicament, or for a lead on the whereabouts of O'Brien.

Then came the ending. As so often happens in many movies, the screenwriters seemed stumped for a way to end their story, and resort to unsatisfactory circumstances that do not fit the rest of the plot and spring a ridiculous final scene on us that leaves us slack-jawed. They also leave us with unanswered questions and give us a chance at revenge via the IMDb website by awarding a lower rating than it was originally destined for.

Vincent Sherman was a solid director, but unfortunately, he missed the boat with "Backfire" because a backfire it was and went unreleased for two years. By the time it was released, Edmond O'Brien had enjoyed some big success - but in this, he doesn't have much of a role.

Actually, the beginning of the movie is the best part. O'Brien is Steve Connelly, just back from the war and hoping to buy a ranch with his wartime body, Al Corey (Gordon MacRae). Al was badly injured and has been in the hospital a while. Steve takes off and says he will contact him. But eight weeks go by, and no communication.

One night, while Al is asleep in the hospital and they have given him something to help him sleep, a woman rushes into his room and wakes him up. She tells him that Steve has been injured, he's in terrible pain, and he wants to die. She doesn't know what to do.

Groggily, Al tells her that he is due to be released soon, and Steve should hold on. He points to a pad where she can write down the address. In the morning the paper is blank, and Al's nurse (Virginia Mayo), among others, is skeptical about his story.

Once released, Al sets off to find Steve. He walks into sticks of dynamite getting ready to explode. He learns that Steve became involved with gamblers, and is wanted for murder of a big shot who wanted what he believed was owed him.

The problem is that once they started in on the flashbacks, the film became confusing. Most of the time going back and forth like that in a film is easy to follow, but for some reason, this wasn't.

The film also stars Dane Clark as another war buddy and Viveca Lindfors who is involved with someone named Lou Walsh, a mystery figure responsible for a great deal of mayhem.

"Backfire" seems too long at 91 minutes because the pace was off. MacRae did an okay job but he needed a little more guidance; this would never be his milieu. Viveca Lindfors is stunning -- it's a shame her film career didn't carry her further, but she wasn't one to play Hollywood games. She was an award-winning stage actress and for some time did a one-woman show that toured around the country. Even into old age she did television and small roles in films.

A disappointment all around.

A common cultural theme providing subtext for many a film noir was the alienation felt by servicemen returning from WWII to a world that had adapted itself to their absence. But that theme usually remained just that -- subtext. Rarely was it dealt with as overtly as in "Backfire," a modest entry in the genre from 1950, and this fact alone makes this otherwise forgettable film notable.

Bob Corey (Gordon MacRae) and Steve Connolly (Edmond O'Brien) are war buddies, Corey layed up in a veterans' hospital recovering from a spinal injury, Connolly sticking close and providing him moral support. The night before Corey's release, while in a drugged haze, Corey receives a visit from a strange, exotic woman (Viveca Lindfors), telling him that Connolly has been injured himself and is asking for Corey. The next day, as he leaves the hospital, Corey is pulled into the police station, where the head of the homicide bureau (Ed Begley) tells him of the murder of crime boss Solly Blayne and evidence incriminating Connolly as the chief suspect. Corey sets out to find his friend in an attempt to clear his name, aided by his girl Friday, nurse Julie from the veterans' hospital, played fetchingly by Virginia Mayo.

What's most interesting about "Backfire" is that though the film gives both men nominal love interests, they're much more interested in each other than either is about anyone else. It would be easy to read homosexual subtext into this film, as it is in many films noir, but it's not really played that way in the movie. The relationship between Corey and Connolly is that of two men who have had to rely on one another in literal life-and-death situations and who now do not know how to rely on anyone else.

It was refreshing to see MacRae in a film like this -- I only really knew him from his string of 1950s musicals, and he equips himself well. O'Brien, a frequent presence in films of this sort, is right at home. And Mayo is a doll, looking for all the world like a 1940s version of Laura Linney. The climax of the film is a rote shoot-em-up, but as always with movies like "Backfire," the journey is a lot more fun than the destination.

Grade: B

No need to recap the plot. Those first few scenes in the hospital are charming, when not also spooky. The chemistry between Mayo and McRae is so infectious, I expected them to burst into song at any moment. But then there's that spectral visitation at the foot of McRae's bed. It's expertly staged, surpassing in impact anything else in the film.

However, both the screenplay and the direction go downhill following this promising start. It's a complicated narrative whose alternating threads between flashback and real time are clumsily woven. At the same time, focal shifts between McRae and O'Brien further dislocate the viewer, (and why is Dane Clark given top billing with such limited screen time ).

At the same time, director Sherman doesn't appear to have a feel for the material, filming in flat impersonal style despite noirish touches from cinematographer Guthrie. Good thing that fine actor Eddie O'Brien is on hand to carry the acting department. McRae is handsome and likable, but without the needed gravitas of crime drama, while the ravishing Lindfors's best scene is as the apparition.

I like reviewer Brocksilvey's comments on the male-bonding aspects that I overlooked. In my experience, it's a very real part of military life and need have nothing to do with same sex attraction. Rather it has to do, I think, with the sharing of grueling experiences and the bonds thereby established, ones which can go deeper than more conventional types. Happily, the movie suggests the very sort of bonding Brocksilvey expresses.

Anyway, in my view, the movie's a passable crime drama, but nothing more.