L'Aveu

There are some interesting shots, but how can you miss with such a rich city as a backdrop. Payne was okay but nothing near 99 River Street. The one thing that was most disappointing was the horrible sound and music. Dialog is impossible to hear at times, the ADR is terrible - even for an older movie and the music was incongruous to the picture a fair amount of the time.

I haver never seen an American film noir shot in Danemark before. That's really the first time.

The story itself offers no great surprises. Payne plays an American cop who tries to clear his sister of a murder charge. He has to fight against counterfeiters. I must admit that we have already seen this before, a thousand times. Especially Payne who is as hard boiled as ever.

But it's a tough thriller, no boring at all with, at the end, a good chase through the country side around Copenhagen.

A rare Andre de Toth movie that deserves to be discovered.

Filmed in Copenhagen, "Hidden Fear" is a 1957 film starring John Payne, Conrad Nagel, and Alexander Knox. It was directed by Andre de Toth, who had seen better days.

Payne loved playing tough guys and did a few of this type of film. This was his last before going into television work.

He plays Mike Brent, who comes to Copenhagen because his sister is in prison for murdering her boyfriend Tony Martinelli. She swears she didn't do it.

In trying to find the killer, Mike stumbles across a counterfeit currency ring. I was a little confused as to where this money ended up. I also don't actually know who killed Martinelli. We do know they were looking for something as Mike's hotel room and Martinelli's apartment were both trashed.

There was a lot of punching and knocking people over the head - I'm surprised no one wound up with brain damage.

It's sad in a way to see people in this who were former stars in other eras - Nagel way back in the '20s and early '30s, Payne, of course, and Knox who wasn't a huge star but played leads in films.

I suppose back then it was a natural progression, particularly in the case of Knox and Nagel, to turn to character roles. Nowadays it seems as though male stars stay on top longer.

Really didn't care for it and there's some poetry or some sort of recitation at the end that seemed out of place.

Alexander Knox actually was nominated for an Oscar for his fine performance in Wilson. Suffice it to say he does not make the same impression in this film. Payne was also a fine actor, but his wooden performance in this film marked the beginning of the end of his career. This is virtually a silent film, because there is no sound crew and the sound track is recorded by a high school dropout, The music is even worse. Missing from key suspense scenes, and then used for meaningless scenes (of which there were plenty). The female actors were OK, but nothing special and this was a great film to allow you to go to sleep early.

There's something extremely rotten in Denmark, and as a Late Film Noir, it's actually a few rotten things and they're people, in this case counterfeiters in André De Toth's jazz-soaked, hard-edge HIDDEN FEAR, where John Payne isn't a Wrong Man but his sister could very well be a Wrong Dame...

So it's up to her tall, tough, distant, moody, gritty-handsome, totally indifferent cop brother to figure things out...

Even if he knows his little sister's prone to trouble wherever she winds up, and might not be so innocent, given the company she kept, which gives his mission a more ambiguous edge...

Making him a complete stranger, lost and aloof on foreign soil that is hardly New York's, Chicago's or Los Angeles's shadowy urban landscape...

From the Danish city lined with neat looking apartment buildings in an antique, dollhouse fashion to the sparse waterfront boatyard, director Toth makes such ample use of the country's genuine exterior, even the studio-shots within the usual dark atmospheric nightclubs or restaurant feels like a far away place...

As a (Late) Noir, HIDDEN has a more suspenseful, edgy title than premise and turnout. There's not that many dark moments and yet the pace is brisk (Payne climbing across a titled apartment building roof is a standout). And the story can be confusing unless you pay very close attention to expository detail...

His sister's charged with murder and upon investigation her deceased boyfriend's crowd are deadly counterfeiters slowly crawling out from the shadowy woodwork. That's the baseline...

And once things are more clear, the locale-to-locale investigation is extremely engrossing, scored with vibrant beatnik jazz: A kind of swinging bop sound, and even at times providing a flaunting horn like the future James Bond films...

Also, Payne has that smooth spy ala 007 aura more than a tough cop. And like Bond, he's hardly alone (he even owned the rights to the Ian Fleming novel MOONRAKER for a while)...

Our subtle, local nice girl is played by an extremely beautiful Anne Neyland, who's far more than eye-candy with eyes that really pierce into the men she's speaking to, while talking or listening, while her chemistry with Payne is genuine and sexy despite their lack of physicality, taking away from everything else...

After a little while you might ask yourself: What Murder? For HIDDEN FEAR is a movie that's even better (and deeper) than its often meandering plot that takes second-fiddle to the characters on board: Instead of wielding a backstabbing last-minute gun, her voluptuous body and full-lips makes for a dame the bad guys want instead of the usual vice-versa...

Meanwhile, the counterfeiters are led by a former war hero Alexander Knox (resembling James Mason) who owns a small yacht that's a pivotal location...

When Payne's Mike is trapped inside, surreal music is heard, sounding like an underwater funhouse ride: subtle, softly strange, awkward and eerie, lending a KISS ME DEADLY vibe...

In fact the entire journey is also somewhat Mike Hammer-like, and Payne would have been fantastic playing him: Only there's no slow-burn, twisty conclusion as things shape-up with an action genre helicopter-upon-car-upon-motorcycle chase...

And although it can be convoluted, FEAR provides a cool dose of thrilling entertainment.