heartfield-1

Watch it for the clothes and the manners. It is a comedy of manners, and the sets are delicious. Before the Crash... Hollywood recycles 1926 hit play by Somerset Maugham, THE CONSTANT WIFE. Watch out, these people are still basically Edwardians. Americans "set in London" except Clive Brook, veddy English. An incredibly stiff young William Powell, a serviceable dandy. And Ruth Chatterton in the role of the wronged wife who's wise enough to use guerilla tactics. Laura Hope Crews as her Mother is a fascinating relic of a distant age.

Not for the faint of heart who must see a car explode every 5 minues. The tensions here are emotional and erotic, something Americans have mostly had beaten out of them.

Weak script, mediocre direction. Don't be fooled, this isn't Noir, more like the dull Gray of a tired businessman's pantleg. There's no flashback, no tight editing, no macabre shadows or complex framing, no passion. The sexual tension remains at the level of a polite yawn.

Hillary Brooke's feeblest effort, perhaps, and she's a bright spot that gets killed off halfway in. Richard Denning is too flimsy to drive the investigative suspense, downright lacksadaisical. Others are merely dull as ditchwater but I don't blame the actors.

This is cops'n'robbers light, verging on the middlebrow TV to come - with a few vintage car chases to alleviate the ennui.

Audrey Totter completists might decie to skip this one. She's stuck in a long black wig and the lighting - unlike great studio chiaroscuro - washes out her 42-year-old face. In a few shots she's hoarse, maybe she had a bad cold for a week, maybe that's why she's so listless. Or is it tthe tedious script and continuity errors? The highpoint comes at.31:55, when the tall callow detective takes a pretzel from a bowl on the bar counter, breaks it in two, eats one, and puts the other back in the bowl. We were still a civilized country.

Audrey Totter did much better the next year in an Alfred Hitchcock episode, Madam Mystery, restored to her blondeness, but playing a wildcat tomboy so different from her icy Nordic Noir bad gals.