edgeplayer
Joined Sep 2005
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Reviews4
edgeplayer's rating
This film comes much earlier than Out of the Past but both show keen detailing for their times' social, political and gender realities. Excellent depiction and good camera-work of industrial security and espionage of the day. After the opening action sequences, during which Walter Pigeon's Nick Carter establishes himself with the audience, we're treated to a series of well executed short scenes of 1939 high-tech. Technology shown as integral to the future/the coming war. Transitional image of women--on the one hand Rita Johnson's character flies an airplane in an emergency and we see the looks of pleasure on her face as she experiences her own competency. But when she lands the plane, "of course," she's overwhelmed and faints (we don't see this, we're just told). A few years before Rosie the Riveter.
A B film--these films were the television of the day--but just like T.V. today, up to 20% of them were well worth watching. And not always because of their plots, paranoid fantasies full of plot holes that they are. Some are actually interesting cultural windows onto the recent past. This is one.
A B film--these films were the television of the day--but just like T.V. today, up to 20% of them were well worth watching. And not always because of their plots, paranoid fantasies full of plot holes that they are. Some are actually interesting cultural windows onto the recent past. This is one.
It's easy to agree with the other reviewers that Etting wasn't the greatest singer and that this short is sub-par in many ways. Shorts, however, were shown between the main features and Etting was primarily a radio star--perhaps the first woman to fully become a radio-based celebrity. It's hard to know what she really sounded like--the technology of the day doesn't compare to now and if you listen to the spoken dialog it's just about as tinny as the vocals.
But I was very surprised to see the bit of creative film-making in the middle of this short. I'm referring to the scene where Etting is filmed sitting singing into a mirror. We see her sing through her reflection. Then, the mirror image changes and the frame around the mirror becomes a screen into which Etting and the audience can see, as if by remote surveillance video, the other characters going through their motions elsewhere. This was a common understanding at the time of what television would look like when made available. It also pretty well encapsulates Jacques Lacan's notion of the mirror stage--that place where the real and the fantasy bump against each other when desire comes out to play.
Not a great short but always interesting to find hidden gems of cinema making no matter where Hollywood buried them at the time.
But I was very surprised to see the bit of creative film-making in the middle of this short. I'm referring to the scene where Etting is filmed sitting singing into a mirror. We see her sing through her reflection. Then, the mirror image changes and the frame around the mirror becomes a screen into which Etting and the audience can see, as if by remote surveillance video, the other characters going through their motions elsewhere. This was a common understanding at the time of what television would look like when made available. It also pretty well encapsulates Jacques Lacan's notion of the mirror stage--that place where the real and the fantasy bump against each other when desire comes out to play.
Not a great short but always interesting to find hidden gems of cinema making no matter where Hollywood buried them at the time.
Many other posts here comment usefully on the acting in this under-appreciated but amazing film--one of the very best films noir. Little has been written about it and it's the kind of film one used to learn about through word of mouth and coincidence though sites like this make that easier now.
But what really turns my crank about this film is its brilliant combination of cinematography and sound. In many ways this is a silent film and Crawford, coming of age during the silent era, reprises her silent self masterfully during the final third of the film. Silent films were never fully 'silent'--they were accompanied by music. In this film, the musical score complements the visual action but sound effects increasingly become front and center as the film progresses, completely overtaking dialog toward the end. The sound of the wind-up dog as it walks across the carpet, a walk shot so tightly that we see the weave of the rug the dog walks on and the thread in the rug that catches its paw just in time. The sound of the Dictaphone machine (a new technology at the time) and the way the recording of Irene Neves' (Gloria Grahame's) disembodied, mechanical voice repeats "I know a place" over and over (several minutes actually) are crucial to the suspense of this film. The final third of the film is virtually dialog-free--instead, through an inspired use of flash forwards we enter a truly cinematic space of the fantastic, the paranoid and, finally, the sublime. Joan walks alone into the morning light. The silent section of the film, the ticking clock and its Poe-like pendulum telegraph her moral ambiguity. See this film--it's a unique, an early 1950s reprise on the silent cinema and how to communicate to an audience through visuals and sound effects. It's widely available on DVD and the transfer is excellent.
But what really turns my crank about this film is its brilliant combination of cinematography and sound. In many ways this is a silent film and Crawford, coming of age during the silent era, reprises her silent self masterfully during the final third of the film. Silent films were never fully 'silent'--they were accompanied by music. In this film, the musical score complements the visual action but sound effects increasingly become front and center as the film progresses, completely overtaking dialog toward the end. The sound of the wind-up dog as it walks across the carpet, a walk shot so tightly that we see the weave of the rug the dog walks on and the thread in the rug that catches its paw just in time. The sound of the Dictaphone machine (a new technology at the time) and the way the recording of Irene Neves' (Gloria Grahame's) disembodied, mechanical voice repeats "I know a place" over and over (several minutes actually) are crucial to the suspense of this film. The final third of the film is virtually dialog-free--instead, through an inspired use of flash forwards we enter a truly cinematic space of the fantastic, the paranoid and, finally, the sublime. Joan walks alone into the morning light. The silent section of the film, the ticking clock and its Poe-like pendulum telegraph her moral ambiguity. See this film--it's a unique, an early 1950s reprise on the silent cinema and how to communicate to an audience through visuals and sound effects. It's widely available on DVD and the transfer is excellent.