Posted by Steve-O“Who'd want to look at his girl for the rest of his life and be reminded of murder?”
Don Miller, writing in "B" movies: An Informal Survey of the American Low-budget Film,
notes that there were three classifications of movies during the 30s and 40s: “... the A, the B, and the programmers, sometimes alluded to as a 'nervous A' or 'gilt-edged B.' That hybrid would often play the top half of a double bill, have one or two fairly high-priced performers and, when a character walked into a room, the walls wouldn't shake as he shut the door; it looked reasonably opulent, but if a studio tried to palm it off as a big or A picture, you knew they were kidding.” Many classic noir could probably be called programmers – including Anthony Mann's Railroaded! and Raw Deal. The Guilty from Monogram Pictures, however, could never be mistaken for anything but a “B”. The walls don't shake when doors close but the sets sure do look flimsy. Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style
notes, “ The Guilty... whose convoluted plot requires more than the low-budget treatment it is given here to be convincing.” However, (as fans of Edgar G. Ulmer and Val Lewton would remind you) sometimes with the “poverty-row” cheap sets and poor acting also came artistic freedom that was often stripped from “A” movies. I think The Guilty tells Cornell Woolrich's nightmarish story admirably. In fact, I think it succeeds because it's cheap.The film begins with Mike Carr (Don Castle) walking down a dark street in a nameless dark city. The voice over tells how he's returning to the neighborhood after six months. When he arrives at his old favorite watering hole he tells the bartender he's meeting his old girlfriend there. Carr starts reminiscing about his old digs across the street. The film goes into a flashback. Mike is living in a cramped furnished apartment with his lieutenant from the war, a shell-shocked Battle of the Bulge vet Johnny Dixon (Wally Cassell). Mike, while taking care of his sick roommate, meets Johnny's girlfriend Linda Mitchell (former teenage actress Bonita Granville). Linda is the identical twin sister of Mike's girlfriend Estelle (also played by Granville). Things get complicated from there. Linda's dating Johnny but Estelle is trying to steal him away from her. At the same time, Estelle is going out with Mike who is viciously jealous.
The two twins go out one night both with the intentions of meeting Johnny. Mike sees Estelle walking down the dark street towards their apartment and he grabs her
and insists that they have a beer together. Estelle goes with him but really wants to go to Johnny. Linda, meanwhile, is at Johnny's place. She's last seen in the movie collapsed on Johnny's bed sobbing. Later in the evening Mike, hours after Estelle ditches him, comes home to find Johnny alone. Johnny goes out to get some air and Mike goes to bed. Later, Mike is woken by a call from Linda's protective mother saying that Linda never made it home. Eventually, Estelle and her mother decide to call the police. The first place the police go is to Johnny and Mike's place.Noir fans may remember another doppelgänger film noir about two sisters from a year earlier, The Dark Mirror. The similarities end there. That “A” picture starred Olivia de Havilland as the twins. With convincing trick photography and impressive acting decisions by the young movie star (de Havilland was only 30 in 1946), The Dark Mirror is an effective thriller. What makes me like the far cheaper and danker The Guilty? Well, first, the film isn't bogged down by distracting camera tricks when the twins are shown. While The Dark Mirror spends nearly the entire film trying to show the two de Havallands in the same shots, The Guilty only has one shot of the twins together. Not long after that, the good twin is killed gruesomely and the viewer is left with the bad (and far less loved) sister, Estelle. The final 2/3rds of the film is spent tracking down her killer while reminding the audience again and again that the bad sister lived.
Once the body of Linda is found in The Guilty, cop (and Castle's costar in I Wouldn't Be in Your Shoes) Regis Toomey investigates the killing and its then the film begins to resemble the paranoid nightmares Cornell Woolrich is known for. After the killing all fingers point at the paranoid and sick Johnny who goes on the lam.
The film – with it's feelings of alienation and paranoia – are similar to other Woolrich adaptations including I Wouldn't Be In Your Shoes, The Chase, Fall Guy, and the programmer Night Has a Thousand Eyes.
The mystery moves along at a quick pace eventually leading to an unexpectedly twisty ending. (I, for one, was convinced who the killer was only to find out that it was a red herring. I'm usually not tricked so easily.)
The cinematography, by director of photography Henry Sharp (Ministry of Fear), is dark and surprisingly interesting at times. There's many over-head shots and shadowy interiors. On scene at the local bar is shot from the perspective of inside a phone booth.
The cast is wooden but effective. Castle looks a lot like Clark Gable and acts like Tom Neal. Bonita Granville retired from acting after marrying the producer (and very rich oil man) Jack Wrather the year the film was released. Granville wasn't too successful as an adult actress but I thought she had an excellent film-noir look to her. While Castle acted like Tom Neal, she resembled Anne Savage. Toomey gives a reliable performance as a smarter-than-he-first-appears cop. Finally John Litel gives a creepy turn as a middle-aged man living in the twins home. Later in the film Litel's character Alex Tremholt confesses that he loved the girls as they grew up but was waiting until they turned into women before pursuing them. Creepy.
“Cornell Woolrich wrote about people caught in circumstances, arbitrary and destabilizing, that provoked fear, often unto terror, and the feeling of utter helplessness in the face of it.” writes Andrew Dickos in Street with No Name: A History of the Classic American Film Noir
“No writer describes this interior world more vividly than he, and the psychology of Woolrich's characters, often facile in itself, is complicated by the subtle modulations of impending dread, of that sinking feeling that always anticipates doom.”The Guilty – with it's many faults – captures the angst felt in Woolrich's words more than any “A” film at the time would dare.
1 comments: