DIRECTOR: Arthur Ripley"The Chase" improves with age. Decay deepens the dreamy mood of a film already crackling with atmosphere. Some examples of the mark that time has left:
WRITERS: Cornell Woolrich, Philip Yordan
COUNTRY: U.S.
CAST: Robert Cummings, Michele Morgan, Steve Cochran, Peter Lorre
MUSIC: Michel Michelet
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Franz Planer
GENRE: Noir
MISCELLANY: bw; 86m; on DVD
• A weeping woman seems decapitated, the glare of a light on her back washing out the shadows around her head.
• The indecipherable words of the gangster Gino, played by Peter Lorre, issue forth like messages from the subconscious.
• The piano soundtrack sounds submerged.
Where does the dream begin and end? The film, one of the more eccentric "returning veteran" noirs of the late forties, starts with a sleepy, unreal sensibility and never seems to wake up.
Pill-popping, down-on-his-luck World War II veteran Chuck Scott stands outside a Miami greasy spoon, salivating over the breakfast frying in the window.
A wallet is dropped out of nowhere. The card inside sends him to Eddie Roman, who lives in a creepy mansion filled with ... what else but Roman statuary? Despite getting the same answer every time, an attendant repeatedly asks Chuck what he wants, through a cherubic peephole.
From there, the sense that Chuck is sleepwalking only magnifies.
Chuck gains a job as a chauffeur, but Roman controls the speed of the car from the back seat. A suicidal woman stands at the beach contemplating Cuba, for some reason unable to buy a ticket there herself. Over a Cuba-bound steamer's porthole, shadows rise and fall like eyelids. The camera seems to bob during the ship scene, giving the viewer the sensation of being underwater. In a Havana nightclub, a camera flash seems fatal. A power outage triggers escape through piercing headlights and foghorns. A destination is dreamed, presumably, then visited awake, but is it yet another dream?
Robert Cummings' portrayal of the troubled veteran, bordering on deadpan at inappropriate times, perfectly suits the hallucinatory air.
The movie is based on a book by Cornell Woolrich, a pulp fiction writer who also wrote as William Irish. Woolrich had many works adapted into films, including "Rear Window," "Phantom Lady," "Nightmare," "The Window" and "The Bride Wore Black."
— Becky
2 comments:
Great Review! I was just doing some research on Arthur Ripley after coming across wild praise for him in the book A Reference Guide to American Film Noir from 1981. He only directed four films one in some sort of collaboration with Edgar G. Ulmer. He is either praised or ignored by critics today.
You inspired me to look up those other Ripley movies. "Voice in the Wind" sounds amazing! I hope it becomes available for home viewing. Thanks, Mike!
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