The Suspect (1944)

The Suspect is a romantic/crime melodrama with film noir overtones directed by Robert Siodmak for Universal in 1944.

It is London in 1902. Philip (Charles Laughton) is a middle-aged man who runs a very exclusive tobacconist’s shop. It’s actually a very sizeable concern catering to the gentry and Charles is decidedly prosperous. He’s also very unhappily married. His wife Cora has made his life and their son’s life a misery. There is no love in Philip’s life.

Then a very pretty young lady named Mary (Ella Raines) walks into his shop looking for a job. He has no job to offer her but shortly afterwards he passes her in the street. She is crying. We have already seen evidence that Philip is in fact a genuinely very kind man. He’s not the sort of man who can remain unmoved by a woman’s tears. He decides, correctly, that she has a problem that she needs to talk about. He takes her for a meal.

Pretty soon Philip and Mary are seeing each other regularly. They might seem mismatched but Philip is charming and gentle and Mary is a delightful and very sweet young woman. Their relationship is entirely innocent. They’re just two lonely people who find comfort in each other’s company. Of course their relationship might not seem so innocent to others.

And it’s fairly clear that love is starting to bloom. They really are perfectly suited and could very easily make each other very happy. In other circumstances it’s clear they would soon marry. But Philip is already married. And there is no way his wife is going to give him a divorce. In fact if she finds out about Mary there won’t be any point in trying to explain to her that the relationship is really quite innocent. Cora will do her best to destroy her husband and the girl he loves. And of course the relationship between Philip and Mary really is more than friendship.

If only Philip didn’t have a wife.

I think you can guess what’s going to happen next but it’s left just a little ambiguous. Maybe his wife’s fatal accident really was an accident. We cannot be entirely sure.

The coroner’s jury brings in a verdict of accidental death. Inspector Huxley is not entirely satisfied. There’s no evidence at all to suggest murder but policemen have very suspicious minds.

The circumstances are sufficiently ambiguous to leave Philip open to blackmail, and when you’re vulnerable to blackmail then you can be pretty sure that a blackmailer will arrive on the scene.

Obviously there’s nothing startlingly original about the plot. It’s one of those cases in which the thing that matters is how well a rather hackneyed idea can be executed. Robert Siodmak can of course be relied upon to execute it very well indeed. This is the sort of thing at which he excelled.

Much also depends on the acting. Charles Laughton is superb. He makes Philip a very sympathetic character indeed. Philip is a truly kind man. When he says that he has never had any desire to hurt anyone we know he is telling the truth. And yet he may have killed his wife. And while Philip appears to be gentle and passive we get the feeling that there is more to him than that. He’s the sort of man who might well stop being passive if backed into a corner, or if he felt that the woman he loved might be in danger. There’s the suggestion of a strong will deeply hidden. Philip is kind and gentle because he’s always been able to be kind and gentle. That doesn’t mean he is as weak as he appears to be. Laughton gets the chance here to show that he can give a great performance that is also extremely low-key and subtle.

Ella Raines is delightful as well. Mary starts out being vulnerable and perhaps just a bit mousy but when she finds love the real Mary appears - a bright, vivacious high-spirited young woman.

Charles Laughton and Ella Raines seem an unlikely romantic pairing and it’s essential to the film’s success that we buy the idea that these two really are head-over-heels in love. And we do buy it, largely because Ella Raines does such a fine job of conveying to us what it is that motivates Mary. She is not just a woman who craves love. She desperately craves kindness and understanding. If a man shows her that kindness and understanding she is going to fall for him, even if he’s middle-aged, overweight and not good-looking. It’s also highly likely that she sees him as a father figure - a man she can trust and rely on completely. We really do believe that this is the sort of man she wants and needs. And Philip undeniably has charm as well.

Special mention must be made of Henry Daniell’s delicious performance as the blackmailer.

Is it film noir? Does it fit into the period noir sub-genre? I think you can make a fairly strong case that it does. It certainly has plenty of noir visual style. Being a Universal production you could even argue that the visual style is gothic noir.

Kino Lorber’s DVD (they’ve released it on Blu-Ray as well) looks great and there’s an audio commentary by Troy Howarth.

A good tight script, excellent performances especially from Charles Laughton and Ella Raines, stylish direction by Siodmak and lots of shadows and moody black-and-white cinematography - it all adds up to a very very satisfying movie indeed. Highly recommended.

Captain Kidd (1945)

Any movie with Charles Laughton as a pirate has to be worth a look, and Captain Kidd (released in 1945) turns out to be pretty good.

William Kidd was one of the most famous of all pirates, and one of the most controversial, the controversy stemming from the fact that there is considerable doubt as to whether Kidd really was technically a pirate at all.

In the movie we’re left in no doubt that Kidd (played of course by Laughton) is a cut-throat and a remarkably devious rogue. He is also ambitious. He wants to buy his way into the aristocracy and that’s going to require a great deal of money. It’s also obviously going to require him to appear to have obtained the money by legal means. So when he sets out on   his latest voyage, armed with a letter of marque (authorising him to attack ships of enemy states) signed by the King, his intention is to engage in piracy whilst appearing to be acting within the letter of the law.

For this voyage he selects his crew with great care. They are all prisoners from Newgate Prison, all awaiting execution for piracy, and all of them guaranteed to be loyal since they’ve been promised a royal pardon if they survive the voyage.

His officers are even bigger rogues than the crew. They are pirates who have served with Kidd before. They have no scruples whatsoever.

Kidd is a man who always has some dishonest but profitable scheme in mind. He is not the only one making schemes. Orange Povy (John Carradine) has plans of his own and he knows Kidd extremely well. He believes he can match wits with him.

Jose Lorenzo (Gilbert Roland) is another of the officers with his own agenda. And then there’s Adam Mercy (Randolph Scott), something of a mystery man and the object of much suspicion on the part of his fellow officers, and especially on the part of the Captain. Lorenzo and Mercy will also try to mach wits with Kidd.

Things get more complicated after Kidd’s rendezvous with the Quedagh Merchant, a ship he is supposed to escort through the pirate-infested waters near Madagascar. The Quedagh Merchant is carrying treasure of immense value, and it is also carrying the beautiful young Lady Anne Dunstan (Barbara Britton). The challenge for Kidd is to get his hands on the treasure without appearing to have committed an act of piracy. He also has plans for Lady Anne, and he’s not the only one.

Captain Kidd keeps a list of names hidden in a secret drawer in his cabin. It’s a list of people who are or have been accomplices in his schemes, and who feel themselves entitled to a share of the loot. The list is distressingly long. It seems a great pity to have to divide the loot so many ways. It would be much safer, more convenient and more profitable if that list of names could be reduced to a more manageable level. Kidd has plans to do just this.

Charles Laughton is in magnificent form. This is overacting taken to the most delightfully extreme levels. He manages to be both horrifyingly amoral and oddly likeable, and also very very amusing. Kidd’s attempts to turn himself into a gentleman provide a good deal of fun. He has hired a valet, Shadwell (Reginald Owen) to teach him the finer points of gentlemanly behaviour. This proves to be quite a challenge for Shadwell.

The supporting cast is very strong, with John Carradine being wonderfully sinister.

Rowland V. Lee was a competent director and does a solid job despite having to work with a somewhat limited budget. With Charles Laughton in full flight there’s never the slightest danger of things becoming boring. The screenplay plays fast and loose with history but it gives Laughton the kind of dialogue he can sink his teeth into. There’s not a huge amount of action but there’s enough to keep the viewer’s interest.

Captain Kidd is in the public domain and there are therefore a number of DVD releases of varying quality. I can’t comment on these discs since I caught this movie on broadcast television (with the print being in reasonable condition).

This would have been a pretty enjoyable pirate adventure anyway, with plenty of nasty plot twists and a gallery of colourful rogues. It’s Charles Laughton’s performance that lifts it to a higher level. For Laughton fans, or for pirate movie fans, it’s pretty much a must-see movie. Highly recommended.

White Woman (1933)

The pre-code era gave birth to a whole sub-genre of outrageous lust in the jungle melodramas in tropical settings. Kongo (1932) may have been the most outrageous of them all but when it comes to pure unadulterated sleaze Paramount’s 1933 offering White Woman is hard to beat.

Carole Lombard is Judith Denning, an American widow eking out a living as a singer in a native bar in Malaya. Or at least that’s what she was doing until it was made clear to her that she was no longer welcome anywhere in the colony. Judith’s husband had shot himself and although she was not charged it’s obvious that there was a strong suspicion that her adultery had driven him to suicide and that she might even have been guilty of more than adultery. That was enough to make her persona non grata but singing in a native bar was the icing on the cake. There really isn’t anywhere for Judith to go since the scandal of her husband’s suicide is going to follow her so when Horace H. Prin (Charles Laughton) asks her to marry him she accepts.

Cockney Prin is a wealthy trader and planter known as the King of the River. He’s debauched and middle-aged and Judith is obviously repelled by him but at the time it seems like the best offer she’s likely to get. So she marries him and they set off for his home in the jungle, a large river steamer decorated in the kind of expensive bad taste you’d expect from a man who started life in the gutter. Spiritually Prin has never left the gutter. He is a bizarre specimen of humanity gone very wrong and he rules his petty kingdom like an oriental despot.

Whether the suspicions attached to Judith’s past life are justified or not it’s obvious that she does not take her marriage vows the slightest bit seriously. Pretty soon she is canoodling with Prin’s overseer David von Elst (Kent Taylor). This simply amuses Prin. He knows he holds all the cards. All the men who work for him have one thing in common - they have no choice. They all have some dirty secret in their past, a dirty secret that Prin knows about and uses gleefully and with sadistic relish. In von Elst’s case it’s cowardice - he deserted from his regiment some years earlier in shameful circumstances. Prin is if anything quite pleased that Judith and von Elst have fallen for each other. If offers him the opportunity for some sadistic entertainment.

The first sign of real trouble comes with the arrival of a new overseer, Ballister (Charles Bickford). Ballister is not afraid of Prin, in fact he’s openly contemptuous. For Prin this offers a new and even more amusing challenge but perhaps this time he has found someone who will call his bluff.

The real trouble starts when two native chiefs arrive to complain about Prin’s shoddy trade goods. Prin insults them in a manner that is outrageous even by his standards. Pretty soon the jungle drums are beating and rebellion is in the air. Prin still believes he is in control, and so he is, for a while. But events are spiralling out of control.

The jungle settings are superbly realised. This movie looks quite lavish in a decadent degenerate sort of way.

Charles Laughton’s performance is deliriously over-the-top even by Laughton standards. When this is combined with one of the most ludicrous moustaches in film history and some  outlandish costumes the results could easily have been mere high camp silliness but Laughton adds a very real sense of viciousness to his characterisation. Prin is a ridiculous figure, but a very dangerous one as well, and his insane over-confidence makes the situation truly explosive.

Charles Bickford shows he can match Laughton when it comes to over-acting. The exchanges between Laughton and Bickford are the movie’s greatest strength - these two actors bounce off one another with magnificent zest.

With Laughton and Bickford in full flight Carole Lombard is inevitably overshadowed. Her performance is good but she’s simply outgunned. Surprisingly, given that Lombard was on the verge of becoming the queen of screwball comedy, she doesn’t try to counter Laughton with wisecracks. It’s obvious that at this stage of her career no-one had yet recognised her supreme comedic talent, which is a pity since a few wisecracks delivered in inimitable Lombard fashion would have enlivened her performance.

Kent Taylor is even more completely overshadowed although he’s competent enough.

The Universal Vault Series made-on-demand DVD is barebones but it offers an extremely good transfer. 

This is real pre-code territory and there’s plentiful sexual innuendo and a general atmosphere of sleaze and depravity that is still quite startling. White Woman positively wallows in sleaze. With Laughton giving one of the most delightfully excessive performances of a delightfully excessive career and Bickford equally over-the-top the result is a deliciously overheated melodrama. Highly recommended.

The Man on the Eiffel Tower (1949)

The Man on the Eiffel Tower is a 1949 murder mystery movie with a particularly involved and incoherent plot, but for all its messiness and muddle it’s worth seeing for some very clever action scenes.

This was a very troubled production with star Charles Laughton at one stage threatening to walk off the picture unless the director was replaced. As a result Laughton’s co-star Burgess Meredith took over as director. The chaos of the production is unfortunately reflected on the screen, with nobody seeming to have any clear idea of exactly the type of movie they were trying to make. Laughton and Meredith share top billing with Franchot Tone who was also the co-producer. All three leads give uneven performances but all three have their moments.

The movie was based on a Georges Simenon novel, with Charles Laughton as Inspector Maigret. Maigret was one of the more intellectual of the great fictional detectives and Laughton’s casting was odd to say the least.

The plot starts with an American couple in Paris. Bill Kirby (Robert Hutton) and his wife Helen (Patricia Roc) have been living on credit for years, patiently waiting for Bill’s rich aunt to die. Or rather, impatiently waiting for her to die. Bill has also acquired a girlfriend, Edna (Jean Wallace), which has made things even more tense. In a cafe Bill is moved to declare that he’d cheerfully pay a million francs to anyone who would kill his aunt for him. His remark is overheard by someone who takes his offer both literally and seriously.

When Bill’s aunt is subsequently found murdered the chief suspect is an impoverished and ineffectual knife-grinder named Joseph Heurtin (Burgess Meredith). Heurtin is arrested. Heurtin would be more worried but he has been promised help in beating the charges. Heurtin subsequently escapes but his escape is in fact engineered by Inspector Maigret. From this point on the plot becomes less and less clear. The main thrust of the movie is a battle of wills between Maigret and a Czech former medical student named Johann Radek (Franchot Tone). We know from the start that Radek was involved in some way although his motivations and many of his actions are decidedly puzzling.

This movie has two things going for it. The first is the battle of wills between Maigret and Radek, with Franchot Tone and Charles Laughton indulging in elaborate psychological game-playing. Tone and Laughton really do strike sparks off each other in their scenes together and Tone is quite disturbing and convincing as the highly intelligent but thoroughly unhinged Radek.

The second thing the movie has in its favour is the very skillful use of the Paris locations, especially in several clever and imaginative chase sequences. There is a chase across the rooftops of the city, and later a chase on the Eiffel Tower. It’s fairly clear that these sequences, particularly the Eiffel Tower sequence, were inspired by Hitchcock (most notably by his famous Statue of Liberty sequence in Saboteur). These sequences can’t quite match the brilliance of Hitchcock but they’re worthy attempts and they are quite successful in themselves.

The movie would have a lot more going for it in visual terms if it could be seen in a decent transfer. The copy I watched was from a Mill Creek public domain set and it really was atrocious (and apparently all the other public domain editions floating about are just as awful). The movie was shot in a process called Anscocolor. Unfortunately the colours have faded very very badly. This is a great pity because the movie makes extensive use of location shooting in Paris and at the time it must have been quite stunning. 

The Man on the Eiffel Tower is an oddity. It’s far from being a complete success but it’s undeniably intriguing. It’s a movie that I suspect I’d be a good deal more enthusiastic about if I had the chance to see a restored print. Recommended, although with reservations. If you can find one of the public domain DVD editions of this movie for rental then I’d say to go for it.