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The move west from Laura's New York anticipates Polanski's from Rosemary's Baby to Chinatown, and there is an adumbration of Jake Gittes' dictum ("I try to help somebody, somebody else gets hurt"). Off the Greyhound with a buck in his pocket, the conman (Dana Andrews) in the coastal California hamlet, strolling into the roadside greasy spoon to have his burger eaten by the dark beauty (Linda Darnell). "The publicity game" is his specialty, he packs the local theater for a séance with the traveling spiritualist (John Carradine) and then decides to stick around for the next target, the sheltered heiress (Alice Faye). The sultry flame expires, the moths include retired police detective (Charles Bickford) and lovelorn diner owner (Percy Kilbride) and jukebox operator (Bruce Cabot). "The possibilities are many, and all interesting, don't you think?" "In a cold-blooded sort of way, sure." Otto Preminger continually uses prodigiously fluid camera movement to edit a scene—it cranes from Carradine in close-up profile to the ocean of faces in the audience until it reaches the protagonist in the back row, in the middle of a rowdy dance it swiftly dollies in for a whisper shared between two conspirators. Faye's faint smile at the breakfast table fades to Darnell's provocative pout at the lunch counter, yet schematic contrasts are complicated by the shrewdness and vulnerability gradually discovered in both characters. (As the cop socks a suspect, a teddy bear in the dead girl's flat is briefly contemplated.) The comic irony of a murder helping out an awkward honeymoon, the true test of faith for a church organist. "You talk different, sure. But you drive like all the rest." The interplay of brunette and blonde continues in Vertigo and L'Avventura. Cinematography by Joseph LaShelle. With Anne Revere, Dorothy Adams, Olin Howland, and Jimmy Conlin. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |