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It opens with a tower bell tolling amid thick fog, and showcases a keen editor-turned-director exploring camera movement. The Scotland Yard superintendent (Sydney Greenstreet) knows all too well the "disturbing contradictions" of the métier, the man he sent to the gallows was innocent all along, scandal leads to his forcible retirement. The supercilious successor (George Coulouris) is all at sea with the case at hand, the "murder in a locked room" of the nephew of the original victim (Morton Lowry). The former inspector takes an interest, he's writing a book. (Peter Lorre as his painter pal is eager to do the illustrations: "I can draw corpses, hmm, exquisitely.") Music-hall chanteuse (Joan Lorring) and Parliament reformist (Paul Cavanagh) also figure in the mystery, a vengeful strand of thought emerges in due time, "there's always a clue, if you can find it." Don Siegel in his feature debut has fin de siècle London in tight arrangements of mist and shadow, and displays the acerbic suspicion of justice systems that gives rise to the renegades and vigilantes of Madigan and Dirty Harry. (His knack for vivid cameos is another trademark already in full sway, from the Cockney burglar brought in for advice to the pinched landlady who pores over Sensational Weekly while sipping her nightcap of spiked milk.) Hitchcock's Murder! for the deliberating juror, swish-pan close-ups for the eponymous pronouncement, "the human equation" throughout. In their final pairing, Greenstreet's evocation of the inquisitive psyche at work harmonizes with Lorre's rendition of the artist's macabre bounce. "I've always had a suppressed desire to see a grave opened. Especially at night." Lang perforates the experiment in Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. With Rosalind Ivan, Arthur Shields, Holmes Herbert, Clyde Cook, John Goldsworthy, and Ian Wolfe. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |