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Title definition on a dictionary page, light bulb fading in close-up, panorama of London going dark. "Who did this?" Cut to the culprit walking toward the lenses, the entire overture is right out of Lang. The American émigré (Sylvia Sidney) works the box-office at the Bijou Cinema, behind the movie screen is the drab flat she shares with her husband (Oskar Homolka), a melancholy terrorist whose latest job has spoiled the audience's night. "It doesn't pay to antagonize the public." Bombs are the next step, discussed at the public aquarium in a foreglimpse of The Lady from Shanghai. (Ritt's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is also anticipated in an extended dialogue exchange between bulky men with their backs turned.) At the bird shop, the owner (William Dewhurst) specializes in explosives and canaries that don't sing, "I must keep the fighters supplied." Trailing all is the Scotland Yard detective undercover as a jaunty vegetable peddler (John Loder). Scenes from a marriage, rehearsal for a war. Between Alfred Hitchcock's mordancy and Joseph Conrad's somberness, a ruthless system of ironies. The Rear Window view of beasts, "some of them are quite ordinary-looking, like you and me." The crucial image is the ticking bomb side by side with the celluloid tin can, the crucial sequence puts them both in the hands of the heroine's little brother (Desmond Tester), who dawdles mindlessly during delivery and goes up in flames along with a packed bus, Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers absorbs it wholly. Hitchcock's montage in the aftermath is even more astounding: The distraught Sidney wanders into a cartoon matinee and laughter is stuck in her throat, the Blackmail knife makes a telling appearance in the dinner that follows. Happy endings, "deeds of darkness." With Joyce Barbour, Matthew Boulton, S.J. Warmington, Peter Bull, and Martita Hunt. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |