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Leisure does not come easily to the inquisitive mind, a doctor articulates the situation: "Is the great detective thinking of a case even on his vacation?" He (Steven Geray) is admired and overworked in Paris, on a holiday in the country he's a middle-aged bachelor captivated by the innkeeper's daughter (Micheline Cheirel). (Peeping from behind sheets on a clothesline, she gazes past the visitor to his big-city car in a montage of shiny auto parts, from hood ornament to hubcaps.) The maiden is engaged to a local lug (Paul Marion), the sleuth regards their elopement with a dolorous shrug. "That much happiness wasn't meant for me." Once their corpses turn up, he's back in his element, sniffing out clues and receiving anonymous letters and noticing that the tell-tale footprint in the barn is suspiciously close to his own. The blandness of the opening scenes modulates into a pendant of La Règle du Jeu (Renoir is concurrent with his own studio reworking in The Diary of a Chambermaid) before darkening into Clouzot territory, all part of Joseph H. Lewis' design. "As elusive as my shadow," sinister duality spreads—the camera tilts upwards from the murky reflection in the river to the protagonist leaning against a bridge railing, framed against the cloudy sky while discussing a past "illness." The deep-focus experiments of My Name Is Julia Ross are expanded, the dead matriarch in the kitchen is composed with dripping faucet in the foreground, steaming tea kettle in the middleground and detective at the background entrance, a slight movement of the camera reveals a lifeless hand. "The imposition of a disordered brain" feeds Lewis' expressionistic eye, the Beckettian "rupture" of the climax fits the schizophrenic seeker who always gets his man. Cinematography by Burnett Guffey. With Eugene Borden, Ann Codee, Egon Brecher, Helen Freeman, Gregory Gaye, and Brother Theodore. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |