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Alan Ladd's transformation from stubbly fleapit dweller to angel of death (trench coat, fedora, faint smile) is a severe trick, and a rare chance to see an icon being whipped up right before your eyes. Veronica Lake's musical numbers are similarly svelte sleights of hand, "Now You See It, Now You Don't" is a magic show (vanishing orbs and all) in clinging satin while "I've Got You" gives her black-leather rain slicker and fishing rod. He's a hit-man grown fatalistic on childhood traumas ("I'd like to crawl down there with you and sleep," he says to the stray cat he's just snuffed out), she's a chanteuse doing undercover work for the government—legitimate stars, matched in size, stylized insouciance and witty blankness. The intrigue bounces from San Francisco to Los Angeles and points to Old King Chlorine (Tully Marshall) at the top of the Nitro Chemical tower, the wizened magnate with "boyfriends abroad." Graham Greene's parable of war and business, and as much a study of a rogue's grudging mobilization as Casablanca. (Ladd: "I don't go soft for anybody." Lake: "This war is everybody's business.") Robert Preston as the heroine's law-enforcing beau, Laird Cregar as a peppermint-devouring middleman and patron of the nightclub arts, Marc Lawrence as the cheerful chauffeur who can't understand why his boss gets squeamish when he goes into gruesome detail about a witness' demise: Polished vaudeville acts that illustrate Louise Brooks' remark about Frank Tuttle's knack for imperceptibly playing comedy straight. Poison gas into "Japanese breakfast food for America," the powder puff on noir alley, the Hitchcockian chase like "a hayride with Dracula." Melville's Le Samouraï mines it richly, Hopper's Catchfire has the couple's escape in the refinery. With Roger Imhof, Frank Ferguson, Olin Howland, Pamela Blake, and Mikhail Rasumny. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |