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Out of a torpedoed ship and into a Gothic cage, the war's hallucinatory trauma. The orphaned heiress (Merle Oberon) sits up at the hospital to address the camera in a daze ("Did you ever go to a funeral where the minister forgot the sermon? Did you?"), her blurry POV comes into focus to reveal the doctor (Franchot Tone) who's to take her to relatives she's never met. Aunt (Fay Bainter) and uncle (John Qualen) and family friend (Thomas Mitchell) in the Louisiana mansion, something not quite right and fiercely enforced by the plantation weasel (Elisha Cook Jr.). "I'll admit, the bayou country has its drawbacks..." Parallel to Gaslight, a barbed analysis of the "persecution complex" as a woman drowning on land. Deep South swamps make surprising noir landscapes (cf. Siodmak's Son of Dracula), humid outdoor shadows contrast with the architecture of stifling interiors, sinister psychological spaces all. (The light in the gloom is the Cajun community that throws jolly hoedowns, the hard-edged lens softens momentarily to contemplate a pair of curious urchins under the dance boards or a jitterbugging couple on the margins of the screen.) André De Toth's very fine technique is visible throughout—the shift from zany comedy to discomforting newsreel at a movie house depicted on the faces of the audience, a tilt up from watery reflections to the heroine suddenly no longer alone, Mitchell on a boat drifting into a baleful close-up. The inquisitive gaze is shared with the discharged worker (Rex Ingram), the bog of memory comes with quicksand. "I've told you about bloodstains. They're a giveaway." The sinking feeling must be confronted at the end, and the following year Lewis has My Name Is Julia Ross. With Nina Mae McKinney, Odette Myrtil, and Eugene Borden. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |