|
Go to bed a strapped secretary and wake up a caged wife, a malevolent matrimonial machination (cf. Sirk's Sleep, My Love). Rootless Yank in London (Nina Foch), "absolutely alone," perfect prey for the sinister operation fronting as an employment agency. The new boss is a wily old manipulator (Dame May Whitty), the real job is to replace the espouse murdered by her psychotic son (George Macready). (While the young woman's suitcase is being destroyed, he's busy shredding her clothes with a knife.) A new identity for the captive in the Cornish mansion, scarcely fooled by a locked bedroom and a stranger's name. "Sleeping pills to keep me down, prowlers to keep me awake!" Every shot though Joseph H. Lewis' eager eye is more ornate than expected, a richness of framing and texture that bespeaks extensive studies of Hitchcock and Wyler. Furtive correspondence and crumpled notes have their role to play, waves crash menacingly as the scion extols the secrets of the sea, his back and shoulder reducing the heroine to a pair of frightened eyes. A shadowy hand creeps over her figure, a staircase collapses under her feet. "Nerves, dear. Just nerves." Whitty's presence points up The Lady Vanishes and Gaslight, and anticipates the complicit mothers of Notorious and Strangers on a Train. No help from anxious maid or ponderous vicar, the cat in the mirror reveals the secret passage, a dastardly concoction no one believes. (Faced with a cry for help, locals commend the killer's husbandly dedication: "How touching.") It's all solved on the beachfront, and wrapped with a wink. "The next time I apply for a job, I'll ask for the references." Lewis in The Big Combo follows another woman suspended between bondage and madness. Cinematography by Burnett Guffey. With Roland Varno, Anita Sharp-Bolster, Doris Lloyd, and Joy Harrington . In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |