Comedy mysteries were a staple of the 1930s, from Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man movies to the Philo Vance series and many others. In the 40s, those mysteries turned into film noir and the lighthearted tone was replaced by a darker, more serious vibe. However, as one decade transitioned into another, there were a few holdovers of the comedy-mystery genre that made their way into the 40s. The best of these later genre entries is, surprising, not a big budget production, but a B-movie that was part of an otherwise unremarkable series of films fittingly featuring a B-list private detective: Michael Shayne.
In Dressed to Kill Shayne, played by Lloyd Nolan, is trying to balance his private live with his professional, investigating a bizarre murder while also trying to find time to marry his fiancée. On the way to pick her up before their wedding, Shayne hears a scream from the apartment upstairs, and when he goes to see what it is, he finds two dead bodies sitting at a dinner table, both dressed in costumes, including a dogs head on one of them. Shayne's investigation uncovers a maze of blackmail, embezzling, jealous, and hatred. While all this may seem pretty heavy, it is handled with a light tone and injected with a ton of humor courtesy of Shayne's wisecracks, the frustrations of his continually ignored fiancée Joanne (Mary Beth Hughes), and the over-wrought Police inspector investigating the murder (William Demarest). Nolan, mostly a bit player throughout his career, really shines as the devil-may-care Shayne, who hides his intelligence behind a witty tongue. Hughes and Demarest are terrific and hilarious supporting characters, especially Demarest, who manages to maintain a consistent level of unhinged frustration at the machinations of Shayne. Surprisingly for a b-movie, Dressed to Kill is very well shot by director Eugene J. Forde and cinematographer Glen MacWilliams, who shoots apartment buildings in such a dark, foreboding way they seem scarier than back alleys.
What Dressed to Kill lacks in star power it makes up for with a deep cast of character actors and a genuinely engaging mystery story, with plenty of twists and turns, but it is all handled with a light, cheerful hand with plenty of laughs along the way.
Horror films that weren't based on famous monsters (Dracula, the Wolfman, etc.) didn't become a big part of mainstream cinema until the 50s and 60s, but there were a number original horror movies prior to then, including the unique, seminal British horror movie Dead of Night. Though it may not be as well remembered today, Dead of Night was the first of what has become a horror tradition: the anthology film. Framed by the story of architect Walter Craig (Mervyn Jones) who gathers together a group of eight strangers at a country house to warn them of the terrible dreams he has been having about them. While at the house, the guests attempt to test Craig's premonitions while also regaling on another with the time honored tradition of telling one another ghost stories. These stories range from gothic horror ("The Haunted Mirror") to atmospheric ("The Hearse Driver"), disturbing ("Ventriloquist Dummy") chillingly creepy ("Christmas Party") and even humorous ("The Two Golfers"). The five segments are helmed by four different directors which gives each a different feel, just as ghost stories told in a haunted mansion would vary in presentation based on the teller of the story. The most famous section of the movie stars Michael Redgrave as a ventriloquist who believes his dummy is not only alive, but evil. This idea has been aped many, many times since and established ventriloquist dummy as a classic horror archetype that still endures to this day. However, the scariest part of Dead of Night is the ending, which wraps up all the scary stories into the framing narrative, as we enter the mind of the dreaming Craig.
With each tale bringing a different facet of scary story-telling, Dead of Night is a broad look at the genre, but in the end it is great because it is truly scary. That not something that can be said about many old movies, atmospheric yes, but not many give your the feeling of lingering dread that Dead of Night does, both with the scary stories and over-arching narative.
28. Rebecca (1940)
For Hitchcock's first American film, he delivered a powerful punch and one of the most atmospheric movies ever made. Adapted from the popular Daphne de Maurier novel, Rebecca had a tumultuous production, with Hitchcock battling producer David O. Selznick for control of the film, which is odd because the final film is so polish. Despite all these issues, the movie won Best Picture at the Academy Awards and was a huge hit at the box office. While his British films got Hitchcock on the map as a burgeoning talent, Rebecca announced his presence to the world as one of the best filmmakers working.
Rebecca starts out like a straightforward romance between widower Max de Winter (Laurence Olivier) and a young woman (Joan Fontaine), who meet at Monte Carlo, fall in love and are married after only two weeks. However, the movie soon morphs into a Gothic horror story with some of the most unique characteristics of any film, past or present. As the newly weds return to Manderley, the de Winter's giant country home, the bride is faced with living up to the standards of her husband's deceased wife, Rebecca. Complicating matters is Manderley's vindictive housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson) who is obsessed with Rebecca and resents the woman trying to take her place. She terrorizes the new bride and makes her life miserable, manipulating to the breaking point. The movie chronicles the unraveling both the mystery of Rebecca and the sanity of several characters.
What makes the movie so singular is that of the five main characters in the movie, one is a house the other is dead. Manderley is a tremendous set, with amazing architecture, furniture, as well as something much more important and intangible: atmosphere. The house is a character in of itself, in almost every scene the amount of haunting and foreboding that it provides adds to every scene. Hitchcock uses a lot of zoomed out shots of Fontaine in Manderley's massive halls, giving you a sense of how isolated and overwhelmed she is. Like the house, Max's dead wife Rebecca dwarfs His new wife and is just as much, if not more, of a character. While the movie itself is named after her, and Rebecca is spoken of in almost every scene, Fontaine's character is never even given a name, credited only as "the second Mrs. de Winter." Rebecca haunts every scene, and the mystery and obsession of her is what drives the movie to it's dramatic conclusion.
The majority of Film Noir are told from the perspective of the darker side of life; criminals, private detectives, and low-lifes are the main characters. If the police are involved, it is usually of a corrupt kind, or operating outside the law. That isn't the case with The Naked City, which is told from the perspective of two by-the-books, New York homicide detectives.
These two detectives are veteran Detective Lt. Dan Muldoon (Barry Fitzgerald) and rookie Detective Jimmy Halloran; the story follows them as they investigate the murder of a young woman named Jean Dexter. The investigation plays out through a very detailed, police procedural style; we see crime photographers, sketchers, witnesses interviewed, and suspects interrogated as well as the tremendous amount of trial-and-error legwork involved in tracking down leads. Suspects are introduced, including Jean's psychiatrist, the cagey Dr. Stoneman (House Jameson), her boyfriend Frank Niles (Frank Niles), and the mysterious Philip Henderson. Muldoon and Halloran slowly put the pieces together and track down the killer, leading to a climactic chase and shootout. However, neither of the two detectives, any of the suspects, or even the victim is the main character of this story, the main character is the city of New York. Shot almost entirely on location in the city, the movie makes great use of both famous locations as well as common city streets, alleys, and subway stations. The New York is alive with characters, and the movie takes time to give us little looks into common people as they go about their business, many of them portrayed by local non-actors.
Throughout the case, The Naked City is presented with purposeful realism, the movie wants you to feel as if you're watching a documentary about a murder investigation, not a dramatic rendition, something it does very well. Director Jules Dassin, who would soon be blacklisted out of Hollywood, masterfully arranged the movie, cross-cutting to different parts of the city at different times, successfully telling us one of the "eight million" stories in the naked city, as the film's closing line puts it. There is no earth shattering revelation, no corrupt political bosses are taken down, The Naked City simply covers one story over couple of day in the most famous city in the world.
No event had a larger impact on the 1940s, and perhaps the 20th century, than World War II. The same can be said for the movies of the 40s, whether it be the influx of war and anti-war pictures, patriotic tear-jerkers, or of course spy movies, most movies made during war time were in response to the war. Some were trying to say something about it, others to support a certain party or side, and many were just plain attempting to turn a tidy profit, but without a doubt World War II was good for the movie business. As a result, all this financial success meant that there were many movies made in an attempt to exploit this, most of which were poorly made. The espionage genre especially suffered from an abundance of bad films, studios simply needed a rudimentary spy plot, and exotic local, and call the bad guys Nazis and you had a recipe for success.
However, of all the movies influenced by the War, the best come from this genre, when they are well written and made. Ministry of Fear definitely has that, it is directed by a master, Fritz Lang, and takes it source material from novelist Graham Greene's same-titled novel. In the movie, Stephen Neale (Ray Milland) has just been released from two years in a sanitarium after "mercy-killing" his sick wife. On his way back to London, he stops at a village fair and visits the fortune tellers tent, where he is mistaken from someone else and given the correct number to bid on the weight of the cake. Winning the cake, he boards a train for London, but is soon attacked by a man pretending to be blind, who steals the cake and escapes. This sets in motion Neale's attempts to unravel a network of Nazi spies, with the help of brother and sister Willi and Carla (Carl Esmond and Marjorie Reynolds) he tracks the ring back to a charity and one of it's luminaries, Mrs. Bellane (Hillary Brooks). Mixed in with classic genre fixtures of intrigue and mistaken identity comes a creeping suspensefulness born of Neale's past and Bellane's use of mysticism and seances that give the movie just that creepy edge. This aspect of the character highlights one of the best parts of the movie: great side characters, particularly villains. In addition to Bellane, the mysterious Dr. Forrester (Alan Napier) and the sinister, slimy Travers (Dan Duryea) round out a great cast of shifty bad guys who are so much more interesting that traditional faceless, lifeless Nazi agents that dot other pictures or this type. Ministry of Fear is also exceptionally well made, shot in a noir style of stark contrast, Lang and cinematographer Henry Sharp film open fields and apartment buildings with the same level of darkness and shadow that underlies the theme of enemies and evildoers hiding in plain sight.
Released just a year before to the end of the war, Ministry of Fear is one of the best of the World War II espionage thrillers because it has a genuine mystery at it's heart, unique characters, and is crafted with both style and care by one of the noir masters.
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