The Locket (1946)

Directed by John Brahm; produced by Bert Granet

The happily anticipated wedding of a man (Gene Raymond) and woman (Laraine Day) is interrupted by the sudden arrival of a doctor (Brian Aherne) who, speaking confidentially with the groom, warns him that his bride is a malicious, lying thief, responsible for the destruction of several men. To the incredulous would-be husband, the stranger unfolds a tale of deceit, tragedy and death.

Driven by excellent performances, The Locket is an absorbing study of the devastation one person can wreak. Day’s character, Nancy Fuller, is a kleptomaniac; more than that, however, she is a thoroughly amoral woman who, while not incapable of affection, pivots her feelings on how or whether people support her and her lies.

The men in her life (including Robert Mitchum, as an initial boyfriend) are captivated by her vivacious personality, a quite charming, even warm, demeanour which, though not superficial or false, is nonetheless hollow, filled with selfishness, and a determination to sacrifice all others if necessary.

Those men, and other characters, are well delineated. Mitchum and Aherne, in particular, play two different types of men drawn to Nancy. Neither is gullible or unintelligent, but each is drawn deeply into their feelings for the woman, and thus are both easy prey to her self-centredness and correspondingly affected when they learn the truth.

The actors are up to the tasks given them by the well-rounded characters. Aherne may seem bland, but gives his character a depth that is hidden by the off-handedly amiable English facade. Mitchum’s artist is lightly unconventional, disdainful of the establishment, but honest enough to be grateful for a rich patron and moral enough to be astounded at Nancy’s crimes.

The movie revolves around Nancy Fuller, and if her portrayal were not convincing, the film would suffer severely. Day is very good in the role. Her emotional scenes are involving: her casual acceptance of some accusations are maddening, her indignation at others becomes outrageous. Day allows Nancy’s switches from anger to sorrow and back again, her sobbing displays for pity and her disregard of consequences for others, to be credible.

The story and script are good. Mitchum’s lines are especially suited to his character’s eventual cynicism. The origin of Nancy’s psychological problems may be simplistic, but is dramatically acceptable. The device of flashbacks within flashbacks does not lead to confusion so much as it does a question of whether the characters providing the narration are telling the truth. Since the audience is not meant to question the events of these memories, that is a difficulty for the story. However, it is the only really prominent problem.

The Locket is a tale of the horrendous damage a callous and supremely selfish individual can cause, a story of how casual evil can be a greater danger than calculated malice. Sometimes not caring about consequences can do more harm than arranging them. Through well-written characters excellently brought to life by fine performances, this movie both entertains and thrills.

The Man With Two Lives (1942)

Directed by Phil Rosen; produced by A. W. Hackel

At the exact moment a murderous criminal is executed, a young man (Edward Norris) is revived after what was first thought a fatal car accident. Initially overjoyed, his family is soon consternated by the survivor’s inexplicable behaviour, unaware that his body has in fact been occupied by the soul of the late killer.

When one sees that a film was made by Monogram Pictures, one knows its production values won’t be high, and its cast will be largely unknown. But any creation of Hollywood’s ‘Poverty Row’ shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. The Man With Two Lives is a entertaining film, principally through the medium of its leading man.

Edward Norris had a very busy career in low-budget cinema, sometimes acting in half a dozen movies a year from the early 1930s to the late ‘50s. Taking small roles in bigger movies, he was often a lead in the cheaper productions, before moving for a few years into television.

In The Man With Two Lives, he gives a convincing performance, first, as a decent but rather bland young man, and then, as a psychopathic criminal. His interpretation of the latter makes the character rather charming at times, and he easily slips from bonhomie to menace. He makes the far-fetched and under-written story credible. There is a good scene in which his character simply barges in on a meeting of his old gang, guns down the new leader and takes over. The confidence Norris gives the man carries conviction.

Marlo Dwyer, as the criminal’s former girlfriend, matches Norris’s skill, but in a more natural fashion. The other actors veer from capable to wooden, and, while they fulfill their parts well enough, achieve no more.

The story combines crime drama with a touch of mysticism. As mentioned above, it stretches believability, though not to the breaking point. The script is better at dialogue than at actually furthering the story, but nonetheless has some interesting aspects. The newly re-awakened soul of the killer doesn’t recall his past life, and so must reconcile what he is told about who everyone thinks he is, with his urges and subconscious memories. There is a disastrous one minute at the end of the film which should be ignored for the benefit of the film’s enjoyment.

Unlikely to be found even on the latest of late-show movies, The Man With Two Lives is probably typical of the ‘programmers’ that filled out a double bill, paired with a more watchable film, back in the 1940s. Even so, it has its moments, and is better than one might think.

Hangman's Knot (1952)

Directed by Roy Huggins; produced by Harry Joe Brown

In the last days of the American Civil War, a Confederate Army major (Randolph Scott), dispatched to Nevada to capture a Union wagon carrying gold, carries out his mission, killing all of the wagon’s escort. Returning to their local contact, the Southerners discover that the war had ended a month before, and that they are liable to hang for murder and theft. Their one chance is to escape to Mexico. But chased by a posse and soon cornered, that chance starts looking remote.

About 1946, Randolph Scott made the decision to act only in westerns, and for the next 16 years and the last forty films of his career (excepting a cameo as himself in a 1951 film), he did just that. The decision served him well, especially when he teamed with director Budd Boetticher. Huggins isn’t in Boetticher’s league – directing only this one feature – but Hangman’s Knot is a good, solid entry in Scott’s genre of choice. More likeable than John Wayne and tougher than Joel McCrea, Scott is a strong, tolerant, moral leader in the film, the sort of character the viewer immediately trusts and admires.

The other actors turn in creditable performances and create more than just cardboard people. Claude Jarman Jr plays a young soldier who clearly would prefer to have remained at peace on his family’s farm, and Lee Marvin is convincing as Scott’s subordinate who wavers uncomfortably close to villainy. Donna Reed’s role as the leading lady is almost perfunctory, however; hers is the weakest character. Frank Faylen (who portrayed Ernie the cab-driver in It’s a Wonderful Life, also starring Donna Reed) has a good role as an easy-going, almost philosophical soldier.

(I find it interesting that a number of older movies (from the 1940s and ‘50s) seemed to have had an easier time believably illustrating the diversity of types in an army than do movies now, the latter often coming across as self-conscious in such attempts. Perhaps this has to do with the fact that in the said decades, almost everyone in the U.S., Canada and Europe had been or had known men who had served in war.)

Huggins’s writing is rather better than his directing, and makes use of the stolen gold as a catalyst. The posse who pursue Scott and his men may or may not be legitimate sheriff’s deputies, but the distraction the gold exerts on them is real. It has an effect on the Southerners, too, with even Scott’s character being vexed as to what to do with the incriminating cargo.

A positive aspect of Hangman’s Knot is the stunts. Yakima Canutt, the famous and pioneering Hollywood stuntman, is the movie’s second unit director, and undoubtedly had a hand in devising the physicality of the film. That’s probably him in the ambush scene, leapfrogging onto a horse to get away; it’s a jump that he perfected for the cinema.

While no classic, Hangman’s Knot provides a satisfying time, with good action, a decent story and commendable performances.

 

Mr Skeffington (1944)

Directed by Vincent Sherman; produced by Julius J and Philip G Epstein

In 1914, Fanny Trellis (Bette Davis) is the most popular girl in New York. She is courted by numerous suitors, all determined and all disarmingly dismissed by the object of their affection. However, when her beloved brother, Trippy (Richard Waring), is caught embezzling money from his employer, Job Skeffington (Claude Rains), Fanny uses her charms to woo the smitten man into marriage. Thus begins the intriguing, sad and eventful relationship that carries the pair over the next twenty years.

This is a drama that both highlights, and is carried by, the actors, in particular the two leads. Davis certainly did not shy away from playing unsympathetic characters in her career, and Fanny Trellis fits very well into that category. She is vain, superficial and empty; her self-love is shared only with her brother and, perhaps, her sensible and good-hearted cousin, George (Walter Abel). She may like others, even admire them, but she has no warmth for them, and, consequently, the audience has little for her. But Fanny is not meant to be sympathetic. She conveys a story to the viewer; she does not win his heart.

Rains, on the other hand, is much more likeable, and the audience almost instinctively wishes his character a better life. It’s interesting that he changes gradually – at first, he indulges his new wife’s shallowness, then is disappointed by it, and finally frustrated – while Fanny changes abruptly when confronted with a crisis. This is true to their characters.

The other actors do well – Waring’s overly dramatic interpretation of his part is likely due to direction – though their characters are much more sketchily drawn than Davis’s and Rains’s.

The story is a good one, an adult story. Skeffington is Jewish (“Skeffington. That's a strange name for Market and Cherry”, Fanny remarks – the movie’s writers came from that part of New York) and people react to that heritage differently. Trippy is clearly anti-semitic, but Jewish or gentile means nothing to Fanny, indicative more of her indifference to people than to ethnicity. The adultery characters engage in is handled obliquely, due to censorship of the times, a quality which often creates better and more imaginative scripts than does the later permissiveness. Even so, these sins in themselves illustrate character: Fanny bounces from one good-looking, exciting man to another, while Skeffington takes up with plainer, intelligent women.

The movie is not without flaws, the biggest being Davis herself. She was in her mid-30s during filming, and never looks convincing as the young Fanny. Nor was she ever attractive enough to represent the most desired woman in Society. Hedy Lamarr’s was a name bruited about for the role; she would certainly have been a convincing beauty, but her acting would not have sufficed. Davis’s overcomes the incredible scenes.

As well, the score, by Franz Waxman, is over-wrought, used too loudly and strongly at melodramatic moments. And the film, at two and a half hours, is a little too long.

Despite the problems, Mr Skeffington is an involving tale of two people who should not have met, should never have married, and the trials they go through because of their unsuited temperaments and lives.