Hope everyone had a restful and enjoyable holiday weekend. Well I am back with my latest edition of the weekly series, Tuesday’s Overlooked Film. Again, special thanks to Todd Mason of Sweet Freedom for collecting all the contributions.
This week, I thought I had a film all lined up, but then I read a post by frequent commenter to this site, ‘Jack Deth,’ on the website, Front Room Cinema. His post was about the Top Ten Femme Fatales. As one may have guessed, many of them came from the film movement/genre known as film noir. That immediately put me in a noir-ish mood, having also just recently sat through TCM’s ‘Noir Christmas.’
This inspiration lead me to the 1944 feature, The Woman in the Window, directed by Fritz Lang. It starred Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett and Dan Duryea. It is based on J. H. Wallis’ novel Once Off Guard.
At the beginning of the film, our protagonist, the milquetoast Professor Wanley (Robinson) is headed towards his gentlemen’s club while his family is away. He passes a shop window and sees an oil painting of the lovely Alice Reed (Bennett). After a night in the club, Wanley departs only to run into the subject of the painting in the flesh. This chance encounter leads Wanley and the audience on an unexpected journey that comes to a shocking conclusion.
At the time of its release, The Woman in the Window was a minor critical and commercial success. But as with many things, over time, this film became forgotten by the masses – with the exception of the most ardent of noir fans.
This principle cast and director would collaborate again in 1945′s Scarlet Street.
Man Hunt (1941) directed by Fritz Lang
For a synopsis of the plot, I will refer you to Turner Classic Movie’s encyclopedia of the film. I will just explain why I like this film.
When I first saw this movie I really enjoyed the premise of the “hunt and the hunted” that kept me on the edge of my seat for the duration of the movie.
As for performance, George Sanders stands out in his “magnificent” portrayal as the Nazi antagonist. TANGENT ALERT Sanders in my opinion was a top-notch good character actor that I feel like too many people do not talk about nowadays. Films that immediately conjure up his memorable performances include Rebecca, Foreign Correspondent, All About Eve, Picture of Dorian Gray, to name a few. When he was a “good guy” he was roguishly so and when he was “not-so-good,” he came off as sly an devlish. In this film that trait makes him so convincing as the Nazi villain to Walter Pidgeon’s noble protagonist.
As someone who was not alive during that time, I have easily fallen under the impression that most if not all WWII movies produced in America were made after our entry into the war (12/7/1941, nearly 6 months after this film’s initial cinematic release). So over the years it has been enlightening to discover that there were many Hollywood productions that dealt with the spectre of war that people must have been feeling if even separated by that war with an ocean.