Sorry, Wrong Number

Sorry, Wrong Number is a 1948 film starring Barbara Stanwyck as the rich and spoiled invalid wife of Burt Lancaster. Alone at home, she overhears a phone call which seems to be about a murder plot. It’s a classic set-up and I enjoyed the movie, which is dark both in photography and plot.

The ‘overheard conversation’ is a staple of a good many crime stories, one example being Philip Macdonald’s The Nursemaid Who Disappeared, which predates Lucille Fletcher’s very successful radio play on which the film is based. In the movie, the main story is told through a series of flashbacks, but this doesn’t stop the tension mounting, thanks to Stanwyck’s performance, at her highly-strung best.

The story involves a fraudulent scheme featuring a dodgy guy called Morano – played by William Conrad, who later played Frank Cannon, the rather obese TV gumshoe. Lancaster is in moody, and pretty effective, form, but the film belongs to Stanwyck.

Fletcher turned her story into a novel, and she wrote a number of others, none of which I’ve read. As an aspiring radio writer, she met a young composer, who became her first husband. His name was Bernard Herrmann, and he became one of the best composers for crime films of all time. But his great scores for Hitchcock came after the marriage ended.

Witness to Murder

Witness to Murder is a 1954 movie which I stumbled across the other day and found surprisingly enjoyable. The premise is engaging, if not totally original – a woman sees a murder committed in the apartment block across the road, but can’t find anyone to believe her story, and becomes increasingly paranoid.

So we are in Rear Window territory, although Cornell Woolrich wasn’t responsible for the screenplay, which was the work of director Chester Erskine. The cinematographic style takes Witness to Murder into the realm of film noir, and despite a few implausible plot twists, and scenes which veer into high melodrama, overall this is an effective piece of movie-making.

The key to the film’s success lies in the casting of the two stars. Barbara Stanwyck is almost as good playing the panic-stricken good girl as she is at portraying the dark-hearted bad girl in Double Indemnity. The oily George Sanders is suitably nasty as Richter, the violence-obsessive who strangles a prostitute and then sets out to destabilise, discredit and ultimately kill the witness to his crime. To rub in how unpleasant Richter is, he turns out to be an ex-Nazi who rants away in an explosive burst of guttural German when provoked. Sanders played so many appalling rotters in his time that I really do hope he was a delightful chap in real life. Fortunately, a nice cop falls for Stanwyck, and though his attempt to prove her story correct draws a blank time and again, he doesn’t give up.

This isn’t a major film, but the suspense is maintained throughout with a climactic scene worthy of Vertigo, and that coupled with the performance of the two stars explains why it has worn well. I’m glad I watched it.

The Two Mrs Carrolls

I rather enjoyed The Two Mrs Carrolls, a movie that is often described as a film noir (though I think you need to define film noir quite loosely to accommodate it.) Really, it is as much a classic woman in jeopardy story as the very different Back to the Coast which I discussed the other day.

Unexpectedly, the woman in jeopardy is Barbara Stanwyck, often a femme fatale, but here a rather syrupy character who makes the mistake of falling for psychopathic artist Humphrey Bogart. Bogart too is cast against type – he’s not really ideal for the role of angst-ridden creative genius, and the headaches which represent his troubled mental state are portrayed (to be blunt) in an overplayed manner of which any ham actor would be proud. Yet somehow, despite the flaws of the film – it’s based on a stage play, and the theatrical origins of the story become increasingly apparent as the story progresses – it is still pretty entertaining to watch.

Bogart falls for Stanwyck while still married to the first Mrs Carroll. He paints his wife as the Angel of Death, and then, as his creative juices begin to dry up, decides to murder her. For a time, he is happy with Stanwyck, but then the problem returns and he allows himself to be seduced by Alexis Smith (rather less attractive than Stanywyck, but there’s no accounting for tastes.) He embarks on another murder plot, but his schemes are complicated by a blackmailing chemist and his own precocious daughter. Very watchable.