PHANTOM LADY (1944) B/W 87m dir: Robert Siodmak
w/Franchot Tone, Ella Raines, Alan Curtis, Aurora Miranda, Thomas Gomez, Fay Helm, Elisha Cook Jr.,Andrew Tombes Jr., Regis Toomey, Joseph Crehan, Doris Lloyd, Virginia Brissac, Milburn Stone
From The Movie Guide: "A superb thriller, and the first American film by German director Siodmak to enjoy any significant success. Alan Curtis plays an innocent man accused of murdering his wife, with Ella Raines, as his secretary, and Thomas Gomez, as an off-duty cop, engaging in a search for the man's female alibi, a mysterious woman (Fay Helm) whose existence is denied by every witness. Adapted [by Bernard C. Schoenfeld] from a novel by Cornell Woolrich [writing as William Irish], with suitably Expressionistic camera angles and moody lighting."
This film noir classic is the first movie to be produced by Joan Harrison, who was one of Alfred Hitchcock's closest collaborators, working on scripts for such films as REBECCA, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, and SUSPICION.
From Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style, edited by Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward:
"Scott Henderson, a successful young businessman, is arrested for the murder of his wife, who was strangled in their apartment with his tie. On the night of the murder, he explains, he met a young lady in a bar and persuaded her to join him in attending a musical show. Part of their arrangement was that they would withhold each other's names, so all he knows about her is that she was wearing a flamboyant hat which was identical to the one that the lead Latin American singer in the show was wearing. Since neither the cabdriver, the bartender, nor the singer can (or will) confirm his story, Scott is tried, convicted, and sentenced to die in eighteen days. Scott's faithful secretary, Kansas, believes his story and decides to find the real murderer with assistance from police inspector Burgess, who is also convinced of Scott's innocence. She haunts the bar where Scott first met the 'phantom lady,' and pressures the bartender to inform; but he is killed in a car accident. Disguising herself as a prostitute, Kansas seduces Cliff March, a trap drummer in the musical show who had given the 'phantom lady' the eye. Cliff admits that he has been paid to 'forget' the woman. When Kansas unfortunately drops her purse and Cliff sees the police sheet on him, which she is carrying, he is upset and pursues her. She escapes to call Burgess; but Cliff is strangled with a scarf by Jack Marlow, who takes Kansas's purse. Marlow, Scott's best friend, is a schizophrenic artist who was having an affair with Scott's wife, and killed her when she refused to run away with him. Jack meets Kansas at the prison when both are visiting Jack, and he agrees to help her find the murderer. Through a cooperative milliner, they trace the hat to Ann Terry, who gives them the hat. Overjoyed, Kansas accompanies Jack back to his studio-apartment to wait for Burgess, where she discovers her stolen purse and realizes Jack is the murderer. As Jack unties his scarf to strangle her, Burgess arrives and Jack jumps out the apartment window. Scott is freed from prison and is welcomed home by Kansas.
"The Phantom Lady not only boosted the American career of director Robert Siodmak, but also gave him a métier in which his special Germanic temperament would find its happiest medium --- the film noir. For all of its silly dialogue and reliance on one of the pulpier Woolrich novels, it, as much as any other film, defines the studio noir. Siodmak and his brilliant cinematographer, Woody Bredell, have provided The Phantom Lady with the essential ingredients of Woolrich's world, from the desperate innocent at loose at night in New York City, a city of hot sweltering streets, to the details of threatening shadows, jazz emanating from low-class bars, and the click of high heels on the pavement. The whole noir world is developed here almost entirely through mise-en-scène. The second half of the film, in which Franchot Tone predominates as a domestic version of the crazed artist --- whose preoccupation with his hands is a throwback to the German classic, The Hands of Orloc ...---- is certainly the weaker part of the film and the denouement does stress verisimilitude. But these defects can be easily overlooked because of the film's tour de force jazz as sex sequence. Intercutting shots of Elisha Cook, Jr., reaching orgiastic fervor as he climaxes his drum solo with shots of the wordless innuendoes of Ella Raines, Siodmak brilliantly interweaves expressionistic decor with American idiom. If watched without sound, the scene could be from one of the classic German films of the 1920s.
" --- B.P. [Bob Porfirio]"