The Chase

1946 noir

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A veteran with no past but the "kind of face women like to talk to" finds a gangster's wallet and is hired to be his chauffeur. It's the shadowy mid-40's, so the gangster obviously has a wife who our hero falls for. He decides to help her escape her marriage to the oft-cruel Eddie Roman and flee to Cuba, and that's when the fun really begins.

You know what? We need to do a Noir Festival after we're finished with Bill Murray. Start recommending selections now!

This isn't upper-echelon noir exactly, but it's interesting, and you really have to give it credit for the ballsy left turn it takes without even signaling about halfway through. Also, I approve of any movie that begins with flapjacks. There are some cool visuals here. Guy Maddin, one of my favorite directors, talked about this movie in an interview, and some of the imagery reminded me of shots from his films, especially a scene that takes place on a beach but is so obviously not filmed at a beach. There are also some nice weirdly-framed shots--Chuck's head popping into a shot almost like it's a mistake, a shot through a steering wheel. Robert Cummings plays Chuck Scott, the type of two-first-named hero in these types of movies, and the performance is good because you barely notice him which is just the way it should be. Michele Morgan's the blonde, and Steve Cochran plays a despicable villain named Eddie Roman. Everything you need to know about his character's explained in his first scene where the woman giving him a haircut knicks an ear and explains, "You moved." He slaps her and says, "But you didn't. Filthy dame." Peter Lorre plays his henchman Gino, and if you're going to have a henchman, you should make them like Gino, goofily sinister and with an indeterminate nationality. I love how bored Lorre's character seems in almost every scene he's in. There are some really cool little details that help this movie stand out a little bit. Monkey-handled knives, a guy in a white hat who you know you can't trust because he's wearing a white hat, spilled wine and sound effects in a cellar, Roman's ability to accelerate and brake from the back seat when he wants to. It's great stuff, but you do wonder during a scene involving a car and a train how a car can decelerate from 110+ mph to 0 in about six and a half feet. A warning if you see this one--you do have to force yourself to go with the flow because this does end up having a strange structure that might not completely work. I'm willing to give director Arthur Ripley and screenwriter Philip Yordan (from Cornell Woolrich's book) bonus points for the experimentation though.