Unstoppable short story man Cornell Woolrich brought a new twist to the old saw about a phony stage psychic who fears his predictions are starting to come true.* Noired up at Paramount, transformative cinematographer John F. Seitz guided megger John Farrow to a personal best while someone (studio exec turned producer Endre Bohem?) did much the same for corrupt, sad-eyed beauty Gail Russell as the girl whose death Robinson foresees, but hopes to stop . . . perhaps with his own. Twenty years ago, Robinson was working a high-class psychic mind-reading act with fiancée Virginia Bruce & best pal Jerome Cowan when unbidden visions started to come true (at the horse track, in the stock market, even saving a kid’s life), unnerving him into quitting and eventually running out on his pals. Two decades on, his former partners have died, leaving daughter Russell who Eddie G. ‘sees’ as headed for trouble. And since everything he says turns out sooner or later to be true, boyfriend John Lund and even no-nonsense detective William Demarest take note, surrounding Russell with 24-hr. protection as time runs out. Cunningly designed and trimmed to the bone (just 80"), the film is shockingly effective in spite of a pat final explanation too concrete to match the general sense of mystery and fatalism that catches at the throat of the film’s alternate reality.
DOUBLE-BILL: *Here’s two: Claude Rains following a similar path in THE CLAIRVOYANT/’35 and Hitchcock’s swansong, FAMILY PLOT/’76, teasing Barbara Harris with hints of it.
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