CROSSROADS (1942)

A typical example of an M-G-M mid-list feature, script not-quite camera-ready, but keeping the studio wheels in motion, the plant humming at near capacity and contract players & staff working; no more, no less.  Well . . . maybe a bit less in this case.  You can almost hear top execs giving out the assignment: ‘Nothing personal, Bill, it’s just business.’   Set back to 1937 France (avoiding war complications), rising French diplomat William Powell is accused out-of-the-blue of hiding an old murder charge under a second identity.  He pleads amnesia, a train accident 20 years back that left him with permanent memory loss, recalling nothing before he was 22.  So . . . maybe the charge is true?   He simply doesn’t know.  Yikes!  With supposed ‘ex’ Claire Trevor testifying in court against him; Basil Rathbone making a surprise appearance that gets him off the hook (then coming back for blackmail cash); and only loyal wife Hedy Lamarr (purely decorative here) steadfast.  Plenty silly; plenty talky; but reasonable fun parsing truth from fiction in the first two acts (are they ‘Gaslighting him or telling the truth?*), the film falls apart from a cascade of third act revelations and Jack Conway’s typically insensitive direction* with everyone going thru the motions, and only Margaret Wycherly’s pathetic putative Maman pulling past the comfort zone.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Hedy, just off a rare good M-G-M role in TORTILLA FLAT/’41, ankled the studio two films later only to find equally slim pickings elsewhere.  Even C.B. DeMille’s hit SAMSON AND DELILAH no help in the long run.  Instead, she and composer George Antheil invented ‘frequency hopping,’ used to control torpedoes in WWII and still being used in your SmartPhone.  No kiddin’!

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Note: with director Conway’s idea of French style, other than in courtroom scenes, we might be visiting some Beverly Hills/Bel-Air suburban home monstrosity.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Speaking of 'gaslighting,' two years previously, a fine British film of GASLIGHT, later retitled ANGEL STREET when M-G-M made an even finer 1944 version under the original title for Ingrid Bergman; Charles Boyer, Joseph Cotten & Angela Lansbury; George Cukor directing.