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Sunday, September 19, 2021

CRACK-UP (1946)

Turn off the right side of your brain to savor the spectacular look of this stylishly imagined film noir.  A very tall tale centered around popular fine arts lecturer Pat O’Brien who opens the film in full crack-up mode, smashing his way into a locked museum, punching a cop and swooning in delirium in front of his own museum board.  Drunk?  Overworked?  Crazy?  Or does it have something to do with two possibly forged paintings gone missing?  The plot doesn’t add up, but director Irving Reis works up a hushed, threat-filled atmosphere fit for an Old Masters Gallery between the flashbacks to O’Brien’s terrifying recollections of a train wreck he survived . . . a train wreck that never happened.  Yikes!*  Going on the lam to find the truth behind his dreams after a tipster is murdered, O’Brien can’t even trust girlfriend Claire Trevor, awfully tight with suspicious police detective Wallace Ford, museum donor Herbert Marshall & board member Ray Collins.  Played at a deliberate pace Reis can’t quite pull off (O’Brien loses tension when he can’t shout his way thru a role), it’s still unusual enough to grab you.  You’re likely to guess who didn’t do it; but may not guess who did.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Hard to credit director Reis, best known for literary stage-to-screen adaptations like ALL MY SONS/’48 and THE FOUR POSTER/’52 as the man behind O’Brien’s breathtaking train hallucinations.  Best guess gives the nod to cinematographer Robert De Grasse, second unit director James Anderson, special effects head Russell Cully and most of all to transparencies & visual effects man Harold Wellman.

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