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Wednesday, March 6, 2024

LATIN QUARTER / FRENZY (1945)

Remarkably effective little chiller from British B-pic megger Vernon Sewell, expanding on his debut short, THE MEDIUM/’34, an early Michael Powell writing effort.  Impossibly lux-looking for its budget, like a sumptuous Quota Quickie, with cardboard sets & trick shots creating a turn-of-the-last century Paris in the artist-friendly Latin Quarter.  It opens with a spectacular traveling shot sailing past Notre Dame gargoyles, o’er a miniature model Paree, swooping down to narrow cobblestone streets and tenement life, cafés & hovels.  (Modeled on a famous animated multi-plane shot from PINOCCHIO/’40?)  It soon settles down to a starving artists story as poor young dancer Joan Greenwood (not yet famous, but already purring her lines) becomes eccentric Artist’s model; eccentric Artist’s wife (a marriage of mutual convenience: he gets a model/she gets room & board); then another artist’s mistress; and finally a Missing Model.  And on the very day she’d planned to run off with her lover.*  Months later, some amateur detective work and a couple of terrified psychics will help figure it all out.  No real surprises in the solution, but atmosphere & style play out as if Val Lewton (Hollywood’s Prince of the suggestive psychological paranormal creep-out  -  think CAT PEOPLE/’42) had teamed up with Poverty Row stylist Edgar G. Ulmer.*  If only there were decent prints instead of tv-sourced Public Domain dupes to up the visual ante and give this the presentation it deserves.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *That’s Derrick De Marney as Greenwood’s lover, best known for Alfred Hitchcock’s YOUNG AND INNOCENT/’37.  Excellent in a dud-free cast.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *DETOUR/’45, Ulmer’s zero-budget existential masterpiece, was out the same year, but the better Ulmer match is BLUEBEARD/’44, from the year before. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/05/bluebeard-1944.html

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