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Sunday, July 21, 2024

A GENTLEMAN AFTER DARK (1942)

Journeyman director Edwin L. Marin doesn’t bring a lot to this crime thriller, a low-budget affair that misses its potential.  Too bad, a top-tier cast (Brian Donlevy, Miriam Hopkins, Preston Foster) and solid below-the-line players (Dmitri Tiomkin score; Milton Krasner lensing) from indie producer Edward Small sounds promising as Donlevy’s gentleman thief robs jewels from high society with wife/partner Miriam Hopkins, leaving nothing behind but a faint scent of heliotrope.  But when ‘baby makes three,’ Donlevy wants to go straight (to the country) while Hopkins shows interest in neither baby nor great outdoors.  (Shades of GREEN ACRES!)  Lucky for her, new lover Phillip Reed is waiting to step in; ratting out Donlevy on his final job to Police Detective Foster, old time Donlevy pal.  Twenty years on, the little girl thinks she’s Foster’s kid; Donlevy’s about to be paroled; and Hopkins returns from abroad to blackmail both ‘Dads.’  Neat-o.  And while Marin hadn’t much coin to spend, look what Fritz Lang does with something similar (also with Krasner as cinematographer) and barely more cash on THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW/’44 and SCARLET STREET/’45.*  The two films capturing just what’s missing here.  A fun watch, nevertheless, with a few good curve balls in the third act.  And Hopkins surely is one badass unsympathetic dame.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *In addition to his superior work with Lang (no easy man to please!), Krasner later became a regular for Vincente Minnelli & Joseph L. Mankiewicz.  But check out the artistic stylization Lang brings to SCARLET STREET and WOMAN IN THE WINDOW to see what this film might have been.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/08/woman-in-window-1944.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Note how they ring out the passing years when Donlevy is in prison, stamping out license plates with advancing years on them.  Cute!

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