The Dark, Rainy Streets of "Phantom Lady"

An example of Siodmak's lighting.

If you've read this blog recently, you know we've been on a film noir kick since the start of the new year. We started by revisiting The Blue Dahlia and then moving on to This Gun For Hire and Black Angel. Our latest noir is Robert Siodmak's 1944 "B" mystery Phantom Lady, which--like Black Angel--features an amateur female sleuth.

The film opens with civil engineer Scott Henderson (Alan Curtis) meeting a mysterious, distraught woman (Fay Helm) at an empty bar on a hot Saturday night in New York City. Scott, who has been stood up by his wife, asks the dark-haired stranger if she wants to see a musical revue with him. She initially refuses, but then reluctantly agrees on one condition: They exchange no names, no addresses, and never meet again. Scott agrees.

Later that night, Scott goes home to find the police at his apartment. His wife has been strangled with one of his ties ("A knot so tight it had to be cut with a knife," says one of the detectives). Scott's alibi falls apart when he can't identify his mysterious date. Even worse, the bartender, a taxi driver, and a drummer at the theatre all act as if they had never seen him.

Scott is arrested, convicted, and sentenced to die. It's up to his office co-worker Carol (Ella Raines) to find the real murderer. It's obvious to everyone--except Scott--that Carol is mad about the civil engineer.

Franchot Tone, Thomas Gomez, and Ella Raines in a telling scene.

This premise is similar to the later--and better--Black Angel, in which a man's wife must prove his innocence while he awaits his fate on death row. Black Angel provides more complexity and more nuance. The only element separating Phantom Lady from a dozen other mysteries is that the key witness--the mysterious woman from the bar--appears to have vanished without a trace. Well, there is another distinguishing trait: the killer, played by the biggest star in the picture--doesn't show up until the film is half over.

A passer-by (far right) likely saves Ella's life at the train platform.

Yet, if Phantom Lady lacks a creative spark plotwise, it benefits mightily from Robert Siodmak's moody direction and Ella Raines's determined detective. Siodmak creates some knockout visuals once Carol takes to roaming the city's darkened streets to find the killer. The scene in which she follows the suspicious bartender is a tour-de-force as the two move through rainy streets, a shadow-filled train platform, and partially lit arches. It as good as the famous sequence in Cat People (1942) in which Jane Randolph is followed by something after leaving the swimming pool.

I'm curious as to whether the decision to have the murderer wring his hands compulsively was the screenwriter's or Siodmak's. Regardless, it provides the director with the opportunity to provide some disconcerting close-ups of the hands of the strangler.

As for Phantom Lady's star, Ella Raines makes Carol so likable that it's easy to see why Inspector Burgess decides to help her. (Sure, he makes up an excuse for doing so, but I think it's clear that he admires Carol.) She also gets to display her first-rate acting chops when slipping in a disguise as a trampy lady who takes a liking to a manic drummer (and key witness) played by Elisha Cook, Jr.

Raines had a solid, if unspectacular, acting career. She starred in a handful of "A" pictures opposite leading such men as John Wayne (Tall in the Saddle), Randolph Scott (Corvette K-225), and Eddie Bracken (Hail the Conquering Hero). She later headlined the 1954-55 TV series Janet Dean, Registered Nurse.

Ella Raines also reteamed with director Robert Siodmak in another film noir, The Suspect (1944), which starred Charles Laughton. A year later, Siodmak would make The Spiral Staircase, one of my favorite mysteries, and follow it with his noir masterpiece The Killers (1944). I suspect we will reviewing that one in the near future, too.

3 on 3: Film Noir

Each week this month, the Cafe will present a "3 on 3 panel" in which three experts will answer three questions on a single classic film topic. This week, the Cafe poses three questions on film noir to: Gary Cahall from MovieFanFare!; Dorian from the blog Tales of the Easily Distracted; and Sheri Chinen Biesen, author of Blackout: World War II and the Origins of Film Noir.

1. What is your definition of a film noir and what film do you consider the prototype--the one that best exemplifies the genre?

Stanwyck and MacMurray in
Double Indemnity.

Gary: Film Noir is the accidental love child of German silent expressionist cinema and Warner Bros.’ 1930s crime dramas, raised in an atmosphere of World War II heroism and Cold War paranoia. Along with the requisite shadowy streets (big city or small town) and shadowy deeds (premeditated or accidental), a successful noir picture often has a protagonist who is walking the fine line between good and evil, and who--if it’s a male--is just as likely to kill or be killed by the female lead as he is to kiss her at the movie’s close. And no matter how many characters are in the film, the one constant presence is Fate.

I know it’s not the most daring of choices, but to me the picture that best captures these elements is director Billy Wilder’s 1944 thriller Double Indemnity, starring Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, and Edward G. Robinson. A seemingly smart guy in over his head, a seductive and amoral temptress, and a “fool-proof” murder plot that’s not as simple as it appears...all with whip-smart dialogue from Wilder and co-scripter Raymond Chandler, of Philip Marlowe fame.

Dorian: I’d define a film noir as a story in which the bleakest aspects of humanity keep trying to get the upper hand, and the protagonist(s) keep trying to thwart those aspects against all odds. Those “bleakest aspects” can range from one character’s problem to an overall tough situation affecting many characters.

Peter Lorre in Stranger on
the Third Floor.

Sheri: The antihero in Stranger on the Third Floor complains, “What a gloomy dump. Why don't they put in a bigger lamp?” Paul Schrader defines noir as “Hollywood films of the 1940s and early 1950s that portrayed the world of dark, slick city streets, crime and corruption.” Film noir is a series of atmospheric black-and-white wartime-postwar Hollywood crime films known for shadowy style, doomed antiheroes, lethal femme fatales and cynical hardboiled worldview. Literally, “black film” or “dark cinema,” film noir was coined in 1946 by French critics discovering dark wartime Hollywood films they were seeing for the first time. This dark film trend was recognized in the U.S. In my book Blackout: World War II and the Origins of Film Noir, I explain how wartime Hollywood blackouts and censorship influenced film noir. Double Indemnity is an exemplar of noir style.


2. If you had to single out one director that influenced film noir than any other, who would it be?

Gary: Austrian-born Fritz Lang, who presaged the noir style with such films as M and the Dr. Mabuse movies in Europe before fleeing to America when Hitler came to power. His first Hollywood project, the 1936 lynch mob drama Fury with Spencer Tracy, contained a number of noir sensibilities, as did his 1941 “let’s kill Hitler” thriller Man Hunt. Within the noir demimonde itself, Lang’s resume includes The Woman in the Window, Scarlet Street, The Big Heat, and a picture that’s my answer to question #3.

MacMurray and Robinson in
Wilder's classic film noir.

Dorian: Of all the talented directors who’ve influenced film noir, I’d single out Billy Wilder because of his gleefully jaundiced view of humanity. Even Wilder’s comedies have a strong undercurrent of cynicism, so it’s only natural that his dramas and suspense films would fit so well in the noir universe, including Sunset Boulevard (1950), Ace in the Hole (1951), and of course, my personal favorite, Double Indemnity (1944).

Sheri: So many fine noir directors. Tough choice. . . .While Fritz Lang is very important, as is Robert Siodmak, one of the most influential noir auteurs was émigré writer-director Billy Wilder (Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Lost Weekend, Ace in the Hole).


3. What is your favorite underrated film noir, the one film that doesn't get the attention it should?

Gary: While the City Sleeps, a later (1956) genre entry that’s part “psycho killer” suspenser and part hard-boiled newspaper drama. A serial murderer dubbed “The Lipstick Killer” is preying on women in New York City, and Vincent Price, the ne’er-do-well son of a deceased media mogul, offers a promotion to whoever among his top newsmen can break the story and bring the maniac to justice. The suspense comes not so much from trying to guess the murderer’s identity (we see him “in action” before the opening credits), but from watching how far reporter Dana Andrews, photo editor James Craig, city editor Thomas Mitchell, and wire service head George Sanders will go—from office politicking and backstabbing to using their wives/girlfriends (Rhonda Fleming and Ida Lupino, among others) as “bait”—to win Price’s contest. Oh, and Lang clearly shows that one of the things driving the “mama’s boy” madman into his flights of homicidal rage is EC horror comics.

Dorian: I’ve always felt that Henry Hathaway’s The Dark Corner (1946) was an underrated noir. It covers so many classic tropes that it’s almost like “Film Noir’s Greatest Hits,” in a good way! One of the things I like most about it was Lucille Ball’s character Kathleen. She’s warm, loving, and practical, yet also strong and able to think on her feet and help save the day when hero Mark Stevens is up against it.

Elisha Cook, Jr. in Phantom Lady.

Sheri: Many underrated noir films. . . . Double Indemnity is more influential than many realize in spurring the film noir trend recognized in the U.S. film industry during the war. More modest early underrated noir include Stranger on the Third Floor and Phantom Lady (which needs to be released on DVD and Blu-Ray). Lang's Ministry of Fear is underrated with beautiful noir style shot during wartime blackouts just before Siodmak filmed Phantom Lady and Wilder shot Double Indemnity. Dead Reckoning, Out of the Past, Act of Violence and Tension are also great.