The Scarlet Hour (1956)

Too much of everything

Pretty Good

Absolutely the worst movie.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

This is unusually funny for being a noir. The plot keeps developing in most surprising and sometimes hilarious new directions, as the complications pile upon each other in this (for the police) inextricable murder mystery, while not even the perpetrators themselves, not any one of them, really can understand what happened.The lead played by Carol Ohmart would have been perfect for Barbara Stanwyck, and at moments Carol actually looks like Barbara, and most strikingly so in the last scene. Tom Tryon is like a substitute for Montgomery Clift, the same kind of helpless gullible victim of a superior woman who knows her arts, and there are even some Hitchcock moments in this film, like in the bathing sequence, when you all the time are aware of a third man watching them, although he doesn't come forward until afterwards. The major comic ingredient is Elaine Stritch as the constantly slightly tipsy friend, one of several friends earnestly doing what they can to help the puppets of a grimly ironic destiny out. You expect more murders and gun shots in this drama of passion, but it's not necessary. The plot is quite enough entertaining in itself, no further exaggerations are needed, and even the end with its perfect cliffhanger question mark is satisfying as such. No further action is needed.

Apart from movies another passion of mine is Popular Song - the kind that peaked in the late thirties/early forties as opposed to the graffiti linked to a beat that came in in the mid fifties and refuses to go away. Often a song would originate in a non-musical film (Again - Roadhouse; Mam'zelle - The Razor's Edge) and The Scarlet Hour was a case in point, Paramount staffers Ray Evans and Jay Livingstom (To Each His Own, Mona Lisa) came up with a doozy, Never Let Me Go, and Paramount signed Nat Cole to perform it in a stand-alone sequence in a night club. That was my sole reason for purchasing this DVD but it's not too hard to take, an interesting cast, seasoned director, albeit the plot is turning a little yellow at the edges and Elaine Stritch makes off with everything worth stealing.

Desperate housewife wants to run off with her lover, and to get the much-needed cash they rip off a couple of jewel thieves. The jealous husband gets wise to their scheme and tries to beat his wife into submission. In the scuffle his gun goes off, killing the wife-beater. Welcome to Noir Country. This movie starts off promisingly enough, but ultimately disappoints. The main problem are the two leads, who just aren't engaging enough to root for. Especially Tom Tryon as the hapless lover is just not up to it, being weak-willed and spineless from the get-go. Me, i would not organize a kids party with this drip, let alone a jewelry heist. Carol Ohmart is a shade better, but again fails to engage much sympathy. In fact the best performances are by Elaine Stritch and Scott Marlowe as the fun-loving friends of the estranged couple. David Lewis is also suitably menacing as the brains behind the robbery gone wrong. A lot of possible suspense is also prevented by the fact that, as in most 50's thrillers, the police is always just one step behind the culprits. So it's just a matter of time before everybody gets their rightful punishment. ( Phew, that's a relief!) If you're a noir addict like me you might give this one a once-over, but probably once will be more than enough.

This is a superb film noir directed by Michael Curtiz, which has never been officially reissued in video or DVD format. The film introduces three new lead players, Carol Ohmart, Ton Tryon, and Elaine Stritch, who here all appear in their first feature film. This was clearly a conscious decision by Paramount to try and create new stars. They took an excellent script and entrusted the project to the capable hands of Oscar-winner Michael Curtiz, who is of course most famous for directing CASABLANCA (1942). Carol Ohmart is the femme fatale. She has a low dusky voice and moves, speaks and acts like Barbara Stanwyck. Stanwyck was twenty years older than Ohmart, and perhaps it seemed time to try and reinvent her. Ohmart does an excellent job and there is nothing to complain of about her performance except for one thing, and that is that she did not possess the natural magic of a true star. In this film she is highly effective, but we are not entranced. What is there that makes one woman spellbinding and another not? We will never know the answer. Young Tom Tryon as the earnest, love-crazed male lead is very good, though at that age he looked a bit weird, and he was much more effective and better looking when he was older and had developed a bit of gravitas, as for instance in THE CARDINAL (1963). Elaine Stritch is given a substantial supporting role, and she makes the most of it, stealing plenty of scenes (though apparently without meaning to do so) and showing what stuff she is made of, as the decades which followed have proved. Michael Curtiz does his usual excellent job of directing, and the story really does have some surprises and twists. This is no B picture, it is the real thing. Ohmart is a gold-digger who has married a rich older man (played by James Gregory) for whom she has no affection whatever. But then, her affection is reserved for herself. She does however have a mad passion for Tryon, and must have him. 'I want you,' she says to him repeatedly, like a Roman Empress deciding to conquer Cilicia before the week is out. They can't keep their hands off each other, and their mouths are glued together and they simply can't tell whose arms are which. A slight problem! Tryon works for the husband. Also, the boss's secretary, played with doe-eyed devotion by Jody Lawrance (who retired from acting only 12 years later at the age of 38, and died aged only 55 in 1986), is hopelessly in love with Tryon, who does not notice. This film is notable for an appearance by the singer Nat King Cole, who sings an entire song, 'Never Let Me Go' (composed specially for this film), standing and smiling in a nightclub into which Ohmart briefly goes before slipping out on one of her sinister errands of passion. The film begins with Ohmart and Tryon sitting in an open convertible on a warm summer night on the hills overlooking the lights of Los Angeles. They have been necking passionately and suddenly two other cars drive up nearby, which do not see them. Men get out of each car and a rendezvous takes place, in which a jewel robbery is planned, and the couple overhear all the details. Who is the mysterious and genteel man who is organising it? Later in the film we get a real shock when we find out who he is. (No, it is not Ohmart's husband. Try again. Give up, you could never guess.) Ohmart wants to run away with Tryon, who 'has no money' (at least not enough for her), so she browbeats him into robbing the robbers and taking the $350,000 worth of jewels from them as 'running away money'. When Tryon protests, Ohmart ruthlessly scorns his comparative poverty, and says 'I've been poor before.' But of course, this being a film noir, things go terribly wrong. And go on going wrong. And go on going even more wrong. And everything becomes impossibly tense, so that sweat practically breaks out upon the celluloid itself. And then more surprises come, and yet more tension. The screenwriter has no mercy on us. And Ohmart is relentless, as greedy and passionate as Stanwyck in DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944), a role on which she clearly modelled her own performance. This really is a good one. I would say don't miss it, but first you have to find it, and that is even more difficult than solving the plot. Type it into Google with the word 'buy'.