Blind Spot (1947)

Why so much hype?

Purely Joyful Movie!

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

January 2015:Whilst taking a look at IMDbs Film Noir board,I spotted a review from a fellow IMDber about a very good sounding Film Noir,which they mentioned appeared to have 10 minutes or so cut.Looking round online,I was disappointed to find that the only version which appeared was a 62 minute cut of the movie.May 2015:After giving up on finding the "full" version of the film,I was caught completely by surprise,when a fellow IMDber revealed that he had just tracked down the full version,which led to me getting ready to at last drive out of the blind spot.The plot:Grasping at his last $,fiction writer Jeffrey Andrews decides to go visit publisher Henry Small,in the hope of getting some quick cash.Pushing aside fellow writer Lloyd Harrison,Small tells Andrews that if he wants to get more cash,he needs to start writing more populist material,such as a murder-mystery book.Despite being rather drunk,Andrews comes up with an outline which involves a man getting murdered in a locked room.Taking Small's advance payment,Andrews talks to Small's secretary Evelyn Green,who agrees to come along with him for some drinks.Saying farewell to Green,a very drunk Andrews suddenly decides that he can go back to Small's office and rip up the contract,so that he can become a free agent,and not have to dance round for Small's cash.As he tears up his contract,Andrews hears a strange noise from Small's office,which leads to Andrews soon finding out that his fictional mystery is about to be become real.View on the film:Name checking Humphrey Bogart,the screenplay by Harry Perowne & Martin Goldsmith has a deliciously black Comedy streak,as Andrews grinds his pulp novel up,by talking in a blunt manner to anyone he suspects of keeping the "blind spot" in Small's murder burning.Along with Andrews sharp, sarcastic Film Npir one-liners, Perowne and Goldsmith also give the title some excellent proto-Giallo shots,with Andrews solving of his own mystery novel being revealed in scatted fragments,which are connected up as Andrews uncovers the blind spot in his mystery tale.Emphasizing the Giallo elements,director Robert Gordon and cinematographer George Meehan use icy first person tracking shots and silhouettes to show how cloudy Andrews mind is.Looking absolutely burnt-out, Chester Morris gives an excellent performance as Jeffrey Andrews,with Morris showing Andrews trying to get out of his Film Noir dead-end,by regaining fragments of his unwritten,unsolved mystery.Entering the title basking in an atmospheric mist,the gorgeous Constance Dowling gives a wicked Femme Fatale performance as Evelyn Green,thanks to Dowling taking Green from a flirty secretary to a hardened dame,who finds herself under Andrews blind spot.

A neat set up: Chester Morris is an author of "serious" books. He hates his publisher, but is forced to go to him and ask for an advance. Having worked up his nerve by downing several drinks, Morris arrives at the office to find the publisher in conference with a popular mystery writer—whom Morris promptly insults as a writer of pap. Writing a mystery is simple work, Morris drunkenly insists…he could invent a murder plot in a snap. A murder in a locked room.Some hours later, the publisher is found dead….murdered in his locked office. And Morris can't quite remember two things—the locked room murder plot he had invented, and whether or not he actually did the murder. He sets about investigating—but it's not easy with the police figuring him as the prime suspect.Morris is very good, especially after his character sobers up and we can watch him piece together events and the motives and actions of other characters. (During the first fifteen minutes his slurring and stumbling get a bit tiresome….as drunk people tend to do.)Steven Geray is fun as the rival author; his thick accent adds to his vaguely exotic and sinister aura. Constance Dowling is hard and slick as a possibly dangerous blonde—the publisher's secretary who eventually teams up with Morris. She may be seeking the truth; she may be running away from it. Both the mystery writer and the secretary have their own reasons for wishing that publisher ill.The film develops some great situations—like when Morris and Dowling meet up in his dark basement apartment, each thinking the other committed the murder. Some great camera shots: she steps slowly from the shadows, pausing where all is dark except her ankles in the light. Some cheesy but undeniably fun dialog: thinking she's trying to fool him with romance, Chester tells the girl, "You've got the wrong chump. Violins hurt my ears. And when the temperature's up I drink a bottle of beer…." An excellent B mystery that moves fast, contains plenty of suspense and never takes itself more seriously than a murder mystery should."Do you really think I killed Small?" – A pause, then a hard kiss, finally an answer.... "Yes."

Like Decoy, this distinctive low-budget noir has fallen through the cracks and deserves resurrection. It's another masterly essay in irony from the pen of Martin Goldsmith of Detour fame. The plot involves a desperate, alcoholic writer who sarcastically pitches a "locked room" murder mystery to his publisher, then sees the plot occur in real life (with himself as chief suspect, of course). Despite the lack of his presence in the credits, Cornell Woolrich's novels are an obvious influence here - themes of urban paranoia, loss of memory, disconnected characters, etc, were his stock-in-trade. The ripe dialogue borders on self-parody, and the entire exercise could have easily been directed as a satire of the genre. Instead it becomes a double-density noir. Morris and Geray are rather miscast, but peek-a-boo blonde Dowling is striking (particularly visually) as a potential femme fatale. The moody cinematography is engagingly oppressive, lingering on beads of sweat and trapping us in confined spaces. Director Robert Gordon worked mainly in TV and never had much success in film. The "locked room" mystery, a staple of the detective novel genre, was most memorably committed to celluloid in the early talkie classic The Kennel Murder Case.

This film is a must for fans of noir and b-movies. The hero is a semi-alcoholic writer, wrongly accused of a murder committed while he was drunk.The actor plays this drunk so obnoxiously that he will have you cringing in your seat, begging for him to finally pass out. It's the acting equivalent of fingernails on a chalk board. What saves the movie and makes it worth seeing are the incredibly over-the-top lines the writer cooked up.These include: "the heat sapped my vitality like ten thousand blood-thirsty dwarves," "a ghost-writer is like drugs," "plagiarism is inscribing my name on another man's pen," and "when I want poetry, I read Walt Whitman."Good for a laugh.