★ 6 / 10
Stan Grayson is in a Jazz Funk. Maxwell
John Chard
Stan Grayson is in a Jazz Funk. Maxwell Shane remakes his own 1947 film Fear in the Night but with a better known cast and more money. Adapted from Cornell…
Stan Grayson is in a Jazz Funk.
Maxwell Shane remakes his own 1947 film Fear in the Night but with a better known cast and more money. Adapted from Cornell Woolrich's novel, story has Stan Grayson (Kevin McCarthy) as a New Orleans clarinetist who dreams he has committed a murder in a heavily mirrored room. Upon waking he finds clues that suggest he actually may have killed a man and frantically turns to his police detective brother-in-law, Rene Bressard (Edward G. Robinson), for help. But it doesn't look good for Stan...
Fear in the Night is a good film, and so is this, but if you have seen the earlier version then this feels very much perfunctory. The opening titles are superb, as melted candle wax plays host to the roll call shown in moody dissolves. We jump into Grayson's dream, again this is very well constructed on noirish terms, and from there on in it's a competently crafted visual film noir picture with good tension and splendid jazzy interludes.
However, nothing else makes it stand out, it just sort of exists as an exercise in late noir cycle film making, a pic that doesn't want to even try to push boundaries. The cast are dependable in performances, but nothing to really grab the attention, though Shane does work near wonders to cloak the characters in various levels of paranoia or suspicious machinations. New Orleans locales are a bonus, with cinematographer Joseph Biroc excelling at sweaty close-ups and the utilisation of shadows as foreboding presence's.
It all resolves itself in a whirl of improbability, but as most film noir fans will tell you, that's actually OK. Yet this is still a film that's far from essential viewing for the like minded noir crowd. More so if you have happened to have seen the 1947 version first. 6/10
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★ 7 / 10
Cool little noir that deserves better than the public domain
AlsExGal
Kevin McCarthy stars as a musician who wakes up one morning to find tangible evidence of something he thought he'd done in a dream. Things really gets going…
Kevin McCarthy stars as a musician who wakes up one morning to find tangible evidence of something he thought he'd done in a dream. Things really gets going when good old Edward G. Robinson appears as the musician's brother-in-law who also just happens to be a police detective. There's just something about Eddie G. that compels us to watch him, whatever he's in. McCarthy's character, Stan, thinks he may have committed a murder, and is tortured by the fact that he has no recollection of doing so, except in his "nightmare".He can't reconcile what he knows as reality with what he remembers from his dream and the evidence he found afterwards. (Intriguingly, a button and an odd-looking key.)Oh, there's also a few female characters, none of them of the fatale variety. One of them is just a pick-up in a seedy all-night bar (interesting and kind of fun scene, though), the other two are his sister and his "girlfriend". I put girlfriend in quotation marks because Stan doesn't seem to have much regard for the poor girl, who's a jazz singer and devoted to him. Poor Gina, Stan has not the least interest in confiding his troubles to her, or in fact talking to her at all, as far as I could tell. He's always telling her he'll get back to her later, when he's straightened some things out.Some noirs have a smart and sympathetic girlfriend or secretary (who of course later becomes the girlfriend) who helps the main character sort out his troubles, but Nightmare isn't one of those. It's all about Edward G. and his crime-solving abilities. But who's complaining when Edward G. solves or even commits a crime in any movie? The story is set and filmed on location in New Orleans, which is a major strength of the film. There's one scene where Stan goes on a desperate search through the nightclubs and all-night bars of the city, trying to find a musician who's heard the mysterious melody he heard in his nightmare. I love all the neon lights flashing on and off, proclaiming the alluring names of the nightclubs - scenes like this are what noir is made of. Another memorable scene is when Stan, the long-suffering Gina, and Edward G.Robinson and his wife (Stan's sister) go on a picnic and get caught in a rainstorm. They take refuge in a deserted house, where they light a fire and make themselves tea ! It just struck me as funny that they were making themselves so much at home in a complete stranger's house. Now, there is a reason for this, but that would be spoiler territory.
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50%
AUDIENCE
· 100 ratings
6.4/10
1.6K
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Subtitles, please?