The Amazing Mr. X (1948)

Sadly Over-hyped

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

First off, this is not a horror movie in any way for those who might be thinking that due to the poster or the fact Turhan Bey is in it. During the '40s he appeared in several of the lesser Universal horror films. This isn't one of them. This is a somewhat noirish psychological thriller about a widow, a fake psychic, and a dead husband that may not be so dead. I see a lot of praise for this in the reviews here but this is one time when I'm not in agreement with the majority. Frankly, I found this to be a real bore. The cast is nice and the twists look good on paper but the whole thing is just so unexciting I could barely stay awake during it. Also I don't get the praise for the cinematography. The film looks fine but, again, I'm just not seeing what others are seeing. It's nothing special, in my opinion. Give it a look and judge for yourself but keep expectations low.

Despite the good reviews here, this movie is dismal. Slow and plodding. Rather boring and over acted. The direction is heavy handed. Not of interest in the slightest.The Plot On the beach one night, Christine Faber, two years a widow, thinks she hears her late husband Paul calling out of the surf.Then meets a tall dark man, Alexis, who seems to know all about such things. After more ghostly manifestations, Christine and younger sister Janet become enmeshed in the eerie artifices of Alexis.But he in turn finds himself manipulated into deeper deviltry than he had in mind.

Hypnosis noir (or spiritualist noir) arrives at the heart of noir; staged image, desire amplified at the hands of some illusionist, belief creating a story. The silent Dr. Mabuse, the oldest noir progenitor I have found, is about a criminal mastermind who in controlling the illusion of appearances creates the crime narrative we try to apprehend him in. Exciting as all get out.Here, two beautiful sisters, heiresses to a fortune, fall under the spell of a 'psychic consultant', a spiritualist who manipulates their yearnings for money. Mabuse-like, he controls his appearance, his house a large staging area rigged with devices for illusion. Not very interesting because the same token that brings a hypnosis noir close to the heart of things ultimately substitutes the intuitive dreaming with explanations about how sleep works.The opening scene is pretty tantalizing though. That is the first moment where illusion emerges in the noir world. What is it? The woman is in her house, a marvelous mansion on a cliff overlooking a moonlit beach, and thinking she has heard the voice of her dead (but still loved) husband she goes to the veranda, but of course there's nothing there but the tumultuous sea below. So the illusory urge was already present from the start, it creates everything else, and is as simple as this, a voice coming in from an open window. Nice. It could be the start to a ghost movie, where again it's all about haunted spaces of memory. The Uninvited strikes this balance, another quasi-noir. What makes this a noir is that moments later the woman goes for a walk and the illusionist materializes as if from the night to answer the need for magical dreaming. A crucial turning point later on is a seance that turns real; shifting us from her ethereal dreaming to constructed sleep. In great noir, we have imperceptible shifts so that we dream.

Competently-written, decently acted, and with direction rather better than one would expect from a "programmer", "The Amazing Mr. X" is a pleasant surprise. Turhan Bey, who usually appeared in "exotic" roles, is especially effective as the phony medium.The problem (and the reason for a 6 rather than a 7 rating) is the shoot-em-up ending, which spoils what has up to then been an acceptable drama. Unfortunately, it's easier to write an "all the bad people die" ending than it is to create a resolution based on the characters' situations and psychologies.Certainly worth a viewing, especially if you can't get to sleep.