The Dark Corner (1946)

the audience applauded

A Masterpiece!

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Thought that was Lucille. Thoroughly enjoyable movie. Kept my interest. Acting was superb. Plot line was interesting. Movies today depend on shock value or computer graphics but this was very well done. I had always seen Lucille Ball as a comedienne in conjunction with Desi Arnaz but she did great in this dramatic role. Too bad it was only in black and white but that was hardly a distraction. I've not found many movies, old or new, that were this captivating. I've always held Lucille in high regard but this just added to my appreciation of her skills as an actress. I highly recommend this story to movie lovers. Clean language, good family entertainment.

The first time I saw this, years ago, I thought it was a little torpid. At the opening, when private investigator Mark Stevens slaps the dumb hood William Bendix around, why doesn't Bendix fight back? Then there is Stevens' pushy new secretary, Lucille Ball. Are we in for a romance? Now I don't know why I was bored because, on second viewing, it looks pretty good to me. Maybe all those Charlie Chan movies I saw in the interim have led to successive contrast. This is pretty good noir. The plot itself is nothing that you wouldn't find in a B feature detective story, but just about all of the other elements come together. There is a good woman, yes, but there's also a bad woman. And there is stark lighting, location shooting in New York, despair, shadows, intrigue, murder, frame ups, and well-drawn characters.Where else can you find a line like, "I feel all dead inside. I'm backed up into a dark corner and I don't know who's hitting me." I don't want to get into the plot too deeply because it meanders around quite a lot, like most of these tales. Stevens and Ball are searching for someone who is out to frame Stevens for the murder of a man who had previously framed Stevens for another crime, of which Stevens was innocent. You see what I mean about the plot being tortuous.But -- plot aside -- the photography by Joe MacDonald is excellent. Whatever criticisms may be made of the old studio system, there were giants in the earth. MacDonald was also responsible for shooting "My Darling Clementine" and "Call Northside 777." Except for a little "Manhattan Serenade" under the credits, there is no overscore. All the music in the film comes from some source -- a nightclub band, somebody practicing the piano. It's what Franz Waxman did for "Rear Window." The dialog is divided into three levels: that spoken by Clifton Webb, the aesthete owner of an art gallery; that spoken by ordinary people like Stevens and Ball; and that spoken by roughnecks like William Bendix.Webb gets much better lines than in his other pouf roles, including "Laura." Samples: "I detest the dawn. The grass always looks like it's been left out all night." When an elderly lady remarks that a painting "grows on you," Webb's arch riposte is: "My dear, you make it sound like some sort of fungus." Bendix, the thug, is careless in Webb's office and Webb says sharply: "And stop flicking your ashes on my carpet. That's a genuine capuchin." (Webb uses the French pronunciation of "capuchin" and I had to look it up in Wikipedia to find out what the hell he was saying.) Webb's wife -- Cathy Downs, who can't act -- protests that her paramour would never run off with that other lady because he loathed her. "He loathed her rather intimately, I'm afraid."Level two -- ordinary language -- doesn't get the same number of zingers, but here's a sample. Stevens was convicted of a crime of which he was innocent. Now, someone has left a dead body in his apartment. When he discovers he's been set up yet again, Steven puts his head in his hands and remarks, "I can be framed easier than whistler's mother."The screenwriters, Dratler and Schoenfeld, don't get a pass for level three, the patois of the underclass. It sounds as if they've been reading twenty-year-old pulp magazines. They over reach and you can hear the creaking of joints as they do: "I need two yards for powder money." That translates as "I need two-hundred dollars to take a powder (ie., get out of town)." Stevens is surprisingly effective. He's not really very expressive but he does "anxiety" much better than Bogart ever did.

The story started of well, peaking my interest with a quick visit of the police in the form of Lt Frank Reeves (Reed Hadley) to the office of Bradford Galt (Mark Stevens). Secrets in his past? It wasn't long before he was tailed, and we know there is something amiss. Love how a film will catch you that quick.Of course, there was a very sweet looking Lucille Ball as Galt's secretary. Screenwriters Jay Dratler and Bernard C. Schoenfeld wrote some snappy lines for her.There was a lot of action - cuckolded husbands, murders, car chases, and blind leads in an attempt to keep Galt out of jail and find the real killers.Well worth the time.

Dark Corner, The (1946) *** (out of 4) Noir about private eye Bradford Galt (Mark Stevens) who has a mysterious past, which might be catching up with him after he begins to be followed by a man in white (William Bendix). Soon Galt is attacked in his apartment and when he wakes up another man is dead and he has the murder weapon in hand. Along with the help of his secretary (Lucille Ball) they must try and figure out who was behind the set-up and the reasons for it. Years before finally seeing this film I had been hearing nothing but good things about it and there's no question that the movie has a lot of very good things going for it but I'd probably stop short of calling it a complete classic. More on the issues later but the film contains everything a good noir should have and that's snappy dialogue, a good hero to root for, great use of shadows and of course the twists and turns. I thought the dialogue was the best thing about the film as it seems like each scene was trying to top the one it followed just by having the characters throwing around the witty dialogue, which features every cliché from "behind the 8-ball" to "clean as a peeled egg" and many more. The dialogue is extremely sharp and just bounces from one character to the next and this can be seen right from the start when a detective comes into the office and throws a few rounds with Ball's character. The performances are another plus with Stevens making for a good hero and someone that we can care about as we work our way through the mystery. He isn't really known for noir, which might be one reason this film isn't better known but he handles all the material nicely. It's always fun seeing Ball doing something that is the complete opposite of her Lucy character. Here she gets to play for some sex appeal and does a nice job with it and handles the dialogue extremely well. The real star here is Bendix who is terrific as the mysterious guy. He brings a lot of fun to the role and manages to be very believable in the role as does Clifton Webb who chews up each scene he's in. As expected, the film has some wonderful cinematography and some great lighting. Just check out the sequence where Stevens forces Bendix to give up information in his office. The entire room is lit by a single light and it looks great. The one issue I had with the film was a pretty major one and that's the actually story. It never really grabbed my attention and held it too strongly as I thought there were some weak moments. With that said, there's still plenty to enjoy here and fans of noir will certainly want to check it out.