Nocturne (1946)

Nice effects though.

Just perfect...

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Even though the death of an epicene Cole Porter like composer played memorably by Edward Ashley at the beginning of Nocturne is ruled a suicide, Detective George Raft ain't buying it. The man has a wall full of headshot portraits of various women he's discarded over the years and anyone who loves them and leaves them like that is bound to make some enemies. The answer lies among those women, all of whom Ashley called Dolores.George Raft was always best in noir and gangster films whether he was the good guy or the bad. He was limited in his range, but within that range no one was better.A pair of sisters provide part of the answer. Both Lynn Bari and Virginia Huston were involved with Ashley at some point. But they're only part of the puzzle.One of the best things about Nocturne is about how the killer had the police lab people draw the wrong conclusions about the murder. It's why they label Ashley's death a suicide.If Nocturne were made today, Ashley's character would be openly gay and those pictures on the wall would be rent boys. Might make a great story for the Donald Strachey gay detective books and films that Chad Allen has starred in.A very clever noir film, let's see a gay remake of this.

George Raft does a superb job as "Police Lt. Joe Warne" investigating whether a man committed suicide or was murdered. What I liked about this film was the way it made Lt. Warne seem so human even though he was a hard-as-nails police detective as well. Truth be known, it's not often you watch a tough detective who lives with his mother. I also liked the performance of Lynn Bari who played the main suspect named "Francis Ransom". Now, since this is a mystery I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it, but I will say that if a person enjoys a good film-noir then they might want to check this one out some day. I'd also like to say that I realize there are some folks who don't like movies filmed in black and white. I understand that but frankly they're missing a whole lot of good movies if they use that as a reason not to watch them. This film is one of them.

There are some nice touches in this noir if you can get past Raft's non-acting. For a cop obsessed by a murder, he really needs more than one frozen expression. It doesn't help that the script sticks this 50-year old man with a 60-year old mother (Paige), even if she can wisecrack with the best of them. She's a hoot, but he still looks more like a brother than a son.That opening sequence, however, is masterful and a testament to RKO's artistic team. A night-time camera swoops down from high above the Hollywood hills into a swank, ultra- modern glass house where a handsomely attired man noodles on a piano while a mystery woman sits in the shadows-- and the plot sets up from there. It's done in a single take and is quite riveting.So who did kill the noodler (Ashley). Maybe it was his bad piano playing. More likely it's one of a hundred women who've visited that swank bachelor pad. Anyway, detective Warne (Raft), after viewing the glamour photos on the wall, is obsessed with finding out. His sleuthing takes us on a entertaining tour of LA area hotspots, circa 1946, including a ship that never sails. The attraction really isn't in the whodunit, which proves difficult, anyway. It's in the characters and the settings and some nice touches. There's the brassy blonde "housekeeper" (Dell) who assures us she sleeps alone, the fashion photographer who can't stand his model, the hulking gorilla (Hoffman) who KO's Warne amusingly off-camera. Most of all, there's Mom who may make you rethink nice old ladies. Then too, I like Joe Pevney as the moody, laconic "Fingers"; his smokey joe seems just right. All in all, it's an interesting, if uneven, movie with some good dialogue, but with a wrap-up that sounds like it was thrown together on the way to the studio.

Like others have noted, this is not a masterpiece in the canon of film noir, but it does have originality, humor, a good pace, and some downright interesting characters and actors, including the director Joseph Pevney as Fingers the piano player. George Raft gives a decidedly deceptive performance. He was a good enough actor to look as if he couldn't even act. But, nonetheless, he carries this film along with one deadpan diverting observation after another, spitting out lines from a screenplay that is full of one-liners, yet is cohesive enough to at least somewhat keep the plot unfolding, with scenes that vary from posh apartments and hillside houses, to a piano bar where the pianist and his piano are pushed on a little portable stage from table to table by a big, menacing lug, and even to the RKO studios where Raft pursues his chief suspect, played by Lynn Bari, in what only he and the real murderer knew was a murder and not a suicide. The film's light touch mixes well with its well placed darker moments, especially a pitch black and windy night ( probably Santa Ana winds) in Los Angeles.