says "Hello handsome!" but the director says "Get that stuff off his face - We're here to have dinner with the common man, not Tyrone Power!"
Anyway, this was supposed to be a very atypical film for him, as well as shocking for its time. The Criterion Channel describes it as "one of the most haunting and perverse film noirs of the 1940s," and it certainly has a certain sleazy grip that it exerts as it goes on. It helps that it begins at a carny, with a very "Freaks" like atmosphere, although technically there's only a Geek,
a pitiful alcoholic creature who is seen being fed live chickens as the film opens; in a rather heavy-handed foreshadowing, Powers' Stanton (at first just "Stan") Carlisle comments incredulously how low you would have to sink to end up like that. Stan is a fairly new arrival and a general dogsbody, in particular to Blondell's Zeena
and her alcoholic husband/partner in her mentalism act, but Stan just loves it. He gives a little speech to Zeena, his eyes almost glowing, that is a bit reminiscent of Uncle Charlie's "silly wives" speech at the dinner table in Shadow of a Doubt, and that reveals borderline psychopathy. You can see Zeena realizing this, but at the same time, he's Tyrone Power (as one reviewer said of his performance, "Power uses his almost irritating handsomeness as a subversive tool"), and he's awful sweet to her. We have by this point already seen Zeena's act, that involves Stan going into the audience and collecting written questions that Zeena supposedly burns but then reads "from the ether," but in fact, from a chalkboard written by the alcoholic husband under her floor. But the act used to be better (before her previous infidelities (he said of her that she had a heart like an artichoke, a petal for everyone) drove him away and to the bottle, until she reformed and they reconciled) - she would be blindfold and he would ask her questions from the crowd that she would magically answer. They did this through a secret code that would be built into the questions, and this code is such an effective act (they worked much fancier places before the separation) that it's their "nest egg" that Zeena wants to use to send hubby to rehab. But alas it is never to be: in something that looks like it's on purpose, but is really an accident, Stan accidentally gives him a bottle of woodgrain alcohol and it kills him. He is guilt-ridden (so he's not a total psychopath) but still gets Zeena to teach him the code. However, he also has the beautiful young Molly
(whom the hulking strongman Bruno regards as his girl) sit in, so that she learns the code, too. And after those two are caught out having sex (it's not that blatant, this being 1947, but it's pretty obvious) and forced to get married (apparently carny folk have a code), Stan takes his new bride and the new act on the road. Thus begins the true rise of the great Stanton.
We next see him blindfold in a swanky Chicago club, performing the act to great acclaim. But not total acclaim: one beautiful woman is unimpressed, and has worked out that it's a code, and the strange stresses that Molly puts on her words are the key. (Adding to the general atmosphere of dread around the film, the woman is played by Helen Walker, last spotted in a more lighthearted role in 1946's Cluny Brown, but who can certainly pull off the femme fatale. Between that film and this, however, was the tragic accident that essentially drove her out of the business, and if you know that's hanging over her - that she's about to be a pariah - it injects a certain frisson.) She is psychoanalyst Dr. Lilith Ritter, and after Stanton blocks her attempt to show him up (she asks something like "how old is my mother" and he guesses rightly that she is dead), she is suitably impressed and asks him to come up and see her.
The meeting (at her office) doesn't go particularly well: he is not as impressed by her as she perhaps wants, and is more impressed with her gadget that records all her sessions on an LP, seeing the value in the information she has on the bigwigs of this town, and she sends him on his way just as a patient of hers calls in with an emergency appointment. However, he only pretends to leave and sneaks back into the outer office and overhears the patient, an old lady, discussing her dreams about the daughter whom she has lost. Despite appearing morally revolted by Stanton's plans to exploit the knowledge on her LPs, she is soon collaborating, and we see the old lady patient show up at one of his shows and ask a question about her daughter. At this point, Stanton makes a bold leap into the next phase of his planned ascent: spiritualism. He appears to go into a trance, claiming to see a spirit version of her daughter (reciting things about her that only someone with access to the mother's dreams would know) and then collapses in a swoon. This naturally enthralls the mother, and soon she is showering Stanton with money. But again, this is just a stepping-stone: one of the city's true bigwigs suspects Stanton of fraud, and comes to confront him, but he too is a patient of Lilith's and almost immediately becomes Stanton's new sugar daddy. He gives him $150K to start his new "tabernacle," but even this is peanuts. He promises to set him up with a radio station if he can cause the girl whom as a young man he intended to marry to manifest herself. Stanton goes to work on the pure Molly, who is disgusted by the whole affair and wants to leave him and go back to the Carny, and Zeena and Bruno (who visited a bit earlier and spooked Stanton with a repeat of the Tarot reading
that predicted the death of Zeena's husband, only this time with Stanton as the "hanged man" - Stanton blusters that this is just flim flam for the suckers, but you can see it gets under his skin). At this point Stanton gives a speech that smells a bit of the studio attempting to play it safe, where he insists he never insults or uses God or religion (even though he has earlier made it quite clear what he thinks of religion in recounting his treatment by the pious in the orphanage he was raised in), and somehow manages to persuade her to play along. However, it all falls apart when the city bigwig is so obviously deeply affected that he breaks down and prays and she rushes forward and breaks the spell. (Never mind that in the process he essentially reveals that he has done over untold people in his path to the top.) The rest of the film is the descent of Stanton, who, despite everything (this is no Brighton Rock) loves his Molly (and, in an acknowledged piece of studio interference that echoes Zeena's attempted rescue of her husband, is (potentially) finally redeemed by her). The most chilling part of this is when Dr. Lilith (hey - is this where Frasier got the name?), whose advances Stanton had earlier rebuffed (on the sensible grounds that they couldn't be seen together, given that he was using her LPs illegally), reveals her true colors. (This would make a good companion piece to Blind Alley, where the protagonist uses psychoanalysis as a weapon against the villain.) We plummet towards two bookends. One has Stanton, surrounded by winos, repeating the stock demonstration of mindreading that Zeena's husband performed on him on the night he gave him the fatal alcohol. ("I see green hills - I see a boy running with his dog...") with one addition (the husband didn't mention a mother waiting, because it wouldn't have worked on the orphan Stanton), followed by the callback to the Geek at the start. But then Molly reappears...
Is this a true noir? Well, it certainly has the hallmarks of Fate crushing us all in her grasp, and ill befalling all those who try to get ahead by cheating the system. And add to that a cynicism about just about every sacred cow of mid-century America that is almost breathtaking, and you can see why this was not a huge popular success at its release, and equally why it has become a revered cult movie. It is indeed, unforgettable. Beautifully shot on a lot that had real circus performers, in the stark expressionistic lighting that typified noirs, and with a mesmerizing (no pun intended) central performance, surrounded by excellent support acts. Yes, it's a bit pulpy, but so was the tawdry bestseller on which it was based, and which this film is widely regarded to transcend. See it now before Guillermo Del Toro releases his remake!
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