Dead Reckoning

C. O. DeRiemer

at 4:57 am

Captain Warren ‘Rip’ Murdock (Humphrey Bogart) and his friend Sergeant Johnny Drake (William Prince) are on their way to Washington right after the war for reasons they haven’t been told. But on the train, they learn that Drake is going to receive the Medal of Honor. Drake realizes the publicity he’ll get, and the next moment he’s jumped off the train and disappeared. Murdock can’t figure it out. He remembers the small enameled medallion Drake always carried with the name John Joseph Preston engraved on it. He knows something is wrong, and he’s determined to track his friend down. Murdock winds up in Gulf City a few days later, staring at a corpse burned beyond recognition lying in the morgue. And he learns the only thing found on the body was a small lump of melted metal with enamel on it.

The movie is grade B noir, made watchable by a strong Bogart performance and a story line that almost compensates for noticeable weaknesses.

When Murdock investigates what drove Johnny to leave Gulf City and join the army, then come rushing back, he discovers a beautiful widow, Dusty Chandler (Lizabeth Scott), an unscrupulous gambler, Mr. Martinelli (Morris Carnovsky) and Martinelli’s goon (Marvin Miller), who likes to administer brutal beatings to soft music. Murdock has to keep his guard up; he can’t quite figure Dusty out. It turns out Drake, who’s real name was John Preston, voluntarily took the fall for her when her wealthy husband was shot and then ran out before the trial. Did Dusty really love Johnny or was she just using him? Murdock meets her at Martinelli’s supper club, buys her a drink and invites her to dance while he tells her of Johnny’s death. “I wanted her in my arms,” Murdock says in flashback, “while I told her. My right hand on her spine would feel the shock if there was any. She’d tested pure so far, but so did another girl I knew once, right up to the dollar.”

“Tell me where you saw him…please,” Dusty begs. “On a slab in the morgue, burned to a crisp,” Murdock tells her.

“Her whole body,” Murdock tells us, “had gone soft as custard when I slugged her with it, but I kept thinking — she has to know something.” It turns out that she does. This leads to more murder, beatings and betrayal. The worms of doubt and distrust dine well.

The drawbacks to the movie are due in part to Scott’s performance. She was, in my view, a limited actress. We don’t know which way she’s going in the movie, good girl or bad, until the end, but she just doesn’t create the kind of anticipatory tension that some other actresses could create with Bogart. She has a great husky voice, an nice overbite and a cultured accent halfway between Bryn Mawr and a lisp.

Bogart was at his best, I think, when he had strong, vivid actors to play off of. They accentuated his own unique style. Not only does Scott seem a little pallid, the other actors don’t strike many sparks with Bogart, either. Carnovsky makes a smooth villain but not a vivid one. Marvin Miller simply doesn’t carry much menace as an enforcer. The others, with the exception of Wallace Ford as a semi-reformed safe cracker, are all interchangeable with dozens of other Hollywood character actors.

On balance, if you like Forties noir and Bogart you will probably enjoy the movie. Just be prepared for some flaws. I like it well enough to have bought it. There are no extras to speak of. The DVD picture looks just fine.
Rating: 4 / 5

Peter Scott-presland

at 6:23 am

This is a slightly odd example of film noir; all the themes are there, but pretty much none of the visual style. The prologue aside, it is mostly played out in well-lit interiors, and though the script crackles with lost idealism and betrayal, there is little visual equivalent in the murky shadows in which film noir is usually (and best) located. (An aside: someone asserted in a comment on another review that Billy Wilder “invented” film noir with “Double Indemnity” in 1944. The truth as always is a lot more complex. It’s true that Noir was largely invented by ex-pat Germans such as Wilder, Lang and Dmytryk, steeped in the expressionism of pre-war UEFA; but fully-formed Noir was a long time in the making. It could be argued that the first Films Noirs were “M” and “The Threepenny Opera”. But I digress.)

Director John Cromwell, a man of left-wing leanings, made some excellent movies, from Bette’s “Of Human Bondage” Of Human Bondage [1934] [DVD] to Kim Stanley in “The Goddess” (not currently available here), via “Caged” Caged [DVD] [1950] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC], an ultra-tough prison movie with Eleanor Powell. All of these reveal a director dedicated to getting the best from actors, and with a liking for tart scripts. It’s just that this isn’t his genre, and result is rather dour and not much fun.

But there are many good moments. The plot, about a GI (Bogart) trying to trace his war buddy and then both avenge his death and prove who really killed the moll’s husband when his friend was the fall guy, is suitably twisted. The violence is particularly brutal, and the baddies, one smooth, one psycho, are satisfyingly etched. Best of all is Elizabeth Scott as the treacherous moll – Cromwell draws a performance from her far more sultry and subtle than many of the period, Veronica Lake included. Bacall she ain’t, but she carries great conviction. Where the film is steeped in Noir is its bitter, post-war disillusionment, the wartime camaraderie, symbolised by the catch-phrase “Geronimo”, contrasted with the graft and treachery of those who stayed behind and profited. This was made in 1947, when the contrast between war and peace was most pronounced. It is also startling and very refreshing to hear a man say of his friend, simply, “I loved him”.

The double-crosses are such and the masks so convincing that you really are in doubt of the outcome right up to the last terrific fifteen minutes. I won’t spoil it for you, but definitely worth checking out, if not quite up to repeated viewing.

Rating: 4 / 5