Phantom Lady (film)

Infobox_Film
name = Phantom Lady


image_size = 300px
caption = Lobby card
director = Robert Siodmak
writer = Story: Cornell Woolrich Screenplay: Bernard C. Schoenfeld
starring = Franchot Tone Ella Raines Alan Curtis Elisha Cook, Jr.
producer = Joan Harrison
music =
cinematography = Woody Bredell
editing = Arthur Hilton
distributor = Universal Pictures
released = February 17 1944 (U.S.A.)
runtime = 87 minutes
country = United States
language = English
amg_id = 1:106001
imdb_id = 0036260|

"Phantom Lady" (1944) is a black-and-white film noir directed by Robert Siodmak, his first Hollywood "noir." It was also a first for producer Joan Harrison, Universal Pictures' first female executive and Hitchcock's former screenwriter. The film was based on a Cornell Woolrich same name novel (under pen name "William Irish"). [imdb title|id=0036260|title=Phantom Lady.]

In what may be the film's most famous sequence, rhythmic inter-cutting between Elisha Cook, Jr.'s frantic drumming (dubbed by Gene Krupa) at a seedy night club and the leering responses of sexy secretary Ella Raines climaxes in a heated sexual encounter without actually showing a sex act on the screen.

Plot

After a fight with his wife, Scott Henderson, a handsome and successful 32-year-old civil engineer, picks up a mysterious woman in a bar and they go out. The woman refuses to exchange names, becoming the phantom lady of the film.

When Henderson returns home, he finds cops waiting to question him because his wife has been murdered with his necktie. Henderson and the cops try to find the phantom lady who can provide him with an alibi but fail. It's up to Carol, Henderson's loyal secretary with a secret to trace the phantom and set Henderson free.

Cast

* Franchot Tone as Jack Marlow
* Ella Raines as Carol "Kansas" Richman
* Alan Curtis as Scott Henderson
* Aurora Miranda as Estela Monteiro (as Aurora)
* Thomas Gomez as Inspector Burgess
* Fay Helm as Ann Terry
* Elisha Cook, Jr. as Cliff Milburn
* Andrew Tombes as Mac, the Bartender
* Regis Toomey as Detective Chewing Gum
* Joseph Crehan as Tom
* Virginia Brissac as Dr. Ellen Chase
* Milburn Stone as voice of District Attorney

Critical reception

Critic Bosley Crowther was not impressed with the atmospherics of the film and panned the film due to its screenplay, writing, "We wish we could recommend it as a perfect combination of the styles of the eminent Mr. Hitchcock and the old German psychological films, for that is plainly and precisely what it tries very hard to be. It is full of the play of light and shadow, of macabre atmosphere, of sharply realistic faces and dramatic injections of sound. People sit around in gloomy places looking blankly and silently into space, music blares forth from empty darkness, and odd characters turn up and disappear. It is all very studiously constructed for weird and disturbing effects. But, unfortunately, Miss Harrison and Mr. Siodmak forgot one basic thing—they forgot to provide their picture with a plausible, realistic plot." [ [http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9503EEDA153DE13BBC4052DFB466838F659EDE Crowther, Bosley] . "The New York Times," film review, February 18, 1944. Last accessed: January 29 2008.]

References

External links

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* [http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/02/21/phantom_lady.html "Phantom Lady"] at Senses of Cinema
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH5ZPIsI6-M "Phantom Lady"] trailer at You Tube