Classic Films in Focus: EXPERIMENT PERILOUS (1944)

Like the more illustrious Gaslight (1944), Experiment Perilous (1944) focuses on a beautiful woman trapped in a sinister plot to destroy her sanity, with Hedy Lamarr as the lady in peril and George Brent as her aspiring protector. The film also features direction by Jacques Tourneur, but it falls short of his best work in classics like Cat People (1942) and Out of the Past (1947). In spite of its flaws, Experiment Perilous is a moderately entertaining thriller, largely because of Lamarr's irresistible charms and the suave menace of Paul Lukas as the dangerously possessive husband.

George Brent plays Dr. Hunt Bailey, who meets a timorous but kindly older woman (Olive Blakeney) on a train trip home to New York. When the woman suddenly dies on her return to her family's house, Hunt is left with her diaries and a growing urge to know more about the surviving members of the Bederaux family. Nick Bederaux (Paul Lukas) is a wealthy man, but his house's chief attraction is his lovely wife, Allida (Hedy Lamarr). Nick engages Hunt to assess Allida's sanity, but the doctor suspects that Allida is in very real danger from her manipulative spouse.

We never reach the hysterical pitch of Gaslight as this plot unfolds, perhaps because Nick Bederaux is a less sophisticated tormentor than Charles Boyer's sadistic villain. Nick is merely jealous and mentally unstable; he is more capable of murder than the slow, deliberate turning of the screws that really Gothic cruelty demands. Paul Lukas handles the role as well as possible, but his performance would have benefited from juicier sins to commit over the course of the film. Because Nick is less inventive as an antagonist, Hedy Lamarr has less to work with as the victimized Allida, although her delicate beauty suggests her vulnerability and justifies all of the masculine attention she attracts. George Brent more or less plods forward through his part as the heroic doctor; he's too solid and respectable to seem threatened, even when he realizes that he's being followed and then discovers that Miss Bederaux's diaries have been stolen from their hiding place in his own home. Hunt never believes Nick's claims about Allida, and he progresses from admiring her portrait to being in love with her with alarming speed.

The picture does offer some memorable visual moments, from closeups of Lamarr's impossibly beautiful face to a bank of fascinating aquariums that we never get close enough to inspect. The Bederaux home, with its strange hidden stairs and maze of rooms, invites mystery, and it provides for an explosive climax when Nick finally launches his homicidal endgame. These elements earned the movie an Oscar nomination for Best Art Direction, but it's easy to imagine this setting filled with much more gripping suspense than we actually get. Tourneur creates that kind of hair-raising dread in his most important films, but it only breaks through in fits and starts in this production. The result is not a terrible picture but a mediocre one; dedicated Tourneur fans might want to see it just to expand their knowledge of the director's oeuvre, and others will find it worthwhile just for an hour and a half to admire Lamarr's incomparable looks.

Be sure to note Albert Dekker in a supporting role as Hunt's friend, Clag. For a really different perspective on George Brent in the thriller genre, see The Spiral Staircase (1945). Hedy Lamarr also stars in Algiers (1938), Ziegfeld Girl (1941), and Samson and Delilah (1949). Paul Lukas won the Oscar for Best Actor for his performance in Watch on the Rhine (1943), but you'll also find him in The Lady Vanishes (1938) and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954). For more from Jacques Tourneur, see I Walked with a Zombie (1943), The Flame and the Arrow (1950), and Night of the Demon (1957).

Classic Films in Focus: 42ND STREET (1933)

In the Depression Era, frothy, upbeat musicals were a much appreciated form of relief, and nobody made musicals any frothier or more upbeat than choreographer Busby Berkeley, who didn't actually direct the films but rather constructed elaborate, show-stopping musical numbers around which the directors filled in the gaps. Of the Busby Berkeley films, 42nd Street (1933) is the best known, partly because of visually dazzling musical interludes like "Shuffle Off to Buffalo" and partly because director Lloyd Bacon's surrounding story is the ultimate backstage theater tale that so many later films have imitated, parodied, and revised.

The picture features Berkeley regulars Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler as two of the performers in a troubled stage musical being produced by the brilliant but dangerously overworked Julian Marsh (Warner Baxter). Powell plays Billy, one of the principal performers, while Keeler is Peggy, a nervous first timer. After a couple of more experienced chorus girls (Ginger Rogers and Una Merkel) help Peggy get a spot in the show, she finds out just how demanding life on the stage can be. Meanwhile, the show's star, Dorothy Brock (Bebe Daniels), depends on a wealthy admirer for the musical's financial support, but she can't seem to give up her old flame (George Brent) for the sake of her career. When Dorothy breaks her ankle just before opening night, Peggy is forced to sink or swim as her last minute replacement.

The musical numbers are great fun, especially the cheeky "Shuffle Off to Buffalo," and "42nd Street" has become a classic of the genre. Baxter's line to Keeler, "You're going out a youngster, but you've got to come back a star!" is hopelessly sappy but still one of Hollywood's most memorable moments. Ruby Keeler really is the new kid in the film; this was her first screen appearance, and she is somewhat overshadowed by the scene stealing comediennes Ginger Rogers and Una Merkel. Rogers, of course, would go on to lasting fame as Fred Astaire's dancing partner, but she has a great role in "Anytime Annie" that lets her show how spunky, funny, and smart she could be.

42nd Street earned two Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture. Lloyd Bacon and Busby Berkeley worked with Powell and Keeler again for Footlight Parade, which also appeared in 1933. George Brent went on to meatier roles as a leading man, starring with Bette Davis in Jezebel (1938), The Old Maid (1939), and Dark Victory (1939), among others. You'll find Ginger Rogers making her first screen appearance with Astaire in Flying Down to Rio (1933), but don't miss her starring comedic performance in The Major and the Minor (1942) or her Oscar winning work in the women's melodrama, Kitty Foyle: The Natural History of a Woman (1940). The delightful Una Merkel can also be seen in Destry Rides Again (1939) and It's a Joke, Son! (1947).

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.

Classic Films in Focus: THE OLD MAID (1939)

In 1938 Bette Davis had starred in Jezebel as a Southern belle whose unconventional behavior brought her misery and loneliness. In 1939, Davis and a number of her Jezebel cohorts returned for another Civil War love story in The Old Maid, in which Davis plays a Northern debutante whose unconventional behavior brings her misery and loneliness. Oddly enough, Charlotte Lovell in The Old Maid actually trespasses more seriously against convention than Jezebel Julie Marsden, even though Charlotte is presented as the more sympathetic and tragic of the pair. Directed by Edmund Goulding, The Old Maid is an emotional, star-studded melodrama, one that showcases Davis' talents for transformation and for making brittle, damaged heroines wring the hearts of their audiences.

The picture begins with Davis' Charlotte playing second fiddle to her cousin, Delia (Miriam Hopkins), who is about to be married to a wealthy young man who has everything Delia could want, except her heart. Delia's jilted lover, Clem Spender (George Brent), turns up just in time for the wedding, but Delia marries the other fellow anyway, leaving Charlotte to comfort Clem. Apparently, she comforts him all too effectively, since she later "goes out West" for a while and comes back with a baby whom she claims is a foundling. Clem never finds out because he dies on the battlefield, but Delia discovers the truth and prevents Charlotte from marrying into her husband's socially prominent family. Eventually, Delia incorporates Charlotte's daughter, Tina, into her own family, and the child does not know that bitter, strict "Aunt" Charlotte, the unloved old maid, is really her own mother.

Several of the Jezebel crew reunite for this outing. In addition to Davis, we have George Brent as the rakish lover, dying again, but this time in a Union uniform. Donald Crisp, who had played the kindly paternal doctor in the first film, appears as the kindly paternal doctor in this one, as well. Max Steiner, who was a very busy man throughout the classic era, returns as the composer. The parallels make The Old Maid almost a mirror image of Jezebel, with Rebels turned Yankee and the accents changed. Both films give Davis plenty of dramatic fuel, although she has more fun with her appearance in the later production, as Charlotte ages over the years and becomes somewhat like Davis' heroine in Now, Voyager (1942), only in reverse. 

Like Jezebel, The Old Maid is very much a movie about clothing, with the wedding dresses of the two cousins and their daughters forming important focal pieces at different critical moments. We also see the changing fashions of the times as the years pass, encouraging us to contrast the freedoms of the younger generation, Tina (Jane Bryan) and Dee (Janet Shaw), with their mothers' more repressed youth. Charlotte, however, seems even more confined and restricted in her later wardrobe, sartorial evidence of her trapped life and the secret she keeps locked away.

Certainly the most interesting aspect of the film is the relationship between the two cousins. Do they really mean to hurt and torment one another so relentlessly? They take turns being antagonist and victim, driving sharp daggers into one another's backs and then wishing they could pull them out again. They really take the idea of the "frenemy" to a whole different level. Part of the chemistry between them stems from the fact that Davis and Hopkins hated each other. It explains why the cousins' cruelties seem so much more believable than their kindnesses. Davis was very good at this kind of toxic feminine codependence; it would serve her well in later movies like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) and Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), where the relationships bubble over into Gothic horrors.

Sounds cheerful, right? It's worth knowing that the film was adapted from a play based on an Edith Wharton novel, The Mother's Recompense (1925). Given that origin, you can probably view the ending of The Old Maid as the happiest outcome possible. You’ll find more of Bette Davis and George Brent in Dark Victory (1939), The Great Lie (1941), and In This Our Life (1942). Miriam Hopkins earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actress in Becky Sharp (1935), but she also starred in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), Trouble in Paradise (1932), and Virginia City (1940). For more maternal melodrama, try Stella Dallas (1937), Kitty Foyle (1940), and Mildred Pierce (1945).

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.