Classic Films in Focus: NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES (1948)

I hadn't heard of Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948) before The Criterion Channel included it in a trio of noir films directed by John Farrow, the other two being The Big Clock (1948) and Alias Nick Beal (1949). The most obscure of the three, Night Has a Thousand Eyes is still a fascinating picture, thanks to a supernatural story originally written by Cornell Woolrich and a great performance by Edward G. Robinson as the tragic protagonist. Like the other Farrow pictures in the set, this one starts at a pivotal moment and then backtracks to the events that created the crisis of the opening scene, which gives the viewer a kind of precognition, too. While Night Has a Thousand Eyes benefits from the performances of Robinson, Russell, William Demarest, and Virginia Bruce, a weak showing from John Lund as the heroine's love interest undermines the appeal of the young couple Robinson tries to save from disaster.

Robinson stars as former traveling psychic John Triton, who unhappily discovers that his ability to see the future is real. After his visions drive oil heiress Jean Courtland (Gail Russell) to attempt suicide, Triton recounts his history with Jean's parents, Whitney (Jerome Cowan) and Jenny (Virginia Bruce), who were once partners in Triton's act. Jean's boyfriend, Elliott (John Lund), remains skeptical of Triton's story, but as the older man's predictions repeatedly come true everyone around Jean has to take the threats to her safety seriously.

Edward G. Robinson is the main draw here, and he delivers a compelling depiction of a man forever on the outside of humanity thanks to his unwanted ability. Triton can't control his visions, and most of the time he can't stop the future he sees from happening, either. He gives up the love of his life hoping to save her from the early death he foresees, but it doesn't work, and Triton spends the next two decades secretly watching his old friend Whitney Courtland raise the daughter who should have been Triton's child. When Whitney and then Jean face mortal danger, Triton rouses himself for a final attempt to change someone's fate. Robinson, adept at playing almost every kind of character, invests this one with tremendous pathos. Triton has the air of a martyr without making a fuss about it, his aging face lined with grief and resignation. He never seems crazed or deluded, even though the people around him mostly discount his claims until it's too late. The viewer, seeing all of the evidence in Triton's favor from the beginning, has no reason to doubt him, and we wait in suspense for the rest of the characters to figure out that Triton's powers are the real thing.

Most of the supporting cast is solid, with Gail Russell especially engaging as a young woman grappling with her own sense of doom. Her scenes with Robinson are tender and moving because Jean believes Triton and he desperately wants to save her, even though he isn't sure he can. Jerome Cowan and Virginia Bruce both have some good moments in the backstory section, while William Demarest and John Alexander stand out among the skeptics in the third act. Unfortunately, there's no feeling of true devotion between Jean and Elliott because John Lund is so bland and unsympathetic as the latter. Because the audience and Jean both believe Triton, Elliott's persistent skepticism comes across as boorish, and his attempts to reassure Jean seem more like paternalistic chauvinism at best. Triton risks everything to save Jean, and his concern for her feels deeply genuine, but Elliott doesn't seem to feel much of anything. It's a shame Triton can't save Jean from marrying a wooden bore, but his psychic powers don't extend to bad casting decisions.

For more from director John Farrow, see Where Danger Lives (1950), His Kind of Woman (1951), and Hondo (1953). Edward G. Robinson rose to fame for his gangsters in movies like Little Caesar (1931), but his other noir pictures include Double Indemnity (1944), The Woman in the Window (1944), Scarlet Street (1945), and The Stranger (1946),as well as the iconic Key Largo (1948). Catch Gail Russell facing more supernatural peril in The Uninvited (1944) or try Angel and the Badman (1947) or Moonrise (1948). If you enjoy movies based on the work of Cornell Woolrich, look for The Leopard Man (1943), Phantom Lady (1944), Black Angel (1946), and The Window (1949).

Classic Films in Focus: KONGO (1932)

Kongo (1932) certainly ranks as one of the stranger productions of the Pre-Code era and also one of the most alarmingly perverse. It began as a stage play and had already been adapted by Tod Browning in 1928 as West of Zanzibar, with the great Lon Chaney and Lionel Barrymore as the embittered rivals, but the MGM sound version benefits from the experience of Walter Huston, the actor who had originated the role of Dead Legs Flint on the stage. Huston might not be remembered as a man of a thousand faces, but he makes quite a grotesque spectacle as the picture’s insanely vengeful villain, who could give Joseph Conrad’s Kurtz a run for his money. Lurid, deliriously racist, and steeped in sadistic thrills, Kongo is a fascinating journey to the dark heart of classic horror for those with a strong enough stomach, but it’s by no means safe territory for the Pre-Code novice.

Huston’s Dead Legs Flint was paralyzed years ago when his rival, Gregg (C. Henry Gordon), crushed his spine and stole Flint’s wife. As part of his elaborate plan for revenge, Flint takes Gregg’s daughter, Ann (Virginia Bruce), as an infant and places her in a convent school until she is grown. Then he delivers her to a Zanzibar brothel for humiliating assault and abuse. After two years, he has her brought to his miniature empire in the Congo, where he rules the natives with a mixture of cheap magic and cruelty. When the drug-addicted young doctor, Kingsland (Conrad Nagel), stumbles into Flint’s camp, he rekindles Ann’s humanity, but he also attracts the interest of Flint’s nymphomaniac mistress, Tula (Lupe Velez). Flint wants Kingsland to operate on his damaged back, and he also has a final act of violent vengeance planned for Ann and Gregg.

Kongo shares many themes with Heart of Darkness, including a repulsively racist attitude toward the native Africans, but its focus is really on Flint’s maniacal obsession with revenge. He has an ugly, disfigured face to match his twisted soul, and he relishes the suffering he inflicts on Ann, treating her like a dog in his own house and encouraging her miserable dependence on alcohol. “How proud your father would be if he could see you,” he sneers. His sadistic streak extends to the natives and Tula, whose tongue he attempts to cut out when she disobeys his orders to keep Kingsland away from the addictive root he craves. Flint’s grand scheme requires his old enemy to come to the camp, confront Ann’s defilement, and then die so that Flint can have Ann burned alive in accordance with the local burial custom. After nearly twenty years of plotting, Flint seems poised to realize his horrible desire, but an ironic revelation casts a different light on everything he thought he knew.

Huston’s performance dominates the picture, but Virginia Bruce sells the fractured humanity of Ann very effectively. She really looks awful when we see her again after her ordeal in Zanzibar, with deep lines around her face and a wild, bestial quality in her movements. Conrad Nagel also revels in a sorry state as the drug-addled Kingsland, swinging between debauched euphoria and sober nobility. Bruce and Nagel have some very tender scenes in which they attempt to save one another from the nightmare world they inhabit, but their best moments as actors are their worst ones as characters. Once they get cleaned up they become more conventional and less memorable, but luckily their romantic salvation occurs very late in the picture. Lupe Velez plays the Portuguese Tula with more energy than subtlety; Tula’s chief ambition is to sleep with as many white men as possible, but her residence in the remote camp offers her limited opportunities, and it’s never really clear how the audience is supposed to feel about her.

Track down the 1928 film for a double feature comparison of the two versions. William Cowen only directed half a dozen movies, none of them particularly well-known today. Walter Huston, however, earned four Oscar nominations during his screen career and won Best Supporting Actor for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). For more of his work, see Dodsworth (1936), The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941), and Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). Virginia Bruce also stars in Jane Eyre (1934), Born to Dance (1936), and The Invisible Woman (1940). Look for Conrad Nagel in The Divorcee (1930) and All That Heaven Allows (1955). Lupe Velez is best remembered for the Mexican Spitfire movies starting in 1940, but you can also see her in The Gaucho (1927) and Where East is East (1929).

Kongo is currently available for streaming on Warner Archive Instant; Warner has also released the film as part of its Archive DVD collection.

Classic Films in Focus: THE INVISIBLE WOMAN (1940)

Unlike the earlier invisible man movies, The Invisible Woman (1940) leaps right out of the horror genre and lands in screwball comedy, with the feisty Virginia Bruce leading a cast of particularly eccentric characters on a merry romp through mischief and romance. The tonal shift might disconcert those looking for a true follow-up to James Whale’s 1933 chiller, but The Invisible Woman works surprisingly well as a comedy, and the special effects contribute to the fun, this time with a lot of naughty winks about a naked young lady parading around. Fans of classic comedy will also appreciate the performances of great supporting players like Charles Ruggles, Oskar Homolka, Margaret Hamilton, and Shemp Howard, but the hammy highpoint is John Barrymore as the decidedly theatrical inventor of the invisibility machine.

Virginia Bruce plays disgruntled dress model Kitty Carroll, who agrees to become invisible in order to get revenge on her nasty boss, Mr. Growley (Charles Lane). She disappoints Professor Gibbs (John Barrymore) by running off before he can exhibit her to his sole financial backer, Richard Russell (John Howard), so the pair have to pursue Russell to his remote lodge in order to prove that the machine works. Meanwhile, an exiled gangster named Blackie (Oskar Homolka) sends his thugs after Gibbs and the machine so that the homesick crook can sneak back into the United States.

Bruce spends a lot more time being visible than either Claude Rains or Vincent Price had done in the earlier movies, but she projects enough saucy personality in her voice to carry the invisible sequences. Like most screwball heroines, her protagonist baffles and thwarts the men around her, but Kitty gets to do it while naked and invisible, which makes her especially intriguing to John Howard’s wolfish socialite, Richard, who thinks he has seen everything when it comes to young ladies. Kitty is a fun, bold character, never a victim and always in control of the situation, even when the gangsters kidnap her and Professor Gibbs. If the earlier invisible men found a power that bred madness in their transformation, Kitty finds a power that is liberating and long overdue.

The rest of the cast is full of top-notch talent, with Barrymore stealing scenes for all he’s worth as the loopy, bombastic Professor, who comes off like Frank Morgan’s long lost brother. John Howard, well-known to audiences in 1940 as the star of the Bulldog Drummond movies, is charming as Richard, even if his part mostly consists of reacting to the nuttier characters around him. Veteran comedian Charles Ruggles gets laughs as the long-suffering servant, George, who keeps trying to resign from Richard’s employ but never actually goes, and Margaret Hamilton is very effective as the Professor’s prickly housekeeper, although we don’t see her often enough. Oskar Homolka puts his crazy eyebrows to good use as the gangster boss, while Shemp Howard and Donald McBride clown around amusingly as his utterly inept thugs. All of these players know exactly how to make their characters memorable and interesting to the audience, which helps to explain why such a silly picture is so much fun.

Like The Invisible Man Returns (1940), The Invisible Woman earned an Oscar nomination for Best Special Effects. A. Edward Sutherland, who directed The Invisible Woman, also made the 1928 version of Tillie’s Punctured Romance starring W.C. Fields, but during the silent era Sutherland had been an actor himself. See more of Virginia Bruce in The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and Born to Dance (1936), and catch John Howard in The Philadelphia Story (1940) and The Undying Monster (1942) for more of his roles after the Bulldog Drummond run. John Barrymore gives more comic performances in Twentieth Century (1934) and Midnight (1939), while Charlie Ruggles appears in Ruggles of Red Gap (1935) and Bringing Up Baby (1938). Look for Oskar Homolka in Sabotage (1936), Ball of Fire (1941), and I Remember Mama (1948), the last of which brought him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.