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By
NICK ZEGARAC
How odd to find ex-MGM
glamour girl and comedian extraordinaire Lucille
Ball starring in a film noir; and how wonderful to
discover her talents amply suited for Henry
Hathaway's razor-sharp thriller, The Dark Corner
(1946). Lucy is Kathleen, the faithful as a bird
dog and can't be devious secretary to private eye,
Bradford Galt (Mark Stevens). Galt is working his
usual batch of unhappy home wreckers when he
decides to take a break from the fray with Kate.
But the evening turns disastrous as the two are
tailed by Stauffer (William Bendix) -- a decoy
designed to put Brad in all the wrong places,
starting with a frame up for the murder of his
ex-friend, Anthony Jardine (Kurt Kreuger).
Meanwhile, on the more fashionable end of town,
art dealer Hardy Cathcart (Clifton Webb) is
entertaining another gala event at his glittering
salon. Married to the stunning, and much too
young-for-him beauty, Mari (Cathy Downs), Hardy
doesn't suspect that Jardine and his wife are
lovers -- that is, until the two become stupidly
obvious in their lovemaking. As the chips begin to
fall into the wrong places and it looks as though
Brad's going up the river for a crime he didn't
commit, he confesses to Kathleen his deep dark
past -- that he was framed and took the wrap for
Jardine's criminal activities several years
before, a loyalty which doesn't make much sense
but that ironically makes Jardine's untimely
demise look ideally like an act of frustrated
revenge.
Hathaway's direction is rather nimble throughout,
moving his characters around like ill-fated chess
pieces jumping toward their untimely demise. Okay,
hiding a body under one's bed and waiting for the
upstairs maid to find it while vacuuming isn't
exactly sound logic or film making -- but it gets
the prerequisite laugh. Constance Collier makes a
welcome addition to the cast, playing one of her
delightfully whacked out society dames -- Mrs.
Kingsley -- for which the character actress was
justly famous. Ditto for Clifton Webb's
run-of-the-mill, slightly homoerotic performance
as Cathcart -- a man who lusts after portraits
that resemble his wife. Running a scant 99
minutes, The Dark Corner gets into more than a few
crevices, tipping over rocks and rare collector's
art with equal aplomb and finding the moral decay
and grit of low society in some of its highest
places.
Fox's transfer on The Dark Corner isn't ideal.
Although the grayscale is relatively stark and
stylized -- as it should be -- and fairly free of
age-related artifacts, there's a considerable
amount of edge enhancement and shimmering of fine
details that crop up sporadically throughout this
DVD presentation. It's odd…you would think that
with HD DVD just around the corner, studios would
be making sure they had a slew of near pristine
prints to remarket under the 'new and improved'
banner. But The Dark Corner's print is
inconsistently rendered at best. Watch for
Kathleen's V-stripped coat to shimmering
uncontrollably, as well as background spectral
highlights on telephones, chairs and most any
other shiny surface. The audio is interesting --
it's presented in original mono and a stereo
remix. Both are adequate -- the stereo only
marginally spread across the three front channels.
Extras include trailers for this and other Fox
Noir titles, as well as an audio commentary by
James Ursini. |
