Movie Review: Phantom Lady

Phantom Lady (1944)
directed by Robert Siodmak, starring Ella Raines, Alan Curtis, Franchot Tone

Note: This is my entry in the Sleuthathon, hosted by Movies, Silently

Scott Henderson (Alan Curtis) is a man with one hell of a problem on his hands. He arrives home late one night and walks right into a welcome committee of sneering cops, who lead him to the strangled corpse of his estranged wife. Scott swears his innocence, but his only alibi is a flimsy little story about going to a bar and meeting a mysterious woman. He doesn't know the woman's name and can barely remember what she looks like except for one tiny detail: she was wearing a strange hat. By coincidence, the singer at the show they attended together was was wearing the very same hat. Police Inspector Burgess (Thomas Gomez) is sympathetic to the hapless Scott, but it doesn't matter; everyone who supposedly saw Scott and the "phantom lady" swear it never happened.

Scott's fate is sealed. He's found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. But luckily for him, there's one person still fighting tooth and nail to save him: his loyal secretary Carol "Kansas" Richman. Secretly in love with her oblivious boss, Kansas is determined to track down the witnesses and force a confession out of one of them. Even if it means stalking men down alleys or seducing them or throwing herself into danger. Yet even with all her pluck and determination, Kansas is stymied time and again as the witnesses keep dying or disappearing. She enlists the help of Inspector Burgess and Scott's best friend Jack Marlow (Franchot Tone), but they likewise prove powerless. And all the while, the clock is running out for Scott. As impossible as it seems, the fate of one man's life might just depend on them tracking down that one strange hat and the phantom lady who wears it...

Ella Raines is one of Hollywood's more intriguing almost-success stories. The slinky brunette beauty with cat-like green eyes turns up in endless '40s glamor photos and she has some major movies to her name (Brute Force, Hail the Conquering Hero) but somehow she never became a box office draw on her own. Raines was discovered by Howard Hawks and the connection makes total sense when you see her on screen. Even in movies like Phantom Lady and The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry, where she plays straight-talking "good eggs," there's an icy confidence to Raines, a challenging sneer lurking under the smile. She doesn't necessarily come across as a major acting talent but that cool charisma was tailor-made for a Hawks heroine. And yet oddly enough, after building her up for a minor role in Corvette K-225, Hawks apparently lost interest and signed her over to Universal. Phantom Lady was really her first major starring role and in retrospect, one of the best parts she would ever get.

Raines is the magnetic center of Phantom Lady, playing an archetypal "gal Friday" who turns out to be an amazing combination of Mata Hari, Nancy Drew, and the Terminator. Her character should come off as a mere stack of cliches, a lovelorn secretary turned girl detective and all for the sake of a very dull man. But in the hands of director Robert Siodmak and Ella Raines, Kansas is a relentless force of nature. 

A more traditional movie might simply have had the secretary going around and politely questioning people. Instead, Phantom Lady gives us a fascinating series of scenes where Kansas relentless stalks one of the witnesses, the barman who claims never to have seen the mystery woman. Night after night, she turns up at the bar and sit, her eyes fixed on him. Cold, implacable, silent. The barman slowly starts to crack up under the pressure. What does this dame want from him? One night, he goes home after locking up the bar and she starts to follow him. No matter how far he walks, he can hear the click of her heels behind him. Raines looks delicate and vulnerable in the flickering shadows, wrapped in her translucent raincoat and yet, for once, the frightened woman in the alley is also the pitiless avenger. I won't give away what happens when Raines finally catches up to her man but it's enough to send a shiver down your back.

Even more striking is the film's most famous sequence where Kansas tarts herself up as a swinging floozy, complete with jangling jewelery, chewing gum, and a hot-to-trot attitude, and descends into a jazz club to track down the drummer (Elisha Cook Jr.) She's determined to find one witness who'll talk, even if she has to let this sweaty, panting guy paw her all over. It's one of the film's odd little twists that the sexual energy between Cook Jr. and Raines feels palpable and not entirely fake, with Cook Jr. speeding up the tempo of his drum beats to impress this gorgeous creature giving him the eye. She professes her interest in him and in jazz ("I'm a hep kitten") and he takes her back to where his buddies hang out. Siodmak really goes to town here, creating a feverish, gleefully perverse atmosphere that almost swallows our heroine up then and there. You can practically smell the reefer in the air. The images and angles feel like a direct nod to Siodmak's roots in German Expressionism; he alternates between huge closeups and low angle shots that let the musicians loom threateningly even as they keep pouring out the notes, faster and faster. 

Cook Jr. starts pounding on the drum so fast, you start to worry he'll have a heart attack. And all the while, Raines is there, laughing, throwing her head back, urging him on. She bares her teeth and looks at Cook Jr like she wants to devour him. Despite the jazz music blasting away, her gestures feel like something straight out of a silent horror film. It's bizarre and thrilling to watch. There's no girl detective here; Raines plays the scene almost like she's become possessed. And yet, once the scene is over and Elisha Cook Jr. goes on to fulfill his role in the plot (I won't give away this one either but if you're an Elisha Cook Jr. fan, you already know how most of his roles end), the movie never feels compelled to comment on what we just witnessed. Either we're supposed to assume that Kansas is a master actress, or we have to believe that buried under that common sense and courage is something kind of bestial and repellent, something she lets out this one time and then never reveals to us again. 

I really like the ambiguity Phantom Lady gives to Kansas and I only wish it had been able to maintain the weirdness for the entire movie. Raines still gives us a fine performance throughout and Siodmak keeps giving us shot after shot to love (Did the man ever make a bad-looking movie?). But it must be admitted that one of the weaknesses of Phantom Lady is that outside of Raines and the excellent character actors Thomas Gomez and Elisha Cook Jr., it really doesn't have any performances or characters worth noting.

Generally, I'm a sucker for the whole wisecracking-secretary-in-love-with-her-boss plot. Movies like Footlight Parade, Wife vs. Secretary, and even something recent like Iron Man just get their hooks into me and I couldn't tell you why. But man, Ella Raines could hardly have picked a less interesting object of her affections than Alan Curtis. You can pretty much sum up Curtis and his performance in an early scene where the police roughly question him over his wife's murder. His eyes fill with tears and he mumbles, "I thought guys didn't cry." The line is silly enough as it is, but Curtis' trembling delivery sends it straight into "teenager who just got cut from the football team" territory. And then one of the cops practically jams a cigarette in Curtis' mouth, like someone silencing a squalling infant with a baby bottle. I feel like somewhere out there is an outtake of this scene with the cop rolling his eyes and saying, "Christ, man, will you at least try to remember what kind of movie we're in here?"

But, in the interests of fairness, Curtis isn't meant to be the main lead here. He's just the object of our heroine's devotion and frankly, the movie would have worked better if her motivation had been friendship rather than unrequited love. No, our male lead here is actually smooth-as-a-hat-band Franchot Tone, who strolls into the movie halfway through, playing Scott's best friend Jack. His arrival also coincides with a decrease in the energy and drive of Kansas' character. Not that she becomes weak exactly, but we suddenly get a lot more scenes of her talking with Jack and Inspector Burgess and demurely standing around. It's the great danger of being a female sleuth in a classic Hollywood mystery; once the male lead shows up, you're going to find yourself being elbowed out of the spotlight.

The mystery in and of itself is not particularly compelling and the movie ends up shooting itself in the foot by revealing the real killer halfway through. If the murderer was a particularly compelling character, this wouldn't matter so much, but he isn't, and we have to endure an awful lot of rambling from him about hands and the power in those hands and what they can do. It's about as terrifying as that guy handing out pamphlets on a street corner and wanting to tell you his theories on life. And then the murderer just keeps hanging around while we wait for one of the others to catch on. It's quite a let-down.

For all the illogical little plot conveniences strewn through the script, I do have to take issue with one particular bit of nonsense. The movie makes a big deal out of the "strange" hat that the mystery woman was wearing. This hat was so strange, so unique, you would know it anywhere, and so on. And yet, when we finally get a look at the damn hat, it doesn't look all that different from any other bizarre Hollywood concoction of the time. You can't scare me, 1940s milliners! I've already seen this. And this. I've even survived this. Don't promise me a funny hat, movie, and not deliver the goods.

However, what makes Phantom Lady an enjoyable film is not its plotting or its cliches or its hats. It's that wonderful, bizarre, Alice-in-Wonderland vibe that we get during Kansas' foray into the underworld. Robert Siodmak's direction is strong enough to lift a rather prosaic mystery into full-on nightmarish territory; I only wish the script had been sharp enough to keep up with him. I only wish it had been sharp enough to keep up with Ella Raines, too, who really does deliver a strong, startling performance, creating a female sleuth who'll definitely linger in your mind. But even if the movie ultimately decides to settle for convention, nothing could really dent the vibrant energy of the first half of the movie. It's proof enough that a few great scenes is enough to make a movie worthwhile.

Favorite Quote:

"What a place. I can feel the rats in the walls."

Favorite Scene:

It's really a toss-up between the scene of Kansas stalking the bartender and the scene of her with the jazz musicians. I like the ambiguity of the stalking more as a character thing but the imagery of her in the backroom jazz club is too powerful to ignore. So, in the end, I'll go with the jazz. She and Cook Jr. make some creepy, amazing music together.

Final Six Words:

The grime glitters most of all

Performance Spotlight: Tallulah Bankhead in Lifeboat

Note: This is the second post in a series dedicated to For the Love of Film: The Film Preservation Blogathon III, looking at some of my personal favorite performances in Hitchcock films. The donation button and links for the blogathon can be found by scrolling down.

Tallulah Bankhead in Lifeboat 

"Lady, you certainly don't look like somebody that's just been shipwrecked."

We begin with a smoking ship tumbling into the waves. Bits of wreckage drift by: a copy of The New Yorker, a chessboard, a dead body.  Amidst all this is a woman in a lifeboat, looking gravely out at the destruction. She's wearing a mink coat. She flexes her fingers restlessly. And then she notices a run in her stocking and sighs in frustration, as if to say "Well, isn't that the final fucking straw?"

It's as perfectly succinct a character introduction as you could ever have.

In Lifeboat, Tallulah Bankhead plays Constance "Connie" Porter, a famous and wealthy journalist, who has the bad luck of being on an American ship that gets torpedoed by the Germans in World War II. She's managed to make it to one of the lifeboats, bringing a typewriter, suitcase, and a diamond bracelet with her. As per the rules of disaster films, her fellow survivors represent a microcosm of society: a millionaire industrialist (Henry Hull), a nurse (Mary Anderson), a radio operator (Hume Cronyn), the ship's steward (Canada Lee), an average-Joe sailor (William Bendix), a mother (Heather Angel), and an engineer with socialism on his mind (John Hodiak). But the lifeboat discovers one more survivor: a German seaman (Walter Slezak), who speaks no English at all and whose intentions are a complete mystery.

According to Alfred Hitchcock, the decision to cast Tallulah Bankhead in Lifeboat was a simple one. When he thought of a lifeboat drifting around the North Atlantic, he wanted to put "the most oblique, incongruous person imaginable in such a situation." That was Tallulah.

Back in elementary school, my friends and I would sometimes pretend to hold fake cigarette holders and drawl, "Dahling, dahling." We didn't know who we imitating of course, but that was the cultural legacy of Tallulah Bankhead, a woman that had once been one of the most talked-about celebrities of her age. She was true-born Alabama aristocracy and gorgeously attractive (a young Daphne du Maurier called her "the most beautiful girl I've ever seen in my life.") Her talents for sex, partying, and outrageous comments would probably have gotten her by, but she had considerable talents as an actress. She made her career on stage, bringing passion and verve to parts that were good and cartwheeling when the plots stalled. She had tried Hollywood for awhile, but refused to take it seriously--and audiences didn't respond the same way they had to her on stage. By 1944, she was no longer the glittering star she'd been and her beauty didn't have the same shocking power, but she was still unforgettable. For the role of Constance Porter, a woman whose glamor and cool wit can withstand even a German U-boat attack, Tallulah Bankhead was the first and best choice.

Whenever people trot out the old chestnut of "He/She only played themselves ," my inner retort is always, "You think that's easy?" I know I couldn't do it. And does it matter if a performer is drawing on their own personality if that personality, as in Bankhead's case, is entertaining and vivid?  Go watch a Paris Hilton performance for comparison. Tallulah Bankhead in Lifeboat just seems to get more brilliantly enjoyable each time I see her. And I wanted to feature her here because in so many ways, her performance is the antithesis of what we think of when we think of Hitchcock and his actresses. Bankhead is not a tormented frosty blonde or a fluttery bit of comic relief or a passive little marionette for Hitch to manipulate. Hitchcock is the director, but Bankhead is her own auteur.

Connie Porter is a strange kind of heroine for a 1940s war film. She's older, cynical, unattached and clearly not concerned by it. Even in the midst of debris and destruction, she's funny, drawling out "darlings" and "my pets" and the occasional "you clumsy fool," all delivered in Bankhead's amazing black-smoke-and-bourbon voice. She's a sophisticate but a self-invented one, as she admits to John Hodiak's character, Kovac. It's a character that calls to mind some of the later roles of Joan Crawford and Bette Davis but also offers up something completely different. For one thing, Bankhead is totally casual about sex in a way that neither Crawford or Davis could be onscreen (maybe that's part of why they were the movie stars). Even though the attraction between her character and Hodiak's never goes farther than an onscreen clinch, Bankhead conveys a real sexual charge that somehow bypasses both a 12-year age difference and Code-era conventions. But even more importantly for Bankhead and Lifeboat is this: she has the ability to be a leading lady and at the same time be fully on the same level as her costars. When Bankhead draws lipstick initials on Hodiak's chest or plays cards with Henry Hull or interrogates Walter Slezak, she's no descending goddess. She's part of the gang.

Even though Lifeboat is an ensemble film, Hitchcock does emphasize Connie's viewpoint many times. In the midst of dark and dramatic moments like Canada Lee's recitation of the Lord's prayer and Heather Angel's total break of sanity, Bankhead's reaction is kept at the front.

Using Tallulah Bankhead of all people as the audience surrogate shows some real mischief on Hitchcock's part. But from a narrative perspective, it makes sense. Connie at the beginning of the story is the most comfortable and assured of the Lifeboat cast. The task of the film is to test that assurance, to strip her of her mink and jewels and typewriter. Essentially, to make her just as uncomfortable as it wants to make the audiences of 1944, reminding them of the darkness that needs to be fought. Bankhead's descent into survival mode is America's too.

But if Bankhead is given the heroine's part by design, that doesn't mean the actress doesn't do her part to grab some extra attention. There's a fun game to play with Lifeboat that I like to call, "Spot Tallulah's Funny Background Business." It would be harder to find group shots where she doesn't have some bit of scene-stealing business to take your eyes off everyone else. In a scene where she already has a cigarette, Bankhead ups the ante with a side glance that would make even Dietrich look unsteady.

Or here, planting her head on her knuckles like a thought balloon is about to emerge.

 Or here, in a shot where we're meant to notice the darkening of John Hodiak's brow. But all the while Bankhead's sprawled across his lap in a way that doesn't say "weak, dehydrated, starving survivor of a shipwreck" so much as it says, "public ravishment to commence shortly."

With as much as I've made of Bankhead and the idiosyncratic charms of her character, you might think this performance was pure camp. And yet it isn't. Camp would stretch the reality of the film; Bankhead never does. It's one of the things that separates Lifeboat from the boilerplate genre of disaster films (well, technically it's a war film, but it's got the "disparate characters thrown together" angle so let's call it even). The quirkiness and humor of these characters never breaks the real drama of their situation.

But wonderful as it is to see Bankhead exhale one-liners and play up to the camera, my favorite scene of hers is played relatively straight. Connie and the others are trying to encourage Gus, the injured seaman, to submit to an amputation. Gus, however, can only think about his girlfriend Rosie, a woman who loves to dance more than anything. "If my leg goes, Rosie goes!" he snaps. Connie, in patient, come-to-mother tones, tells him, "I don't know Rosie but I know women. Some of my best friends are women." (The sweetness in Bankhead's voice only makes that line funnier.) She continues on, lecturing Gus about the loyalty of women, how broken-hearted Rosie will be that he would rather die than trust her. All the while you can hear both the sympathy that Connie has for Gus and the sugar she's pouring on, trying to convince him.

When Gus lets slip that Rosie's old boyfriend's been around and that Rosie keeps asking him about life insurance policies, Bankhead glances to the side for a moment. Then she presses on twice as hard, her voice throbbing with feeling ("...think of her back home laughing and dancing...not sure whether you're dead or alive").  She sounds like some patriotic radio announcer. After Connie knows she's sealed the deal, Bankhead lifts her eyes upward for a moment, muttering under her breath, "God forgive me." Bankhead's performance gives the perfect counterpoint to the cool, flip Connie we were introduced to. We see her intelligence, her humor, and her gift for manipulation, along with a very real compassion and warmth.

One reason I love Lifeboat is that it's a wartime propaganda piece that doesn't sentimentalize women. Our main heroine is not a dewy-eyed young woman bravely sending her man off to war. She's a cool, sarcastic forty-something with no apparent interest in being a wife or mother or patriotic helpmeet. And our other female character Alice (Mary Anderson's pretty great here too) may be a lovely young nurse with a gentle voice, but she's also the one who leads the others in a savage and mindless attack. When a man tries to hold her back, she rushes in with redoubled fury. These women are courageous and selfish, violent and loving; they are human.

Because of this, even something that would feel patronizing in another film (Connie being forced to give up vain, frivolous things like diamond bracelets for the common good) seems organic. Connie isn't being molded and humbled into a good little woman, she's a person pushed to the brink of survival. In the moment when Connie has finally lost everything she valued, Bankhead lets loose with this deranged, Halloween-witch cackle that's bound to raise the hairs on the back of your neck.

As a Hitchcock film and as a war film, Lifeboat never really got a fair shake. Damned as apologia then, damned as propaganda now. It's really, for my money, the best of Hitchcock's war films (Not counting Notorious). For all that Foreign Correspondent and Saboteur made speeches about the "little people" who would fight against evil, it's Lifeboat that really showed the humanity and love for those little people. Even down to a detail like a woman checking her stocking after a torpedo strike. Connie Porter is Tallulah Bankhead. But hell with it, she's also us.

This post is part of For the Love of Film: The Film Preservation Blogathon. If you want to make a donation (proceeds are going towards the restoration of The White Shadow, a formerly lost film that helped kick-start the beginning of Alfred Hitchcock's career), here is the link.