classicsoncall Robert Mitchum's character obviously didn't take his own advice noted in my summary line above. You can read that two different ways - he decided to be an involved bystander once Diane Tremayne (Jean Simmons) worked her seedy tentacles into his psyche. But on the flip side, even if he had remained the innocent bystander, he would have wound up getting entangled in Tremayne's demented scheme anyway.The thing that really puzzled this viewer was Frank Jessup (Mitchum) agreeing to marry Tremayne in her hospital bed on the advice of attorney Barrett (Leon Ames). The way Barrett framed it had to do with a sympathy angle the press would have taken to treat the murder of Catherine Tremayne (Barbara O'Neil) and her husband. Even for the early Fifties, I don't know if that ploy would have worked; today the National Enquirer would make mincemeat of the argument. Can you just imagine the headline? While watching, I was questioning whether or not it would be possible to rig a car to go in the opposite direction intended but the courtroom scene did a pretty good job of explaining things. Still, one has to envision Miss Tremayne crawling around under the vehicle to rig the throttle reactor spring and remove the cotter pin from the gear shaft assembly. That mental picture doesn't jive with Tremayne's demeanor for most of the story, so I guess one has to accept it on faith. Another element of that trial scene managed to bug me too - was there ever a time a juror could stand up during proceedings and begin asking questions? What this all boils down to, and I didn't see any other reviewer for the picture mention it, but to me, Diane Tremayne was as insane as her attorney intimated when she showed up to write out her confession following the acquittal. She took a perverse pleasure out of making the lives of others miserable while cooking up her own twisted form of revenge on Catherine because of the way the older woman treated Diane's father. Though the movie certainly qualifies for it's classification as film noir, it turns out that the femme fatale of the piece was actually a lunatic.

jacobs-greenwood Produced and directed by Otto Preminger, with a screenplay by Oscar Millard and Frank Nugent that was based on a Chester Erskine story, this slightly above average crime drama film-noir features Robert Mitchum as working class Frank Jessup and Jean Simmons (in the title role) as Diane Tremayne, a seemingly sweet 'debutante' daddy's girl who's used to getting what she wants.After her mother was killed in Lorraine, France during a World War II bombing, Diane's novelist father Charles (Herbert Marshall) remarried the wealthy Catherine (Barbara O'Neil); they moved to the States where he stopped writing, becoming a henpecked husband dependent on her money. Some nine years later, Diane now feels neglected by her father and controlled by her step-mother, a situation she's compelled to change by using Mitchum's character.The film opens with ambulance drivers Jessup and Bill Crompton (Kenneth Tobey) being called to the Tremayne estate where it's suspected that Catherine has just tried to commit suicide with her fireplace's gas, despite the fact that she claims someone's tried to murder her. While leaving the residence, Frank meets Diane, who's playing the piano and acting forlorn, even hysterical. She later follows him to a restaurant where she charms him into cancelling his date with his steady girlfriend Mary Wilton (Mona Freeman) and the two enjoy an evening of dining and dancing. Diane learns that Frank is a former race-car driver and is working odd jobs while trying to save enough to open his own garage. The next day, Diane invites Mary to lunch and tells her that she wants to help them by giving Frank $1,000 for his future plans. Mary sees through Diane's manipulation and is later angry with Frank for lying to her about the previous evening. Still, Diane convinces Catherine, a notoriously poor driver, into hiring Frank as their family's chauffeur.But after some time living over the garage and witnessing Diane's ways, even dim-witted Frank sees that something's not right and suspects he's being used by her as part of a larger scheme. However, she's able to convince him to stay a little longer, to contemplate taking her away with him. Shortly thereafter, she executes her plan, successfully killing her step-mother Catherine when her car accelerates in reverse off an embankment. Unfortunately, she'd also accidentally killed her father in the process, which causes her to have a mental breakdown. Since Diane's suitcase was found in Frank's room, both are accused of murder. A clever defense attorney, Fred Barrett (Leon Ames), convinces Diane not to confess to the crime, that Frank too would be incarcerated. He also persuades Frank to marry Diane to explain the suitcase as part of their planned elopement. He then successfully battles District Attorney Judson (Jim Backus) in the trial to prove reasonable doubt exists, that a cotter pin could have failed, such that the rendered verdict is "not guilty".Diane then learns that her husband Frank doesn't want her; he wants to try to go back to Mary, but learns that she is engaged to Bill. Meanwhile, Diane insists that lawyer Barrett record her confession of guilt, but he informs her that, due to double-jeopardy, she can't be convicted of the crime. She returns home feeling there's no reason to live, but is then excited to see that Frank is there too. However, he is packing and planning to head to Mexico to get away from her. She insists on taking him to the bus station and he reluctantly agrees. She has champagne in the car and asks him to pour them one last drink. She starts the car forward causing him to spill it, he snaps at her and then she snaps - she throws the car in reverse and jams on the accelerator, hurling them backwards off the same embankment and killing them both, as the story ends.

petrelet After watching this I wasn't sure it was a film noir after all, so I looked up the term and found that there is no consensus on what a film noir is. Does it refer to pessimistic mood, or camera style, or details of plot, or smoking tobacco all the time (this is a point in Ebert's don't-miss Guide to Film Noir)? This film has pessimistic mood, and an all-night diner, and Robert Mitchum, so okay, but it has no gangsters or low-lifes, is largely set in a nice house, and really is the drama of the unfortunate Tremayne family into which an innocent bystander stumbles. Everyone involved went through the war and maybe this is a record of national PTSD somehow.Once upon a time a successful novelist, Charles Tremayne, lived in London with his beloved wife and loving daughter Diane. Then a Nazi bomb killed the wife and emotionally shattered the husband, who hasn't written a word since. He has moved to Beverly Hills and has married a rich woman who apparently does her best to love him and Diane. But Diane spurns her as an intruder and blames her for the loss of the man her father once was. She plays moody tunes on the piano and plots her stepmother Catherine's death. She's not a sociopath, or a schemer motivated by greed or lust. She seems to be a ruthless twenty-one-year-old, emotionally still nine years old, intent on living with Daddy and having everything right again.Enter Frank Jessup, who was himself "shot out of a tank", and now works an ambulance driver. He is sane, perceptive, and competent, but seems to be drifting through life; he has a girlfriend, Mary, but hasn't committed himself to her; he dreams of setting himself up as a mechanic for sports cars but hasn't made a serious move in that direction, seven years after the end of the war. Now Diane makes a play for him and pries him away from the woman who would really have been much better for him. What is her motive? It isn't lust. It seems to be partly desire for a .. playmate? Accomplice? Frank gets pried away without much resistance, but not because he has a wild passion for Diane. It's more that he's just pliable. When a pretty woman kisses him and offers more kisses, the inner will to induce him to break it off because he really intends to be elsewhere never manifests itself. Diane gets Frank hired as her family's chauffeur, offering to have her stepmother set him up with a garage. But then she tries to convince Frank that Catherine has double-crossed him. This is supposed to make Frank hate Catherine, but it doesn't work. He is not a dope, either, and has caught on to Diane's intentions, and tries to talk her down from it. This doesn't work. Neither does her plan, though, on several levels.After some very effective moments, the film (in my opinion) bogs down when Diane's high-paid lawyer comes up with the stunt of having Frank and Diane get married and portraying them to the jury as innocent young lovers. Maybe it's just that I can't for a second imagine a juror being impressed by this. On the other hand the trial sequence is not full of clichés. In the aftermath, the mood of despair sets in. Frank tries to get back with Mary, who acts like a normal person instead of a movie character: she doesn't hate him, but she's moved on. Diane's last hope is that Frank will somehow be the new man in her life. He's smart enough not to go along with that. But he's still too willing to take innocent suggestions even from someone he knows he ought not to take them from. That turns out to be his tragic flaw: that when a pretty woman offers him a lift, as it were, his first and last impulse is to go along.So this is not really a "typical film noir" if you think that means that the characters are all unchecked fountains of vice and melodrama. Nearly all of the characters in the film are laid-back and normal people doing their jobs, as it were. The detective and the D.A. are not crooked; the sharp lawyer is doing his job as he sees it; Mary and Frank and Charles and Catherine are all decent people. (I rather reject the idea that Frank is "amoral" in this film, although he should be more decisive.) Even Diane strikes me as being somewhat pitiable; she is definitely capable of remorse, doesn't want Frank blamed for her actions, and is not a "femme fatale" except in the literal sense, you know. Thinking about this, it might make the film's outlook particularly pessimistic: most people are pretty normal, but somehow it all works out badly anyway. Anyway, I think the relative absence of melodramatic tropes is refreshing.

Jackson Booth-Millard From director Otto Preminger (Laura, Carmen Jones, Anatomy of a Murder), this was a near film noir style film that I saw listed in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, so I was definitely going to watch it. Basically, in Beverly Hills, Mrs. Catherine Tremayne (Barbara O'Neil) was found mysteriously poisoned by gas in her home, and ambulance driver Frank Jessup (Robert Mitchum) is there at the cliff side estate to treat her, the police believe it was accidental, but she believes someone is trying to kill her. Before Frank leaves he notices her beautiful English stepdaughter Diane (Jean Simmons) playing the piano, and he slaps her when she gets hysterical, she slaps him back, and later he is unaware she is following him, and they sit together in a diner and begin flirting. Eventually, after not being to get her on the phone, Frank turns down an offer from his girl friend Mary Wilton (Mona Freeman) to go to dinner together, and he instead goes to dinner with Diane who tells him all about her novelist father who she cares for, and she also offers to help him pay for his own garage he wants to own. Diane next invites Mary for lunch and tells her that she and Frank got together, this does cause her to feel less trustworthy towards him, and he does lie to Mary again about another date they have together. While Mary ditches him for longtime admirer Bill Crompton (Kenneth Tobey), and after having words with her Frank does forgive Diane, who convinces her parents to hire him as the chauffeur, and she also tries to convince her stepmother of the garage proposal. Diane tells him that Catherine, who was considering the proposal, threw it in the trash, and apparently would fire him and lock her up if she found out they were with each other, she is sure her stepmother has control over her weak father Charles (Herbert Marshall). Frank refuses to believe her next story that Catherine tried to kill her with gas from the fireplace, and next day he tells Mary he is going to leave his job and Diane, and when she realises he is going she begs him to stay, and eventually he agrees until he can plan what to do next. Diane is seen taking something out of the car, and when Catherine and Charles get in the car together she tries to put it into gear, but the car instead screeches backwards, and they both fall to death down the cliff behind them. Both Diane and Frank are arrested for suspected murder, if she is found innocent Diane stands to inherit Catherine's fortune, but she is at the moment in a prison hospital having apparently suffered a nervous breakdown. Catherine's lawyer Arthur Vance (Raymond Greenleaf) brings in renowned defence lawyer Fred Barrett (Leon Ames) to defend the heiress, but before the trial starts Frank and Diane get married as part of the case to make them look more innocent. Barrett does indeed prove himself a worthy defence lawyer planting ideas in the jurors heads that they planned to elope, that anybody could have tampered with the car's transmission and steering mechanisms, and of course that they are just an ordinary loving couple. Frank and Diane are found innocent by the jury, but once they are back home he wants an immediate divorce, and she finally confesses about her hatred for Catherine who in her head was getting more attention than she personally did from her father. Frank insists he will return to Mary, but she of course is still leaning towards Bill, while Diane goes back to the office of Barrett and wants to make a witnessed confession to the murder of her parents, to which she is guilty, but he reminds her of double jeopardy. Returning home Diane finds Frank packed and ready to go to Mexico, he refuses to let her come with him, but agrees to let her drive him to the station, but she deliberately forces the car back into reverse, and they too go off the cliff and fall to their deaths. Also starring Griff Barnett as The Judge, Robert Gist as Miller and Jim Backus as District Attorney Judson. Mitchum is really good as the moody driver stuck in the middle of trouble, and Simmons is absolutely perfect as the beautiful Femme Fetale who manipulates everyone to her advantage and is not bothered who gets hurt emotionally or physically, the thrilling and twisted moments are well done, the court case sequence is interesting, and the dark romance is a big hook, it is certainly a must see crime drama. Very good!