mark.waltz I've heard film historians describe film noir as being about a man destroying himself because of sex. That certainly is the case here where police lieutenant Lee J. Cobb witnesses the society girl (Jane Wyatt) he's in love with frantically kill her husband whom she believes is about to try and kill her. Rather than arrest her, he aids and abets her, which creates suspicion with his younger cop brother (John Dall). Younger brother quickly begins to suspect the truth, and in trying to cover up his protection of Wyatt, Cobb inadvertently destroys himself in the process.It is entirely obvious what is going to transpire here, but it is so much fun watching all the pieces fall into place. It is also interesting to see "Father Knows Best" mother Jane Wyatt play a not-so-nice character, a far cry from the majority of the film heroines she played, dating back to the original "Lost Horizon". Cobb certainly wins sympathy for what he does to protect the woman he loves (who most certainly would end up betraying him if she had the chance) and his performance is excellent. This is one of those little "sleeper" films that deserves re-discovering for a crafty screenplay and the little details that are sometimes looked over yet end up being pivotal when included. Here, that comes with each and every character, even the minor ones, including Dall's fiancée, Lisa Howard, an airport security guard, and several witnesses.

thebluesterman Some viewers are born fans, some achieve fandom and others have fandom thrust upon them. Right, Malvolio? My continually expanding passion, if you can call this insatiable thirst for black and white/old/scratchy films like this one a passion, certainly feels like it has been thrust upon me. I didn't start off loving this stuff because it was just the sort of film my mom and dad would never have let me see as a kid in the 50's. I forget the 60's and was raising kids on the Berenstain Bears and Curious George in the 70's and 80's. Now, here we are in the reclining years and there is the wonder of NOIR exploding on my screen like that meteor busting in on the Russian skies a few days ago. The Man Who Cheated Himself was painlessly easy to watch in spite of the places where the source material suffered from the hiccups, staggers and jags. I liked it very much. Some of the scenes evoked recollections of the camera work in The Third Man, interestingly enough itself made just one year earlier. If you are a noir fan and aren't picky, you'll love this. If you are a critic or anal retentive about only watching films in better condition than before they originally went into the can, well...you may only like it. One objective subjective observation...the writers did a fine job of getting me to the place of feeling younger Cullen's pain. Ouch! :-)

lawrence smith This is another of the many B minus movies tagged as film noir in the hope of generating some interest in something that is devoid of it. All aspects of the film - script, acting, direction - are mediocre. The acting by the three leads is wooden. I guess John Dall was expected to go places in the movie business but then someone realised he had little talent and therefore ended up doing TV work. Lee J Cobb who is usually terrific cannot rise above the poor script and poor direction. Jane Wyatt is supposed to be a femme fatale but comes nowhere near convincing the viewers. The movie does have two of the strangest looking cars that I have ever seen, the one in which John Dall goes after Lee J Cobb is particularly strange. The DVD transfer is typical Alpha.

Robert J. Maxwell A homicide lieutenant, Lee J. Cobb, has a rich girl friend, Jane Wyatt, who is about to divorce her husband. The husband has been planning to kill her and make it look like a burglary gone wrong. Cobb stumbles into their sitting room just as Wyatt and her husband are struggling for the gun. Hubby winds up shot twice and dead. Instead of reporting the incident to the police, Cobb disposes of the body elsewhere and throws the gun off the Golden Gate Bridge.He's assigned to the case, however, and is to be assisted by his younger brother, John Dall, a rookie sergeant. All kinds of twists and turns follow. The gun thrown from the bridge evidently landed in the net of a fishing boat instead of the sea. And another gun is used in a robbery that is microscopically identical to the gun in Cobb's case. A witness to Cobb's disposal of the body turns out to have been color blind and made a mistake concerning the color of the coupe Cobb was driving.John Dall finally twigs. Cobb cold cocks him and he and Wyatt leave for a temporary hiding place at Fort Point, but Dall discovers them and they are arrested. Final scene: A charming Wyatt is cuddling her lawyer in the courthouse, saying, "Oh, you'll get me out of this, won't you? I have lots of money." After a contemptuous stare, she passes the handcuffed Cobb without a word.It's a workably formulaic plot -- investigating yourself, or having your brother investigate you. "The Big Clock" probably did a better job of it. More recently it was borrowed for "Presumed Innocent." I don't know how many other examples have been floating around.This exemplar is pretty humdrum. Lee J. Cobb is a magnificent actor and has done fine work elsewhere, especially for Elia Kazan. Here, he's dour throughout. Even at the beginning, when he's supposed to be joking with his newly arrived kid brother about the kid's forthcoming marriage, he seems to be performing a duty instead of enjoying himself. Nor is this Jane Wyatt's kind of role -- the treacherous, perfidious rich dame. She was attractive and perceptive and sensible. Here, the director (Felix Feist) has her overacting to the point of dolor. (She faints twice in the same scene after some hysterical babbling.) Dall doesn't add much but he's given at least a more complex role.The story itself doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense. After all, Jane Wyman had been whining abjectly about her husband's plans to murder her -- and she was RIGHT. Hubby had jimmied the door, bought a gun, and did what he could to arrange a fake burglary and was caught and killed just in time to prevent him from achieving his goal. So why does an experienced policeman like Cobb, without a moment's reflection, decide to cover up the death? How can two guns have identical lans and grooves? And what is the likelihood of their BOTH being used in murders within a few days of each other? I'll tell you what the likelihood of that's happening is. The probability is exactly .00012848329.Come to think of it, I'm not sure about how one of those guns wound up in Tito Vuolo's fishing net. Was it the gun that Cobb threw from the bridge? Or did the gun belong to Vuolo's ne'er-do-well son? And, if I remember, blue-green color blindness is less common than red-green. Not that it makes much difference in everyday life. I mean, when was the last time anything important depended on your distinguishing blue from green? The Samoan language has only one word for the part of the color spectrum that includes both blue and green and the Samoan people are doing quite well, thank you very much.I've kind of made fun of an unambitious B feature, I know, and maybe I shouldn't, but it really is a little dull and sometimes jarringly discordant.