I Wouldn't Be in Your Shoes is directed by William Nigh and adapted to screenplay by Steve Fisher from a story by Cornell Woolrich. It stars Don Castle, Elyse Knox, Regis Toomey and Charles D. Brown. Music is by Edward J. Kay and cinematography by Mack Stengler.Hoofer Tom Quinn (Castle) is convicted of murder on circumstantial evidence. Sentenced to death row, Tom must hope his wife Ann (Knox) can find the proof of his innocence before his date with death.Pretty routine noir exercise this one, but definitely of interest to film noir lovers looking for something they may not have seen before. In true noir fashion fate and coincidences play a huge part in the narrative drive, as does a bit of obsessive yearnings and questionable moral standing. The look is nifty, very noirish when the prison or the church is involved, or the nighttime shots in general, while there's a quirky edge to proceedings that always keeps the pic interesting. The ending is a disappointment (in true noir terms), and apart from the always reliable Toomey, the acting only just about passes muster, but it's worth a look see, even if it isn't the under seen gem some would have you believe... 6/10

Thanks to the ingenious William Irish/Cornell Woolrich original short story (published in 1943), this Monogram quickie is actually worth seeing. It has an excellent screenplay by Steve Fisher and topnotch direction by William Nigh. Adding to the tautly suspenseful script, cinematographer Mack Stengler has really excelled himself with fine compositions and moody lighting that gives all the movie's compositions a wonderfully rich, glossy sheen.Ah! No wonder the movie is so good. The producer is Walter Mirisch, a man of great taste who has brought out the best in his cast, headed by Don Castle, Elyse Knox and Regis Toomey. Another masterstroke is that Mirisch hired Otho Lovering to "supervise" the film editing. In other words, Lovering was actually on the set to supervise compositions and advise Stengler, leaving Nigh free to concentrate on the actors. Using music by Frederick Chopin for the score was yet another ingenious way to save money and yet enhance the movie's appeal.

This was one of the stranger murder frame-ups: not by adding fake fingerprints, not by placing the fall guy at the murder spot at the right time, not even by hiding the murder weapon in his house. It was framing by shoes and shoes alone. Seriously, if you wanted to commit a murder without being discovered, you would absolutely think of stealing someone else's shoes, put them on your feet, thank god they fit, and go ahead merrily with your murderous plan, content that you're free of any trouble and that the man whose shoes you stole will surely take the fall for you.And so, the main, obvious, explicit plot line of the movie is quite awkward, or it makes the police look like an awesomely incompetent institution. Of course that the main guy must have been framed. Or, at least, if you, Mr. Detective sir, think that he wasn't, then you should definitely arrest and convict the wife too, since she swore that he was at home at the time of the murder; therefore you, Mr. Crooked Detective sir, should find a better plan.Fortunately, all this is of little consequence. As we find out in the end, during a rather wonderfully eerie scene, the whole movie was built almost literally around an idiomatic expression - to be or not to be in someone else's shoes.So we have the Crooked (and frankly rather sick) Detective, Police Inspector Clint Judd, aka Santa Claus, who fell in love with a dancer, Ann. He went ahead and planned most of his future life around this love, before he even talked to her, or rather danced with her for the first time. Of course, there was a little impediment - not that the girl might not love him back, which is something totally beyond his faintest consideration, but that she is married. And to a fellow dancer, nonetheless.So what does he do? Since he wanted to figuratively walk in her husband's shoes (Tom), he proceeds to literally walk in his shoes in order to frame him with a murder and get him out of Ann's sight. I found this narrative trick so cute that I'm willing to gloss over the above-mentioned technicalities of the set-up. Besides, they were the husband's only pair of shoes, carelessly thrown through the window to chase away a bunch of cats in heat - quite an annoying reminder of what his character would have done after turning off the light next to his beautiful young wife, had his movements and desires not been restricted by the darned Code.And so, the Gods of the Noir take notice of this transgression. What, you're throwing away your only shoes, and your dancing shoes too? OK, let's take control over your life away from you. Then the second transgression occurs: Ann wants to keep a large sum of found money, which might well be, as Tom insists, someone's life savings. And she persuades him to go along with her plan of waiting for a week to see if anyone reclaims it in the papers. OK that seals the deal, say the Gods of the Noir, you two are doomed. And the whole fatal mechanism is set in motion, all ending up with the husband on death row....Except it turns out it wasn't the Gods themselves who orchestrated the whole deal, it was nothing but a mere mortal playing with idioms, using a man's shoes against himself to make them uninhabitable. There is no real talk of a destiny in this movie, it's all a mad man's game, a man who, with clean blue eyes and a beaming smile, explains to the girl of his mad dreams the length to which he had gone to stalk her, the time and work he had spent to build her a golden cage, and how happy she'd be in the life he had designed for her.This was a surprising noir, populated by a host of characters slightly different from the usual suspects. We have indeed two poor schmucks and one femme fatale, along with a host of barely sketched characters. But the woman seduces in spite of herself, and when she does play her deadly game in earnest, she's so distressed that only a mad man could have believed her. Poor schmuck #1, Tom the husband, is absolutely passive and properly set at the hands of his fake destiny, but he's hardly the focus of the story, he works more like a motive for the true actors - the wife and poor schmuck #2. The latter would not be so poor and pitiful, after all he orchestrates the whole deal, were it not for the genuine ill love and utter remorselessness of his behavior. The detective is eerily clueless about the moral transgressions he is committing, about the morbidly obsessive nature of his love and the unforgivable nature of his deed. He is at the complete mercy of his cravings, a mere plaything in the hands of biology - or of some whimsical God taking a break from its lawful duties. Had he not been murdered, the man should have been put in a mental asylum, not in jail...And then there are, of course, the cute little details of the Quinn household, way warmer and more personal than the norm for a noir.Really, one thing on top of another, it turns out that this little movie is quite the buried treasure. I just wish I could find a better copy, because, as it is, I don't dare to say a thing about the visuals. But the whole thing came for sure from the wild bank of the noir river, where it dwells alongside Dassin's "Naked City", Ulmer's "Detour", Montgomery's "Ride the Pink Horse" and Daves' "Dark Passage".

This rediscovered little dilly wouldn't walk away with any awards, but it's the sort of grade-B fare that makes film noir aficionados jump for joy! As is remarkably common in such flicks, the fog of confusion comes in on little cat feet--this time in the presence of two fighting felines on a fence. The protagonist flings his shoes at them, and fate suddenly starts tromping roughshod over him and his hapless spouse. The plot is somewhat plodding by modern standards, but its patient unfolding allows realization to creep slowly over the viewer, so that the conclusion is all the more credible and satisfying. Fans of crime and mystery films of the forties and fifties should find this offering to be a runaway pleaser!