This masterpiece has it all; good production values, a great cast with memorable performances, a tight script, and good direction. Why it has been buried after 70 years is beyond me. It is right up there with the best of Hitchcock. The screenplay by Woorich and Yordan is impeccable. I'm having trouble finding reasons to only give it an 8 out of 10.Robert Cummings is perfect in this role, as is Steve Cochran as Eddie Roman, the terrifyingly ruthless crime boss. Peter Lorre is actually overkill, although he does a great job as well. Even the femme fatale, Lorna is well-played by a B actress. I sure am glad my car doesn't have one of those backseat accelerators; my kid would go crazy with it. This film is a must-see; highly recommended.

The Chase is directed by Arthur Ripley and adapted to screenplay by Philip Yordan from the novel The Black Path of Fear written by Cornell Woolrich. It stars Robert Cummings, Steve Cochran, Michèle Morgan, Peter Lorre and Jack Holt. Music is by Michel Michelet and cinematography comes from Frank F. Planer. Plot finds Cummings as World War II veteran Chuck Scott, drifting and skint, he finds a wallet and returns it to the owner. The owner is one Eddie Roman (Cochran), an apparently wealthy and thriving business man who repays Chuck's honesty by giving him a job as a chauffeur. Nothing from here on in will ever be the same....The Chase is one of those film's that fell in to the public domain, got a cult following in spite of the number of bad prints out there, and now arguably deserves a place on the must see list of film noir enthusiasts. Bad prints aside, The Chase deals in oppressive atmosphere and lives in the void caught between a dream and a nightmare. Ripley (Thunder Road 1958) crafts his whole film in a dream state, keeping it mostly nocturnal, he and photographer Franz Planer thrive on Woolrich's premise and use slow pacing and shadow play to smoother the characters. It feels stifling, odd even, but with a couple of tricks up his sleeve, Ripley garners maximum impact by disorientating the viewer for the wonderfully absurd ending. Some may call out cheat, others are likely to enjoy its Wellesian feel, either way it's certainly a film that can't be called dull.Cummings is fine as the good guy suddenly finding his world shifting sideways in a blur of pills, sleep and perfume, while Morgan registers nicely, even if ultimately she's underused and often her character is just there to make a romantic point. Cochran, in only his second year of acting, is a dominating and frightening force as the handsome and oily Roman. It's a menacing portrayal of a character who slaps his women around and literally will stop at nothing to get his way. But even Cochran is trumped by yet another weasel turn from Lorre, standing on the side of his boss spitting flem as well as sarcastic quips, Lorre alone is enough to seek the film out for a viewing. Good secondary support comes from Jack Holt in an important small role.It doesn't push any boundaries or hold up as being hugely influential in the film noir cycle. But it's a relevant piece of work in that cycle, and certainly recommended to those interested in dream like oppression. 7/10

Cummings character is down and out and finds a wallet and returns it to a rich gangster type who just got a haircut from a private barber. In this scene, the gangster is telling the barber what a good job she did only he is wearing a hat. Then he flinches and the manicurist nicks his finger so he slaps her to the floor and then gives Cummings a job as his chauffeur. Then a foe of the gangster is left alone in his wine cellar with a bottle of Napoleon brandy and presently he's mauled to death by the gangsters dog and the bottle is broken and spilled all over the cellar floor. How sad. And irrelevant. Then the gangsters sad wife appears and gets Cummings to help her escape from the gangsters clutches, so they high tail it to Havana on a steamer in a single room with a piano in it where he plays sad music and then he pulls the curtains and they obviously get it on. Once in Havana, she gets knifed in the back and Cummings gets busted and then he gets knocked out and wakes up back in Miami, then he has amnesia so he goes to see his Naval doctor who is treating him for traumatic, melodrama, pseudo-noir, B-movie Malady. Then Cummings and the Doctor go to a bar for a drink as part of his treatment and things happen and Cummings remembers some things so he probably had a dream about the Havana stuff so he rushes off to another boat to Havana but the gangster is rushing off there too but he crashes his car with a train he is racing from his back seat gas pedal so then Cummings and the depressed wife can rush off to Havana. But why? I love old black and white movies and I especially love them if they are really good or even make a little sense. This one is just corny but has a nice old Cadillac sedan and a house with statues in it.

When a recently made film attempts (often beautifully) to recreate the visual reality of bygone eras it can drag me out of the fiction and into a different state of mind, somewhere between involvement in the story and contemplation of the production methods. Now that I've become aware of that problem, I am now similarly affected by films actually made contemporaneously - of and in those past eras. Unwanted sophistication I would call it. As The Chase opens and Bob Cummings looks hungrily through the glass front of a 1940's diner I'm transported right back into my living room, sitting in front of a digital video setup. But, there are compensations.Bob Cummings has reality. He can't shoot twenty rounds from a six shooter without reloading; he doesn't defeat five or more heavies in a last reel triumph and walk away unscathed OR over dramatically bloodied; and he's just not a wise guy. Considering the way Hollywood created gangsters and heroes to fit popular expectations and credulity, despite that gross limitation, this film comes across as a dramatic story that could happen to someone. And, the de rigueur comic relief that we've learned to accept as de rigged up drama is wonderfully absent.One other minor distraction that marred the film for me, and probably wouldn't for anyone else: When the story moves to a Havana cabaret the music, a solo flamenco guitarist, is almost certainly Jeronimo Villarino - I could be wrong, but I'd bet on it. I could hardly keep up with the dialog as I studied the scenes for a glimpse of him. Maybe it was just recorded and Villarino wasn't present during filming. As far as I know no films exist of him playing. The guitarist is not credited.So, I was involved in the story. I wanted to be there because the bad guys were bad, the hero might be the eternally longed for true friend, the femme fatale was a real woman laboring under the oppressive sex role that made women desirable and mysteriously evocative as a captive piece of coral in a glass paperweight. The gangsters car smelled of ethyl gas and brake fluid and didn't have any integrated circuits, and we escaped from the cynicism of the bad guys' domain into a hopeful future filled with light - which noir implies.