Recently finishing the wonderful Canadian Neo-Noir TV mini-series Cardinal, I was pleased to learn from a fellow poster on ICM about a Canadian challenge,where ICMers have to watch as many Canadian titles as possible in a month. Knowing recent productions from Canada,I struggled to come up with any made during the "Classic" era of cinema. Finding out about director Fyodor Otsep after seeing the fascinating Amok during my 100 French films in 100 days,I was thrilled to stumble on his name when I began search for Canadian Film Noir,which led to me listening in on what the city was saying.The plot:Working on a story about an actress who died in a car crash,newspaper reporter Mary Roberts presses lawyer Albert Frédéric on claims from the actress that the suicide of her husband was actually murder. Focusing on his new creation,composer Michel Lacoste allows his marriage to Blanche Lacoste to break down. Seeing nothing left,Blanche kills herself. Finding her body ,Michel fears that Blanche's suicide looks like murder. Hearing Michel's tune,his lawyer Frédéric promises to stop the city whispering and to rid any doubt of the suicide,but only if Michel pays a "debt":To stop Mary Robert's whispers.View on the film:For his final movie, (shot as the alternate French language version La forteresse was being shot on the same sets with a different cast) director Fyodor Otsep (who in 1918 was a Russian film cooperative,but had to flee Europe when France got Occupied) listens in with a sharp use of Morris C. Davis,which Otsep composers to build anxiety over the debt Michel Lacoste is ordered to pay,and the composition playing out over the breakdown of his marriage. Driving over the frosty atmosphere from the outdoor locations of 40's Canada,Otsep conducts a fantastic A Christmas Carol mood into Lacoste and Frédéric's outside encounters via stylish weaving camera moves casting a ghostly whisper around the two.Gradually hitting the notes of doubt,the screenplay by Rian James /Leonard Lee/George Zuckerman/Michael Lennox/Gina Kaus/ Hugh Kemp & Sydney Banks (!) strongly strike a Melodrama edge in the crumbling, fractured marriage of the Lacoste's. Sending the lawyer in,the writers snowball a sinister Film Noir bite,where the suicide of Blanche pulls Michel into the deadly double dealing of Frédéric. Suspecting she is not getting the full story, Mary Anderson gives a wonderful,quick-witted performance as Roberts,who pulls Michel veil of darkness with a real snap. Ploughing Michel into following his orders, Paul Lukas gives a wicked,brittle performance as Frédéric,whilst Helmut Dantine pulls the raw Noir strings of Michel's fear,as Michel hears the city whisper.

Mary Anderson is a reporter investigating an old murder case in Quebec. Paul Lukas is a high-end lawyer who was the murderer and, for some reason, he resents Anderson's poking into the crime and "opening old wounds." Boy, would he like her to disappear.Lukas has a friend, Helmut Dantine, who is a brilliant musician married to a shrew. One night, after a particularly bitter argument with her, Dantine shows up plastered at Lukas's house and Lukas puts him to bed. Then he sneaks out into the night with the intention of murdering the shrew, blaming it on Dantine, and blackmailing Dantine into murdering Anderson so that she won't uncover Lukas's earlier crime. Got that? It turns out to be unnecessary for Lukas to murder Dantine's wife because she has already committed suicide and left a note behind, explaining that she couldn't go on living any longer because her nails never dried quickly enough.Lukas, his mind ever dirty, pinches the suicide note and arranges a few other details to make Dantine look like the murderer. The blackmail plan goes ahead. Dantine can't remember a thing from the night before. Lukas tells him that he showed up drunk and bragged about having killed his wife. Lukas is in a position to get him out from under the threat of the hangman's noose, but only if he takes Mary Anderson to Montmorency Falls and throws her in.A slight problem develops when Dantine and Anderson fall in love. Lukas's scheme unravels.It's a B feature and the usual clichés are not avoided. Mary creeps through a darkened house with a candle while an eyeball peers at her through a crack in the door -- that sort of thing. But it transcends the usual cheap mystery if only because it's set and photographed in Quebec, the most nearly European city in North America. The director doesn't go out of his way to give us a tourist's eye view, as Hitchcock did in "I Confess." There is no shoot out in the Château Frontenac. But we see enough of the location to appreciate its verticality and its stony elegance and sometimes severe beauty.Paul Lukas plays the kind of villain he did in "The Lady Vanishes." He's perfectly reasonable, he appreciates the splendor of Dantine's piano concerto -- of which we hear quite a lot -- but he's ruthless too and a little mad.Dantine has chiseled features, like a Bernini sculpture, but their default position is a stern and unyielding frown. He was locked into roles like this because he just couldn't do anything else. On those rare occasions when he tries to smile, the viewer can almost hear the agonized creak of unused mechanisms.Mary Anderson isn't a bravura performer either. She's not stunningly beautiful, not sexy, and her acting achieves a certain plateau and then quits. The thing is that she is eminently likable. She's petite, skinny, and vulnerable. One can imagine being nurtured by her -- she was the nurse in Hitchcock's "Lifeboat" -- but she could never play the scolding wife, for instance.It's a diverting and pleasant feature with no pretensions.

Female reporter investigates odd goings on in Montreal. Convoluted plot line about deaths that are really murder, suicide that is made to look like murder and numerous other twists and turns require a great deal of attention to help unknot it. I tried to watch this the night before last must too late at night and began to nod off. I tried again while I made it to the end I don't know how I really felt because where some things need to be followed its clear who the villain is from the start. That is not in and of itself a bad thing, when done right, its just that the film seems to treat it as a big secret when its not. As I said I really don't know what I felt about the film. If you want to see Montreal in the winter I'd give the film a shot, beyond that its your own choice. (Leave a comment)

The early parts of this movie were terribly confusing to me. True, the print I saw was terrible. It looked like 8 millimeter. However, I hung in because of its interesting cast and indeed, it picks up: Mary Anderson was a very appealing actress. Too bad she never became a star. Helmut Dantine was very handsome and his acting is very good, too. And of course, top-billed, we have Paul Lukas. Only four years after his Osacr-winning performance in "Watch on the Rhine," here he is at Eagle-Lion. Talk about the curse of the statue! From its introduction, the music is exceptionally good. The Dantine character is a composer. He has written a piano concerto, which we hear in pieces and then in performance. (Not all of it is performed but it looks like a real orchestra really playing it.) I can't think of a better piece written for a movie except the Korngold cello concerto for the deliriously wonderful "Deception." I love that movie and I love his music. That piece, stripped of the name of Claude Rains's composer, Alexander Hollenius, is now performed and often recorded by major orchestras, as the Korngold Cello Concerto.Once this movie finds its footing, it's very intriguing. But till then, it's really pretty bad.