Fatalité

Monogram threw some money at this one and produced a nifty noir starring Belita, Barry Sullivan, Bonita Granville, Albert Dekker, and Eugene Palette called "Suspense," a 1946 film directed by Frank Tuttle.

Figure skater Belita plays Roberta, whose skating show is produced by her husband Frank (Dekker). Frank hires down and out Joe Morgan (Sullivan) to sell peanuts, and Joe starts working his way up to more important things, such as falling for Roberta. Frank catches on and, while he and Roberta are relaxing at their lodge, Joe drops in with papers to sign. Frank has him stay the night. The next day, Frank takes a hunting gun and intends to kill Joe, but the gun report starts an avalanche, and Frank is presumed dead. Presumed...but is he? Joe keeps Roberta's shows going after a fashion, all the while rejecting an old girlfriend (Granville) who has the hots for him. She doesn't like his attitude, and wants to know why he left New York in such a rush.

A few minutes shaved off of this film might have helped the pace, which is stopped cold every once in a while by a big skating number, several of which (particularly the first) are really wonderful. Belita of course never had the popularity of Sonia Henie - at the age of 12, she placed 16th at the 1936 Olympics, one of Henie's gold medal years. Belita didn't stay an amateur long and eventually entered films as poverty row's answer to Sonia. Strangely, Belita, with her background in Russian ballet, comes off as more modern and frankly a more exciting skater than Henie. Her lines are gorgeous and she enters her spins faster.

There are some interesting shots in this film, particularly the technique of the overhead light swinging back and forth, taking Sullivan and Belita in and out of the light as they are talking.

Highly entertaining with a good performances by the always solid Sullivan and the imposing Dekker. This was Eugene Palette's final film, as he retired after this. It's a fitting ending - he does a great job as Frank's and then Joe's assistant. It's really a good cast, very un-Monogram like, as were the production values.

Great entertainment. If you like film noir and figure skating, this is the film for you.

Super-aggressive Joe Morgan tries to take over impresario Frank Leonard's ice show and his girl, for good measure, resulting in some strange consequences.

With all the interest in 40's noir, I'm not sure why this genuinely exotic little number is too often overlooked. Maybe it's because its pedigree is not the best, (cheap-jack Monogram), or because its cast is non-movie star, (Sullivan, Belita, Dekker), or the fact that it doesn't turn up on cable (to my knowledge). Nonetheless, in my book it's one of the best examples around of the lost art of b&w cinematography.

Consider, for example, what Belita's surreal, death-defying skating number would look like in color, or that distance shot of the noirish mountain bowl where Frank stalks his prey, or the big neon panel blinking through the fog. In fact, consider the values that would be lost if the entire film were in color. I think one reason many of us return to 40's noir is because of those dream-like shadings,(among other values), that simply can't be duplicated in reds and greens, etc. Then too, these b&w shadings are a perfect complement to the ambiguities pervading the best noir.

But it's not only the photography in this movie, it's also the art direction (Paul Sylos) and the set decoration (George Hopkins). Thanks to them, the spooky ice rink plus the cavernous apartment and lodge interiors achieve real visual distinction with their attention to artistic detail. And even after multiple viewings, I haven't figured out how they did that eerie mountain bowl with its rink at the bottom. That tableau remains unlike anything I've seen in film. All in all, these elements add up, in my book, to a superior slice of visual exotica from noir's golden age.

To me, the most notable part of the story itself is how basically unsympathetic Joe (Sullivan) is with his overweening aggressiveness as he cuts in on everything Frank (Dekker) owns or values. At the same time, I don't buy the climax that looks like some version of the Hollywood Code in action, even if only in diluted form. Nonetheless, it's a great cast from the gimlet-eyed Sullivan (he doesn't look like anyone else in movies) to the commanding Dekker to the froggishly likable Palette. And must not forget Belita's eye-catching wardrobe or the deglamorized Granville getting jilted every five-minutes. And please tell me when ace screen-writer Yordan ever drew a breath away from the typewriter since his name pops up on just about everything from this period.

Anyhow, in my book, the movie remains a real sleeper and visual treat, and TMC would do well to slip it somewhere into their evening schedule.

1946's "Suspense" was another step toward respectability for Poverty Row's Monogram Pictures, soon upgrading its higher budgeted films with the new Allied Artists emblem. Moving up the Hollywood ladder (his eighth feature), Barry Sullivan is well suited for the part of sleazeball Joe Morgan, who lucks into a managerial position for an ice show run by Frank Leonard (Albert Dekker), starring Leonard's beautiful wife Roberta (top billed Belita). Morgan immediately takes an interest in Mrs. Leonard, and when her husband finds out, tries to shoot his rival in the snow covered mountains of the High Sierras, resulting in an avalanche that seemingly buries Mr. Leonard. Although seemingly widowed, Roberta is reluctant to continue the ice show, convinced that Frank may not have died after all (only his cap and gun were found in the snow). Belita, whose career was unfortunately brief, proves herself a capable actress, and would again co-star opposite Barry Sullivan in a similar title, "The Gangster." Eugene Palette completed a Western for Republic ("In Old Sacramento") before retiring from Hollywood, while former Nancy Drew Bonita Granville threw in the towel after six more films, confining herself to television thereafter, going on to produce the popular LASSIE series ('Bonita' is Spanish for 'beautiful'). Other familiar faces abound- George E. Stone, Leon Belasco, Nestor Paiva, George Chandler, Byron Foulger, and 7 year old Billy Gray ("The Day the Earth Stood Still," FATHER KNOWS BEST), in one of his earliest roles. Definitely a noir, occasionally slowed by its numerous (if well done) skating scenes and romantic entanglements, a curious non horror title to appear four times on Pittsburgh's Chiller Theater: Mar 14 1970 (followed by 1969's "It's Alive!"), May 8 1971 (followed by 1967's "Those Fantastic Flying Fools"), Apr 22 1972 (preceded by 1965's "The Eye Creatures"), and May 18 1974 (followed by 1965's "Night Caller from Outer Space").

When a young Olympic figure skater decides to take up acting, it had to be with some skating sequences. While these were somewhat entertaining, they make the film about ten minutes longer. Since the title is "Suspense," this detracts a bit. Still it has many noir qualities with the taciturn Barry Sullivan pretty much running things. it is a romantic triangle where the third is one too many. Actually, a fourth comes into playas well. Joe, Sullivan's character, has significant baggage. Would this have brought him down eventually? Anyway, it was some fun with reasonable good acting by most of the figures.

Suspense doesn't promise to live up to its generic title until its last half-hour, when director Frank Tuttle (This Gun for Hire his only other noir) turns up the voltage and generates some, yes, real suspense. A Monogram release with a big budget (for Monogram), the movie casts the unlikely Belita – an ice-skating 'novelty' star like Sonja Henie – against Barry Sullivan; they would reunite the next year in The Gangster. Albert Dekker and Bonita Granville fill out the other principal roles.

Dekker's the impresario of The Ice Parade, a revue in which his wife Belita stars. A peanut vendor (Sullivan) offers a suggestion for sprucing up the act (a ring of swords through which Belita will jump) and gets offered in turn a management job. Dekker can't help but notice the sparks between his wife and his new hire, especially when Sullivan turns up uninvited at their mountain lodge. When they're off frolicking in the winterscape, he takes at shot a Sullivan but triggers an avalanche, which buries him.

Or does it? Back in her Los Angeles penthouse, Belita senses his presence. Sullivan, meanwhile, copes with another specter from his past – Bonita Granville, whom he ditched in Chicago (he has an unsavory background which she threatens to divulge – though never to us).

What with all this baggage, the romance sours, and Belita begins to suspect Sullivan of having killed Dekker, if in fact he's still among the living....

With Suspense, you have to take the bad with the good. The skating numbers, while eye-popping (a left-handed compliment), bring the action to a halt every quarter-hour or so. On the other hand, Tuttle anticipates by a year Anthony Mann's basement light in Desperate, swinging like a pendulum from glare to shadow. Still, he plays fast and loose with a key plot point – Dekker's reemergence. The dance of the seven veils he performs adds a supernatural touch to the spooky atmosphere, but it falls short of success: there's information missing that by every right ought to be included.

One last note: Suspense marks the last movie, out of well over two hundred, for portly, bassoon-voiced Eugene Palette, a welcome – and all but unavoidable – presence through the 1930s and early 1940s. In this, his swan song, he shows himself once more to be every pound the pro.