Dear Murderer

Dear Murderer is directed by Arthur Crabtree and collectively adapted to screenplay by Muriel Box, Sydney Box and Peter Rogers from the play by St. John Leigh Clowes. It stars Eric Portman, Greta Gynt, Dennis Price, Maxwell Reed, Jack Warner, Hazel Court and Jane Hylton. Out of Gainsborough Pictures, music is by Benjamin Frankel and cinematography by Stephen Dade.

Lee Warren (Portman), consumed by jealousy over his wife's unfaithfulness, believes he has executed the perfect murder, however, he hadn't bargained on another one of his wife's lovers entering the fray. But sensing a great opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, he executes another cunning plan…

Perhaps he's Adolf Hitler in disguise? He's about the right height.

A wonderfully twisty British thriller, Dear Murderer enjoys giving off a whiff of unpleasantness as it enthrals from the get go. Classic Brit staples are in place for this type of thriller, a vengeful man, harlot woman, intrepid copper and male suitors caught in a trap. Construction is as such, that it's initially hard to actually get on side with any of the principal characters, but one of the film's many delights is in how it constantly alters the trajectory of sympathy towards the actual murderer! It helps as well that the story doesn't rest on its laurels, this is not merely about one murder, and about one man trying to get away with that murder, it's about more than that. There's a lot of talking going on, but it's all relevant to actions that are soon to follow, so when the flip-flops arrive, we are fully prepared and immersed in the devilish goings on.

Arthur Crabtree (Madonna of the Seven Moons) is something of an unsung director from the British classic era, where often he has been termed workmanlike and steady. Yet he was able to make much suspense and atmosphere from the most basic of set-ups. He also was a good director of actors, as evidenced here with the performances he gets out of Portman (calm, calculated and cunning) and Gynt (a wonderful slinky femme fatale dressed up to the nines). While in conjunction with photographer Dade (Zulu), he puts period Gothic noir tints on proceedings, especially on the exteriors where darkness, shadows and gaslights imbues murky machinations of plot. There's a big leap of faith required to accept one critical turn of events entering the home straight, but ultimately the finale is not damaged by it, for here a black heart beats strong. Splendid. 8/10

A day or so ago I commented on the film (made only a few years after wards) that somehow resembles this one: FOOTSTEPS IN THE FOG. The basic story is of two ill-matched people who are in a marriage from hell. FOOTSTEPS was about a Victorian gentleman who murders his first wife, only to be blackmailed into marrying his socially ambitious maid, and how he starts conspiring to get rid of her as well. The problem with FOOTSTEPS was a lack of decently spirited direction. It lacked spark and pace, and gets boring. The cast tries, but it does not help enough.

Not so with DEAR MURDERER. Unlike FOOTSTEPS (which was a Hollywood product - so it had to be burdened by larger budgets, and needed vervier directing), DEAR MURDERER is typical of the success story of British cinema - how with a concentration on minimal effect their films are sharper than bloated productions like FOOTSTEPS . The plot is also more devious.

In FOOTSTEPS Jean Simmons' ambitions help destroy her and Steward Granger. But one can easily understand where she is coming from, as we tend to sympathize with people trying to pull themselves out of lower classes into upper classes. But this is dented because she is a blackmailer (though Granger's misdeed deserves such a punishment). Here, Eric Portman is married to a perpetual flirt (Greta Gynt) who despises him. She has been carrying on with Dennis Price, and Portman decides to kill Price. Yet, even in the process of doing just that, Portman gets to know his victim, and realizes that if he had not been sleeping with his wife Price could have been a good friend of his. So his guilt is increased when he discovers that Gynt and Price had broken up their relationship shortly before the murder.

See: the story is still melodramatic, but the characterization is more interesting. So is the difference regarding Gynt's personae, as opposed to her opposite number in FOOTSTEPS. Simmons is socially ambitions, but the audience can accept that. Gynt is sluttish and also unlikeable. She is tired about the marriage to Portman (who does, misguidedly, love Gynt), and eventually wonders how she can end it - quickly. The film speeds to it's conclusion. If one dislikes Portman's Nazi in 49TH PARALLEL (his best remembered performance), his performance here certainly makes up for his totally unsympathetic villainy there.

I have no problem recommending this film to the readers of these reviews. And of recommending it over FOOTSTEP IN THE FOG to them as well.

Dear Murderer (1947)

What a fabulous, complicated, feint and double feint movie about murder, attempted and otherwise. It's a very British feeling film, and though it has a film noir darkness (very dark, in my copy), it doesn't have the angularity nor the action of an American noir. More defining, though, is the deliberate parlor game feel to this very deadly situation. You might compare (if comparing is helpful) to the Joan Crawford "Sudden Fear" to make this most obvious.

There is a lot of sparring with words here, very smartly written, and you have to pay attention as the intentions of the characters seem to be shifting all the time. You have to have the low key, steadfast, opaque, and clever detective of course, and the detective here is brilliantly all those things. And you have to have motive, which we have in abundance.

And you need abundance since so much is going to go wrong here. Eric Portman is the key figure through it all, and he plays a jilted husband with laconic brilliance. His wife, and his wife's several lovers, are all excellent in support, each either surpassingly innocent at heart despite their adulteries, or really devious and selfish. It's beautifully constructed, and really a joy. But you have to pay attention. No getting up for popcorn here.

"Dear Murderer" is a short, very intriguing British mystery that caught my interest by its title. After a long work-related trip, Eric Portman comes home to find his wife not home. But, in fact we find out real quick that he knows a lot more than that and he's intent on killing the other fellow, played by Dennis Price. Greta Gynt is the unfaithful wife. But then there's a twist; Eric soon finds out there's more than one. He can't kill them all, Dennis says. But Eric finds a way to pin the murder on the other other fellow. All these convoluted schemes made for a very complicated but absorbing mess. I liked this very much with its layered plots developing more and more as it went along, but, by the end, the viewer really has very few people to feel any compassion for and therefore it feels a bit mean-spirited and/or downbeat. But the irony of the unexpected, Eric Portman's acting, and his character's egotistical disposition make up for any flaws this film may have. Sit back for a very perverse experience of the British kind.

I happened across this movie on Netflix and, due to my love of noir films and its 94-minute running time, I decided to give it a try. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this.

The plot set-up is fairly simple: a wealthy British businessman returns home early from a business trip to America, discovers evidence that his younger, seemingly devoted wife has been stepping out on him, and decides to get his revenge. That's where the fun begins.

His seemingly foolproof plan doesn't quite go exactly as he thought, which is the case in a lot of movies like this. What separated this movie, though, was that even as the husband's plan began to lose its original shape, what he was able to mold it into became even more diabolical than it was at first intended.

Although all of the cast does a decent job in their assigned roles, it's really the lead roles of the husband and wife played by Eric Portman and Greta Gynt, that deserve special mention. Both play their parts quite well, Portman as the well-spoken, egotistical husband, and Gynt as the manipulative, philandering wife.

I especially enjoyed watching Gynt's character, who plays the role of the femme fatale here as a treacherous vixen who could stand alongside noir's best. In certain movies where wives seek the affections of someone other than their respective mate, they're portrayed as a character who just desires attention from an emotionally distant husband, or one who is either emotionally or physically abused at the hands of a domineering brute. Here, however, she is a truly terrible person, and some of the reactions she gives when hearing information that would normally be very troubling to a person is pretty fascinating.

I don't want to build this movie up as anything more than it is, an enjoyable hour-and-a-half of a formula most of us have seen before, but check this one out on a rainy day when you don't feel like going outside. You might find that it's a bit better than you'd expected.