Jacques Tourneur | I Walked with a Zombie | Canyon Passage | Out of the Past | Berlin Express | Stars in My Crown | Appointment in Honduras | Nightfall | Night of the Demon | The Fearmakers | Nick Carter, Master Detective | Phantom Raiders | Harnessed Rhythm | The Grand Bounce | The Magic Alphabet | Cat People

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Jacques Tourneur

Jacques Tourneur is the son of pioneer French director Maurice Tourneur. There is now an excellent book length study of his work, Chris Fujiwara's Jacques Tourneur, the Cinema of Nightfall (1998).

I Walked with a Zombie

I Walked with a Zombie (1943) shows the full influence of the Sternberg tradition. As in Josef von Sternberg, the film is set is an exotic and extravagantly imagined country. Also, romantic relationships are central. Music and songs are integrated into the story, as in Sternberg. The respectful inclusion of black people also recalls Sternberg's films.

The visual style is also deeply Sternbergian. We see Sternberg's elaborate lateral tracking shots here. Several of these involve masking elements in front of the characters path of motion, as when the nurse and Jessica walk through the cane field, masked by the stalks of sugar cane. The lighting is full of elaborate shadows used to make complex compositions, in the Sternberg tradition.

Other camera movements are less purely in the Sternberg tradition. One of the film's finest shows the nurse and wife sneaking out of the home, on the way to the Voodoo ceremony. First we see the husband, sitting in the background in his room. As the camera tracks across the courtyard, we see the brother in the distance, apparently drinking on the dining porch. Finally we see the two women hurrying out. They too are in the deep background. Their motion is synchronized with the motion of Tourneur's camera. They gradually emerge down a small staircase, and make their way to the front of the shot. All the time, the camera is steadily moving from left to right across the courtyard. The fact the that first two characters seen, the men, are motionless, in the first half of the shot, while the women seen in the second half are in synchronized motion, greatly adds to the fascination of the shot. Motion seems to come out of nowhere. It is part of the beauty and mystery of motion, the ability of people to move, as part of the physical universe.

Another unusual camera movement: one which tracks the mother, as she goes upstairs after her confession near the end of the film. The camera pans through nearly 180 degrees, It keeps turning and following her as she winds up the three sides of the stairwell.

The Flat Wall Shots

Another type of shot that occurs regularly in the film: a shot of people against a flat background wall. The wall is often full of lighting effects. The plane of the camera image is parallel to the wall, which fills the background of the shot. People are typically seen in such shots at full length. The most astonishing shot of this kind shows the nurse at night, against the white wall of the bedroom. The wall is covered with a huge grid of shadows, from a set of scrollwork bars. Arnold Böcklin's eerie painting, The Island of the Dead (1880), hangs on the upper quarter of the wall, its lower right corner framing the nurse's head at one point. This shot has remarkable visual qualities. It shows Tourneur's extraordinary gift for creating mood with shadows. Later, in Night of the Demon, Tourneur will use similar shadows from the complex curves of the balustrade, projected against people and the walls of the Karswell home.

Other flat wall shots include a shot in bright sunlight. The nurse and the older brother are standing in front of a huge lowered blind. We can see outlines of trees and vegetation, dimly showing through the otherwise dazzlingly lit screen.

A third flat wall shot occurs towards the end. The wife is straining towards the outside gates, and is joined by the younger brother. The vertical bars of the gate fill the back plane of the screen, while the two people stand in front of it.

Tourneur gets great mileage in the scenes in the wife's room out of a harp. The harp has an elaborately curved head. Tourneur is always moving the harp, so that this curved line plays a prominent role in his compositions. The curved head line is the only curvilinear form in a room and screen filled with rectilinear objects. It is delicate and simple, but it adds a completely different formal accent to the compositions. Tourneur gets similar use out of the curved back of the couch on which the nurse sleeps. It too allows him to introduce slight curves in otherwise rectangular patterns. I have no idea if Tourneur or the set designers introduced these props, but Tourneur exploits them to maximum advantage. The curved lines suggest an element of mystery, a suggestion that the universe has complexities, and elements not easily understood.

Corridor Shots

Several Tourneur shots show his interest in "corridors", stretching deep into the plane of the shot. However, this is only one element in a Sternbergian mix of devices. Corridor shots are extremely numerous in the film. They are some of the film's most beautiful images. As in other Tourneur films, they often involve porches and porticos, regions on the outside of buildings involving overhanging eaves and roofs. The family home involves an enormous series of arched walkways. These stretch around nearly the whole interior of the courtyard. Tourneur stages much of the film in them. They include the family dining area. Tourneur and the set designer show huge visual creativity with these porches. They are also photographed during many times of day and night; the variation in the lighting adds to the variety of visual appearance they present.

The cantina in town also has three porches. One shelters the singers; one is where the couple sit during the day; a third is around the corner after nightfall. Tourneur stages three separate sets of corridor shots in these. During this third shot, first the singer (played by real life Trinidad calypso singer Sir Lancelot), then the mother, move steadily down this "corridor" towards the couple at the table. Here one side of the corridor is the wall of the cantina; the other side is the pillars that support the overhanging roof. In the background we see the sea.

The paths through the sugar cane can also be considered as corridors. Tourneur often shoots directly down a path. It gives a long perspective in the "corridor" style. Tourneur alternates such corridor shots with Sternberg style lateral tracks with masked foregrounds. The alternation of corridor shots and Sternbergian tracks give a rich visual mix to the sequence.

Even the nurse's room is treated as a corridor. Tourneur frequently shoots down its entire length. The walls of the room form a corridor effect. The photography emphasizes all the complex horizontal lines and shadows cast by the louvered doors and windows of the room. They form a prominent pattern down the whole left hand side of the room.

Both in the home and the cane field, Tourneur often shows people hurrying down the corridors. This gives beautiful movement to the corridor shots. Tourneur sometimes tracks along with the characters, adding to the visual complexity and force of these shots.

Tourneur used corridor shots systematically in his movies. They return again and again. They are at the center of his visual style. These shots are far from formulaic. They in fact show tremendous variety. Each one looks beautifully hand composed by Tourneur. Tourneur usually shows a detailed look at the architecture, furniture, vegetation and lighting down each side of the corridor. All of these elements are thrown into the visual mix. They are used to make parts of elaborate, highly organized compositions. Tourneur often includes ceilings in the compositions as well, plus doorways, archway tops, lintels, and other upper screen architectural structures down the corridor. These too are worked into his compositions. The whole effect can be compositionally extremely elaborate. Tourneur further adds to the richness of such shots, by sometimes including camera movement down the corridor.

Themes

The island's economy here revolves around sugar production. Agriculture will be a background for many Tourneur films. Hero Robert Ryan in Berlin Express will be sent to post-war Germany to revive food production. Stars in My Crown takes place in a farm community. Donald Meek in Phantom Raiders is a beekeeper, Glenn Ford in a planter in Appointment in Honduras, and there is a furrier in The Grand Bounce. There often seems to be a dark side to such farm events. Germany is near starvation in Berlin Express. The scientists in The Magic Alphabet are trying to discover vitamins, key nutritional components of food, without which people are literally starving to death in Java. The farm family in Night of the Demon is part of a sinister devil cult. In I Walked with a Zombie, the sugar work is part of a legacy of slavery.

I Walked with a Zombie shows unusual story telling construction. The film keeps revealing different aspects of its central situation. It does not have a forward propelling plot; instead, it keeps showing new perspectives on what happened in the past. It is almost a "documentary", if one can apply that term to a film that shows a fantastic and totally non-realistic series of events. The way Tourneur's camera keeps exploring the sets in new and interesting ways also adds to the documentary feel.

The narration that describes early parts of the film recalls that of Rebecca (1940). In both films, it is in the heroine who narrates. As in that film, much of the commentary is about the large house the heroine visits, and about how the house allowed the heroine to experience both love and horror. This emphasis on a heroine and a house would become a staple of the "gothic" novels that were so popular in the 1960's, almost all of which involved the heroine going to live in a wonderful but spooky mansion. The cover paintings all showed both the woman and the house.

Canyon Passage

Tourneur worked in a huge variety of genres, although rarely in comedy or musicals. Canyon Passage (1946) was his first major Western. Making Westerns gave Tourneur a chance to work in color for the first time.

The Micro-Landscapes

The community in Canyon Passage is laid out in an unusual way for a Western. Instead of a typical Western town, the action takes place in a series of separate buildings, each one in its own landscape and grounds. People travel between the buildings on short, intricately laid-out paths. The justification seems to be that this is a "pre-town": a pioneer collection of buildings that have not yet coalesced into a village.

Tourneur has a field day with the complex grounds of the buildings. Each is a mini-landscape, full of geographical features such as hills, paths, and sometimes water. Tourneur would include such micro-landscapes in his later films, such as the gas station grounds of Out of the Past, and the river and bridge scene in Stars in My Crown. Tourneur in general was fond of scenes that were neither purely inside, nor purely outdoors. His micro-landscapes are full of nature, but they also contain man-made features such as paths and bridges. They are not nature in its wild state; they are outdoor regions closely developed for human use. Similarly, Tourneur loved to film scenes on porches and under porticos, areas that are outside, but closely connected with buildings. His indoor scenes often include huge windows that show exterior landscapes in the background.

Out of the Past

Themes and Characters from Film Noir

Out of the Past (1947) has many story, character and theme elements of the film noir movement, but a very different visual style. The heroine is a femme fatale, who lies to and destroys the men who love her. There is a mood of doom, a trap that the hero cannot escape. The hero is an urban male, who tries to escape from the corruption and tension of the big city into the countryside, and a more wholesome relationship there, just as in Road House, On Dangerous Ground, Ride the Pink Horse. There is a menacing but elegant mobster, with an even more elegant hit man enforcer working for him. The hero is a private eye. These are all film noir conventions. The hero is even tracked down at his gas station by the visiting hit man at the start of the film, just as in Robert Siodmak's The Killers (1946). And as in that film, his past where he got involved with a femme fatale and her mob associates is catching up to him.

Tourneur's hero shows less psychological disintegration than many noir heroes. His hero will cover up his girl friend's crime, but otherwise is not especially corrupted himself. This makes him closer to Welles in Lady From Shanghai, than to the crooked heroes of Double Indemnity or The Killers. He is hurt by his past, and needs healing. But he is not an emotionally disturbed man. His reactions are those of a "normal" person who has been through a difficult experience.

Visual Style

The style of Out of the Past is Tourneur's own, however. It does not seem especially close to German Expressionism. There is not much high contrast photography, with regions of intense black and white. Instead most of the screen is beautifully lit, with a range of shadowy grays. Camera angles seem largely to be head on, with few of the extreme high or low angles of other film noir directors. Tourneur does sometimes shoot slightly from below, to make his characters look more imposing, but he rarely takes this to extremes. There are few mirror shots, and neither staircases nor clocks play a major role in the film.

Tourneur's style shows what Andrew Sarris called his "unyielding pictorialism". Shot after shot is astonishingly beautiful. Tourneur has an eye for composition. He knows how to arrange the elements on the screen so that they make up an exceptionally pretty picture. Nor does he need to linger over his compositions. He holds a shot just long enough for the viewer to comfortably absorb it. Then he cuts to another camera setup, one showing an equally beautiful composition. Then another. His imagination seems endless.

Some of the scenes show deep focus. We often see directly through windows, either in or out of a building. This deep focus is associated with Orson Welles, and is a stylistic common denominator with films of the 1940's.

Tourneur occasionally experiments with shots a little closer to Expressionism. An overhead shot of the heroine's apartment turns into a pan, revealing much of the apartment and its geometry. However, the camera angle is gentle, and not especially steep. And the shot is just so pretty, from a compositional point of view, that it seems more designed to add to the beauty of the film, and not to be dramatically different.

The Opening Scenes: Elements of Tourneur's Style

Much of Jacques Tourneur's visual style emphases space. There are often large empty spaces in his shots: the view through the windows showing the town at the opening, for example, or the open spaces in the middle of the apartments. His town scapes tend to show the empty street in the middle.

The opening scenes in the small town show a classic sense of visual style. Tourneur often creates a corridor on screen. This is a straight area down which his characters can walk. He shoots this corridor face on. His camera will be positioned at one end of the corridor, looking straight down the length of the corridor towards the other end. So the long axis of the corridor is perpendicular to the plane of the shot. This creates a renaissance perspective effect, with the two sides of the corridor gradually converging on some point in the distance. As in all perspective effects, these two sides look like slightly tilted planes when projected onto the flat plane of the screen.

Tourneur makes his corridors out of many things. The shots of the young boy outdoors have a "corridor" made up of the road. A shot down the sidewalk shows the many projecting arcades and awnings of the buildings. When in the diner, the corridor is the narrow long space between the juke box and the chairs of the diner.

Tourneur's approach here is architectural. But Tourneur does not concentrate on what might be called "official" architecture, such as buildings and rooms, unlike many directors with an architectural approach - such as Fritz Lang. Instead, Tourneur especially loves unofficial architecture, such as the projecting awnings of buildings. The opening, defining shot of this sequence shows the visiting hit man looking up at the projecting covered area of the gas station. This covered region is beautifully symmetrical. It is seen from the side, and forms a classic piece of Renaissance perspective. Its two sided view is emphasized by having the name "Jeff Bailey" appear on both sides, the name being the focus of the hit man's and the viewer's attention. The names are positioned to gently underscore the geometry of the areaway.

Other examples of unofficial architecture: the awning covered walkways of the sidewalk. The chairs along the dining counter. Each revolving chair is positioned in another direction: some are parallel to the counter, others perpendicular, making a beautiful mathematical effect. Later, in the canteen sequence that introduces the heroine of the film, she walks down a complex entrance way to the cantina. This is not one unified passageway. Instead, it is a whole succession of transition zones, each with its own geometry and architectural features. It is a composite area, an example of "unofficial" architecture made up of bits and pieces of small areas. In Berlin Express, Tourneur will show many shots of sheds at the train station, and awning covered areas for the passengers to walk. He will also lead us through many unusual passages in the bombed out city of Frankfurt. All of these perspective corridors are made up of non-primary architecture.

Many of these features are constructed in an industrial style, out of industrial materials. They do not look like the gilded homes of the rich. Instead, the train sheds and gas station awnings look like factory components or industrial constructions. Even the lunch counter has a metallic feel. Tourneur loved machines. His characters are always happy and at peace when they are near machinery. Machines often play a major role in his compositions. The hit man and the boy are framed against the giant towing machine in the gas station. Its tow lines and projecting metal arms form a beautiful composition enveloping the two men. Many of Tourneur's street scenes involve cars, usually positioned perpendicularly to the line of vision. These are as carefully arranged as the revolving chairs in the diner. The best known still from Nick Carter, Master Detective (1939) shows the characters with a gleaming airplane, its surface full of complex patterns of rivets. Tourneur loved such machines for the complex compositions they could make. But they also give the characters a sense of peace and joy. The machines seem like gigantic pets, something his characters can play with, fool around over, and be happy. Their great complexity suggests that they are mentally and intellectually fulfilling to the characters who work with them. This is very different from Fritz Lang, whose machines tend to be sinister devices controlling the lives of his characters.

Tourneur's shots are not all architecture or machinery, however. Instead, they tend to be balanced, and made up out of disparate elements. This balance adds beauty to the composition. It also suggests Aristotle's dictum of "moderation in all things". For example, the key shot of Jeff Bailey's covered areaway at the gas station also shows trees growing behind it in the distance. The shot of the covered sidewalk areas positions this on the left corner of the screen. It is balanced by an open section on the right, showing a building, trees and sky.

Corridor shots are also frequent in the films of John Ford. For instance, Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946) is filled with corridor shots down the outside covered porches of the many buildings in town. It also has indoor corridor style shots along the lengthy bar.

There are other elements of Tourneur's style. He liked tall pillars or straight lines near the middle of his compositions. In town, these were often formed by telephone poles sticking up. In the diner, the door pillar has a similar function. At the mountain lake, the great boles of trees serve similarly. There is only one such tall line per shot, and it tends to be somewhere near the middle of the frame. The shots in town tend to underline this vertical, by having it match up exactly with the perspective of the shot. For example, the telephone pole is position so that it exactly aligns with similar vertical lines of the house behind it. The two sides of the screen separated by the pole each fade away in a slight perspective effect, on either side of the pole. The door pillar at the diner shows a similar exactitude in the perspective effect of the shot.

The tropical scenes here, especially those outside the cottage shared by Mitchum and Greer, recall those in I Walked With a Zombie (1943). Both show lush vegetation arranged into complex patterns of composition.

Berlin Express

Berlin Express (1948) is a spy thriller. None of the leads in the film is a spy; rather, it is about good people who are hemmed in and attacked by evil spies. The film has a German setting, and one of the characters is a spy who wears a clown suit and entertains in a music hall. In this it recalls Fritz Lang's Spione (1928). The film has a finale in the basement of a ruined German brewery, as in Lang's M (1931). The plot of the film also recalls Sternberg's Shanghai Express (1932), with characters of all nationalities and politics making an intrigue-filled train journey through a war torn country. Both films have a scene where obstacles stop the train. The mind-reader stage show section of the film also resembles Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (1935).

The film also has features recalling the semi-documentaries of the 1940's. There is an official sounding narrator who explains things, keeping up a running commentary on the action. There is much location filming in real life great cities. There is an inside look at the operations of the French police and the authorities of the American Occupation in Germany, which functions much like the domestic government police agencies in other semi-docs.

I found the politics of Berlin Express to be a bit confusing. The noble hero of the film is a peacemaker, played by Paul Lukas. He worked as part of the anti-Hitler underground, and his campaign to reunify Germany is sponsored by the US State Department. This gives him an admirable background to which few could object. Is he a representative of a real life political movement of the era? He is opposed by a fanatic German underground, the villains of the movie, whose politics are never made clear. Are these neo-Nazis? One might guess so, but this is never spelled out by the film. Most critical commentators on the film declare these are Neo-Nazis, but do not give any hard evidence. Or could they be Communists? This is also a possibility. The film shows a great deal of skepticism about the Soviets, suggesting that it is their own hostile attitude which is the main stumbling block with peace with the West. Still, the film does yearn for such East-West peace. This makes the politics of the film apparently largely in accord with liberal but non-Communist thinking of the time. I am not sure that I am accurately representing the politics of this movie. One problem with the film: no one ever seems to talk about democratic government, which to me is at the center of all good politics.

Characters

Charles McGraw is plainly delighted to be playing a good guy here; most of his other film roles during this period were of monstrous villains. He is also glamorized, as a Colonel in charge of US Army intelligence in Frankfurt.

Of all the main characters in this film, only hero Robert Ryan and Russian officer Maxim turn out to be what and whom they originally seem to be. This is typical of many of Tourneur's films. The characters in Nightfall also turn out to have multiple identities. Even when Tourneur's people are not lurking under false identities, their initial impressions are deceiving. The islanders in I Walked With a Zombie have a huge, hidden past, that only gradually comes out in the course of the film. The bad guys in Stars in My Crown are hiding under KKK hoods, and we also learn a lot of strange things about the villains in The Fearmakers and Night of the Demon. It is hard to be sure of what or who any Tourneur character really is. The surface version of the character seems to be just as "real" as the hidden depths. The hero of Nightfall says towards the end that he prefers his new name of Jim to his old, real name, giving a hint that he likes his new identity better than his original one. And in I Walked With a Zombie, telling what any character's "real" personality is, is a futile enterprise.

Berlin Express shares imagery with the later Nightfall. Both feature extensive location shooting. Both are city films, containing massive panoramas of urban areas. Both go to crowded transportation centers, train stations in the earlier film, bus stations in the latter, and both have major scenes of train or bus travel, respectively. Both have characters lurking under false identities. Both have a hero, a heroine he meets in the course of the story, and a benevolent older male who can be seen as a father figure, and who has official connections.

The vats of beer at the end remind one of the aquariums in Experiment Perilous.

Visual Style

Tourneur's visual style here has a good deal in common with Josef von Sternberg's. Everything in Berlin Express is visually beautiful, just as in Sternberg. Both directors focus on elaborate compositions. The compositions in both are highly complex. The directors are the opposite of minimalists: every shot is loaded with complex series of lines and curves. Both directors employ complex regions of light and shadow to aid in their composition. Both use regions of elaborate background texture. Tourneur here is always shooting against walls covered with complex wall papers or moldings or grillwork, for instance. This means that certain regions of the screen will have a complex texture; other regions of the composition will have a different but just as elaborate texture. This is quite different from an architectural director such as Fritz Lang, who will emphasize the pure geometry of his rooms in his compositions. Both Sternberg and Tourneur also like to mask the foreground of the screen with complex patterns. Here in Berlin Express this is mainly ornamental grillwork, which seems to be everywhere in Germany, and France, too, according to this film! Sternberg, by contrast, liked oriental bead curtains and netting, which would probably have looked out of place in Frankfurt! All in all, both Sternberg and Tourneur seem part of a Pictorialist film tradition.

Berlin Express continues Tourneur's interest in shots which show deep space. The shots at the French police headquarters, for instance, have deep focus shots of Paris visible through their windows. One of the police goes out on to a balcony, and the shot follows him and expands to a whole panorama of Paris, with the Seine and buildings on the opposite bank. This is very beautiful. The technique is very similar to the lunch counter scenes in Out of the Past, which showed the town through its plate glass windows. Similarly, the wide open plaza near Berlin's Brandenberg gate at the finale recalls the open streets of the mountain town at the start of Out of the Past. There are also some large scale panoramas of Los Angeles city streets in Nightfall.

One dramatic panorama shot of Frankfurt is taken from some sort of elevated platform, on which a man is standing. This recalls the street scene near the bus station in Nightfall, which is also taken from some sort of elevated pedestrian walkway. In neither film, does Tourneur actually show us the walkway, or have an establishing shot depicting it from a reverse angle. He simply uses the walkway as his platform for a dramatic view. Both shots have a pedestrian standing on them, in the foreground.

The opening Paris scenes are full of Tourneur's "corridor" shots. Here, these are long perspective views, straight down Parisian streets. These give strong pictorial views of Paris. The two rows of buildings on each side of the shot, form the walls of the "corridor". One striking shot shows a perspective view down a Montmartre street. Then a 90 degree pan reveals another long perspective view, this time through a gate and into the courtyard of a Parisian police station.

The Train

The best sequence in Berlin Express is the train journey from Paris to Frankfurt, near the start of the film. This sequence is one of Tourneur's "micro-landscapes". It shows us the car in which the main characters live in enormous detail, both from within and without the car and train. There are many perspective shots, both down the train's central aisle, and along the outside of the train. These form Tourneur "corridor shots".

The shot, introducing all of the characters, shows us each one through the windows of various compartments on the train. It somewhat recalls the shots through train windows near the opening of Clarence Brown's Possessed (1931).

The train sequence is densely written. It introduces us to most of the characters of the film. It shows the pattern of nationalities intersecting on occupied Germany - American, British, French, Russian and German - and their complex political interactions and history. It shows the mechanism of life and work in occupied Germany. It sets up the main aspects of the spy plot. And the micro-landscape sets this against a spatial organization and floor plan on the train. All of this makes this sequence rich and delightful. The sequence conveys much of the romance and excitement of train travel.

Tourneur shoots from every possible perspective on the train. He has shots from outside the train, looking into the compartments, from in the compartments, looking in the train, from the corridor, looking into the compartments, the reverse, etc. Tourneur shows a Fritz Lang like exhaustivity, exploiting his set for every possible direction of view. Most of the shots are dramatically just right. They vividly convey the mood of that part of the story. When the mood of the story shifts, Tourneur comes up with the right camera position for it, too. Tourneur rarely shoots from a high or a low angle, unlike many other film noir directors, however. The use of an elevated angle is restricted to the shots immediately following the murder, where it helps to underscore the surprise of the situation. Even here, the camera is not too high. There is also a dramatic excuse for such an angle; the army officer in charge is bending down to the ground.

Stars in My Crown

Stars in My Crown (1950) is the sort of serious "family film" that was popular in the 1940's. These usually starred a family, a small kid who was a gifted actor, and had a small town or rural setting. Usually, these films were serious, even soap opera-ish in tone, as the characters confronted a whole series of problems and serious issues. One thinks of Allan Dwan's Driftwood (1947), in which the characters also fought the same sort of serious diseases as in this film, or Clarence Brown's Intruder in the Dust (1949), which also looked at racial hatred in America.

The film also recalls the first half of John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln (1939). Both take place in a richly depicted 19th Century town somewhere in the heartland; in both the hero has to stand up and try to prevent a lynching. This film tries to recreate a way of life in a past era. In this it recalls the films of John Ford, who specialized in recreating ancient lifestyles and traditions. The musical interludes here also seem Ford-like, with music used to evoke a different time and place.

Stars in My Crown contains a ferocious attack on racism. It is one of the boldest of the post-war films, that supported the growing Civil Rights movement of the time.

This film is like Out of the Past, in that it shows evil forces laying siege to people in small towns. Both towns are idyllic places, filled with small businesses and homes. In both towns people love to fish, something that is treated as a source of friendship between grown-ups and kids. But the gangsters of the one film, and the typhoid and race hatred in the other, threaten to destroy the possibilities of harmony.

People in Stars in My Crown tend to live where they work. The minister and his wife, Famous, the doctors, and the farm family of Alan Hale, all have combined work-living quarters associated with them. Tourneur spends a good deal of time exploring these places.

Religion

There are a huge number of films that depict the Roman Catholic Church. There are far fewer that show Protestantism, Orthodox Christianity, or Judaism. Partly this is due to the nature of Roman Catholic religious observance, itself. Roman Catholicism, like Buddhism and the religion of ancient Greece, is oriented towards pious religious activities. The devout of these faiths express their feelings through rituals, activities and stories. Consequently, these faiths have produced a huge body of art, music, storytelling and drama, all of which reflects their religious ideals. This has been true for thousands of years. The heritage of religious art these faiths have created is truly staggering. When film was invented, it was a natural extension to express the sort of religious ideas in film that had previously found outlets in sacred music and painting.

Stars in My Crown is one of the few sympathetic depictions of Protestant religion on the screen. The preacher hero of the film is a wholly good person.

The depiction of Protestantism in this film has formal similarities to the many depictions of Catholicism in the movies. The film emphasizes religious activities, and interweaves these with daily life. Three activities are especially high-lighted in the film: preaching, hymn singing, and visiting the sick. This focus on kinds of religious observance is typical of Catholic movies. Some of the specific activities are deeply Protestant, especially preaching and hymns. It is as if the filmmakers have taken the formal structure of Catholic movies, and merged it with the content of Protestant practice.

"Stars in My Crown" is a hymn tune. It is sung over the opening credits of the film, and recurs throughout the movie. It is an emotionally powerful work. The use of a musical refrain in an otherwise non-musical film is a basic element of the Sternberg tradition in filmmaking. It is one that Tourneur follows with great effectiveness here.

Visual Style

Stars in My Crown is a film that is rich in visual beauty. Shot after shot shows Tourneur's attempt to create visually pleasing compositions. These try to convey the idyllic life of the small town.

Tourneur's approach to composition in Stars in My Crown recalls that of Out of the Past. Many shots, both outdoors and inside, show the "corridor" approach of that earlier film. The opening shots of Stars in My Crown show the small town in ways that recall the small town opening of Out of the Past. Once again, Tourneur favors covered porches and walkways, through which he creates deep focus shots stressing perspective. An interior shot of a bar here recalls the lunch room sequence of Out of the Past. Tourneur shoots down two corridors in the bar: one between two lines of people down to the minister in the back of the bar; a second shot down the bar counter itself. This second shot also shows the "outdoor town seen through the large window" approach of the lunch room scenes in the earlier film.

When Tourneur gets to the minister's home, he creates a shot down the minister's back porch. Once again, this is a straight on perspective shot under a covered portico. It also faces directly on a large window showing the outside world.

There is a deep perspective shot showing the arrival of the minister down a long corridor like road at Alan Hale's farm. Another outdoor corridor shows Chloroform retreating down a gap between two buildings in the bullwhip sequence.

In addition to their pictorial possibilities, the corridor approach is often very informative to the audience. It shows them a great deal of a scene, all in one well organized, easy to comprehend shot. We see everything from the foreground to the background, all nicely laid out and easy to understand. Often times, the corridor passes through many different layers of background. For example, Tourneur can create a corridor showing three rooms of a house. The first room will be in the foreground, then another room will be seen through open doors in the center of the shot; then distant doors in the background of the shot will show a third room. Not only is the shot visually complex and beautiful, but it shows us the entire floor plan of the set, in one easy to take in view.

The fact that Tourneur favors corridors and porticos as the structural principles of his shots, does not explain their beauty. His compositions are often exquisitely gorgeous.

One of the best shots in the film has nothing to do with a corridor approach. This is the introductory shout outside Famous' home. It opens with a composition framed by trees. These form slanting verticals on both sides of the screen, while the fence in front of the home forms equally slanting horizontals. Tourneur liked such strong straight lines. Later, the characters move down the road, and Tourneur pans to the left. The camera comes to a rest on another composition, that is also very beautiful. This one has Famous' head a little above the log fence, while John the child is backgrounded against the fence. Also, in the background right, Chloroform is standing, with trees making a series of three vertical lines in a giant V around him. Meanwhile, Famous' fishing pole males a tilted cross around him, the most powerful lines in the composition. It is a remarkably composed image. The fact that Famous, John and Chloroform are all gentle, good people adds to the appeal of the image.

Other shots involve the road, and an equally angular bridge. The road and the fence turn sharply to the left, making a contrasting set of verticals. Tourneur shoots the whole fishing scene with a widely contrasting series of shots. He is as exhaustive as Fritz Lang, in trying to find every interesting image possible in a scene, then staging the scene around it.

Tourneur's fondness for machinery shows up here in the fan used by the wife. It is a unique figure of visual style, something that I've never seen in other films or real life. It reminds one a bit of the machinery in Sternberg's films, whose rhythmic repetition makes both temporal patterns and visual compositions.

Appointment in Honduras

Appointment in Honduras (1953) is an adventure thriller, set in 1910 Honduras. It is like Phantom Raiders and I Walked With a Zombie, in being a film set in a tropical Caribbean country. Tourneur shows Honduras, as lush, stormy and full of vegetation, like the Mexican scenes in Out of the Past. The jungle shots are full of Tourneur's beloved trees. There are some scary scenes with a jungle puma, reminding us that Tourneur directed Cat People, The Leopard Man, Night of the Demon, all cat thrillers. However, nature is regularly on the attack here, with everything from bats to insects to alligators going after our jungle expedition.

The hero also succumbs to an attack of malaria, recalling the many medical scenes in Tourneur films. He initially dismisses any suggestion that he take quinine to prevent malaria, a bit of an echo perhaps of the arrogance of medical researchers in other Tourneur films. Eventually he takes it, and recovers. This recalls the health-giving substances in Romance of Radium, and The Magic Alphabet.

The covered motor boat used by the dictator's troops recalls the other "large machines" in Tourneur's films.

The tracing paper used by the hero to copy the map is visually striking. It is perhaps related to the see-through screens and windows in Tourneur films. In the days before copying machines came into widespread use in the 1970's, tracing paper, like carbon paper and mimeograph machines, was one of the few devices that could make multiple copies of documents. It played an important role in the circulation of knowledge in human society. Tourneur sometimes has imagery related to such subjects: see the way radium fogs photographic plates in The Romance of Radium. One also thinks of the hero's creation of drawings at his artist's desk in Nightfall, and Anne Bancroft's portfolio of modeling photos in that same film, as well as the draftsmen in Cat People, and the blueprints in Nick Carter, Master Detective.

The film deals with an attempt by a small group of people to thwart an anti-democratic takeover of the country. In this, it is like Berlin Express and The Fearmakers. The hero is also tracked by organized groups of bad guys, and has to flee before them cross country, like the heroes of Nightfall and Out of the Past. However, these parallels play out better in brief summaries like this, than they do in the film. The difference has to do with complexities of form and content. The discussions of history and politics are very rich in Berlin Express, and thin to near non-existence in Appointment in Honduras. Similarly, Appointment in Honduras has little of the plot complexities and intricacies of Nightfall and Out of the Past. Chris Fujiwara's description of Appointment in Honduras as paradoxically at once well-made but trivial seems accurate.

Ambiguity

The film is full of ambiguity, somewhat in the way of other Tourneur films. The hero seems like a villain at first. Indeed, I was disgusted with him on first viewing. The forces he unleashes on ship seem as mean as the bad guys in Nightfall. But eventually, he becomes the film's noble hero. A second viewing shows plenty of hints that his character can be read that way, right from the start: he orders the convicts not to use violence, and they disobey him. Still, the violence he enables against innocent people is really offensive. It is hard to forgive or forget the killing of the radio operator, or the ship's watchman. All of this strikes one as less pure ambiguity, and more plain scrambled scripting. Still, this is consistent with the way Tourneur characters gradually reveal hidden personalities.

Similarly, the treatment of the rich guy. He has the structural position of the Bad Guy, and is played by an actor who specialized in odious rich men, Zachary Scott - see Mildred Pierce. However, Scott's character never actually does anything wrong in the course of the film. Nothing he does can possibly justify his being taken hostage. Nor is there any justification for his wife dumping him, and having an affair with the hero. Are we supposed to hate this guy because he's rich? Or is there a deliberate ambiguity here? Or is this all just scrambled, again? It is hard to say. Appointment in Honduras is a film in which the "hero" enables the killing of innocent people during what seems like an unprovoked attack, and who commits adultery. And a film in which the apparent "villain", however snarling, and unlikable in personality, never commits a single bad action. This is just plain strange. It is deliberate, and of artistic significance? Just a mixed-up script? And how did this script ever get past the censors, anyway? This was in an era in which movie heroes never even killed the bad guys, usually rounding them up and turning them over to the law: an expression of belief in the rule of law in a democratic society that seems politically deeply admirable, to me.

If the rich guy is indeed a villain, the way his wife comes to aid and ally herself with the hero anticipates Night of the Demon, and Mrs. Karswell's warning the hero about her evil husband. It also recalls Out of the Past, and the way the femme fatale kept oscillating between the hero and villain, and the triangles in Nightfall and I Walked with a Zombie.

Zachary Scott can be seen as a member of the upper middle classes, and planter Glenn Ford as an upstart member of the lower middle classes. Scott sneers at Ford's manners to the Captain in the opening sequence. Such conflicts between two levels of men in business will recur in Night of the Demon and The Fearmakers. However, in those films it is the upper middle class Dana Andrews who is the hero, with the villains being the upstart lower middle class characters. This film reverses the approach.

There are no mysteries for the hero or the audience to solve. But the bad guys are regularly confused about the hero's goals, speculating he is looking for a treasure. This ties in with Tourneur's theme, of the difficulty of uncovering truth.

Visual Style: The Ship

The ship at the beginning is unusually small. Its deck and rooms are close to being one of Tourneur's micro-locales. They are beautifully colored, with a mix of red, light blues and greens. The whole effect is like a 1920's film in two-color Technicolor. Famed art director Charles D. Hall does a fascinating job with the ship's rooms. They are full of rectilinear bunks and boxes. It is one of Tourneur's "geometric worlds". The gently sloping ceilings, giving the rooms trapezoidal outlines, contributes to the geometric effect: one is always reminded that one is in a non-conventionally shaped space, but a space still ruled by mathematical patterns. I have no idea what the multi-colored objects in pigeonholes are, in the radio operator's room. But they are visually rich and delightful. The pigeonholes are repeating geometric units. So are the many chairs in the cabin where the heroine is playing cards. These remind one of the chairs in the dining counter, at the start of Out of the Past.

The film opens on a "corridor shot" down the deck. The deck set is fairly short, and we do not get as deep a perspective as in some of Tourneur's corridor shots. The deck contains two outdoor staircases, anticipating the fashion show micro-locale in Nightfall. The angle of the upper staircase is echoed by the angles of the backs of two deck chairs. Both the chairs and the cabin doors are the repeating units Tourneur likes in his shots. Red light is coming out of the doors, while blue light fills the rest of the deck - a color harmony that will persist in the shipboard opening. We also see an octagonal region on the floor near a lifeboat. The lifeboat will be a major visual motif throughout the whole first half of the film. It gets introduced here before any of the human characters.

Later, at the climax of the ship sequence, Tourneur will switch to a "flat wall shot" of the deck, with the plane of his image parallel to the wall of the deck. Tourneur will dramatically move his camera backwards and forwards, always keeping it parallel to the deck wall. This preserves the flat wall shot approach, yet makes for some striking camera movements.

The whole ship seems old, and very remote from anything in modern times, or other movies. The various cabins and rooms remind one a bit of the train in Berlin Express.

The sympathetic radio operator lives and works in the same room on ship, like many Tourneur characters, with his desk right next to the box containing his bed. The radio room seems like the brain center of the ship: it is full of papers and maps, and is the place where information flows in and out of the ship. In the second visit to the cabin, Tourneur will switch to a moderately elevated angle. This allows one to have an overhead view of the operator's use of the telegraph, and of the hero's making a trace of the map. Such an elevated angle is a bit unusual for Tourneur. It recalls a similar gently elevated angle in the heroine's apartment in Out of the Past. And as in that previous film, the shot turns into a camera movement, exploring the radio operator's cabin as a whole. In Appointment in Honduras, the angle is linked to exposition: Tourneur needs the angle to give the audience a better view of the action.

Visual Style

We first see the village from an elevated point of view, spread out as a panorama below. This is a typical Tourneur cityscape, here applied to a very small community.

The hero wears white throughout the picture - first a white tropical suit, then a white explorer's outfit. This recalls the white tropical clothes in Phantom Raiders, and the hero's white coat in The Fearmakers. Later on, the dictator at the palace and his generals will all be in white tropical uniforms, with touches of red.

The scenes of the rising wind blowing the tropical vegetation are beautiful. They anticipate the wind storm in Night of the Demon.

Nightfall

Tourneur's Nightfall (1956) is a thriller. It belongs to the once popular genre in which good, ordinary people are terrorized by a gang of crooks. Other films in this small genre include Andrew L. Stone's The Night Holds Terror (1955), William Wyler's The Desperate Hours (1955), Budd Boetticher's The Killer is Loose (1956), Phil Karlson's Key Witness (1960), Blake Edwards' Experiment in Terror (1962), J. Lee Thompson's Cape Fear (1962). These films tend to be rather plotless, consisting of a series of incidents in which helpless ordinary people are attacked by criminals. Despite the prestige and talent of the directors associated with such films, I have never liked them, or the genre. Such films have always seemed to me to be devoid of entertainment value. Watching favorite actors get brutalized by thugs has always made me cringe. However, to be honest, I have tended to bail out on such films in the middle. I did make it all the way through Nightfall, however, although it is one of the gloomiest of the lot. It is not really clear to me that such movies are examples of film noir, as is sometimes claimed. They tend to take place in an everyday world, that seems remote from the slick urban jungle of earlier film noir.

The heroes of such movies are always exemplars of middle class life styles. Everything is done to underline how ordinary and conventional they are. This often includes putting the men in such films in as ordinary and unspectacular suits as can be found. Here hero Aldo Ray is de-glamorized, wearing a typical 1950's suit and tie. Jeffrey Hunter will sport a similarly square look in Key Witness. Only towards the end of the movie does Ray get in clothes that are a bit more glamorous, a shiny black air force jacket. Ray also suffers from a terrible haircut, designed to make him look square. I kept thinking he should sue the wardrobe department. Tourneur does frequently shoot so that Ray's huge, muscular back is emphasized. Ray is an extremely macho looking actor. But the main use the film seems to make of this, is to show that even someone as tough as Ray is shows little chance against these monstrous crooks. Ray gets little chance to unroll the dynamism that made his supporting performances in George Cukor's Pat and Mike (1952) and Raoul Walsh's The Naked and the Dead (1958) so entertaining.

One might note, that for a director who is often accused of a lack of force, that Tourneur's heroes are often the toughest, most macho actors on screen. Even Tourneur's more gentlemanly actors, such as Tom Conway, James Ellison, Dana Andrews, Glenn Ford and Joel McCrea, are very macho performers. And Tourneur is very comfortable with tough guy actors like Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas, Robert Ryan and Burt Lancaster. Tourneur often makes these men play characters with intellectual depth, such as Ray's artist here, or Ryan's agricultural expert in Berlin Express, as well as the many doctors in Tourneur films.

Much better than the grim scenes with the criminals, are the happy scenes in which Ray encounters love interest Anne Bancroft and good guy investigator James Gregory. Anne Bancroft is making her film debut here. We all owe this film a big debt of gratitude for bringing Anne Bancroft to the screen.

Themes

Elements in Nightfall recall Tourneur's earlier Out of the Past. In both films, criminals spend much time hounding the protagonist, tracking him down and making demands on him. He flees all over the country, and builds a new life under an assumed name. Both contain extensive flashbacks, telling the story out of conventional chronological order. Both films contrast the city, with sections that take place against beautiful, remote mountain scenery. There are also extensive scenes in urban apartments in both films, including three different apartments here. A beautiful shot of a country church near the end of the film, balanced with the vertical trunks of trees in winter, recalls the visual style of Out of the Past. It also recalls the church in Stars in My Crown.

The artist hero works where he lives, a recurring Tourneur theme. His artist's desk recalls the draftsmen in Cat People, the tracing paper on the map desk in Appointment in Honduras, and all the blueprints used by the workers in Nick Carter, Master Detective (1939).

A triangle involving the hero, his doctor friend, and his friend's young wife recalls I Walked with a Zombie. It is a fairly minor element of this picture, though.

The large snow plow machine at the end of this film is unusual in that it is purely sinister. Usually Tourneur's huge machines are friendly, like a pet. This sequence bears some resemblance to the nightmare plowing scene in Anthony Mann's Border Incident (1949), surely one of the most horrifying scenes in the movies. Even in this grim Tourneur finale, however, there is something pretty about the visual patterns made by the snow plow's machinery.

There are numerous clocks, mirrors and staircases in this film, all traditional symbols of film noir. There were also many clock shots in Berlin Express, another Tourneur film noir. In David Goodis' original 1947 novel, the hero is afflicted with traumatic amnesia, from which he recovers at the end: a noir plot gambit if there ever was one. All of this is eliminated in the movie, perhaps to make the hero be more like a regular, ordinary person.

The Titles

The film's opening titles are printed over a beautiful LA cityscape. It shows a forking road at night, with the lights of the building signs forming white patterns against the blackness. It is a beautiful composition. There are three buildings, one on the left, one on the right and one in the middle, that all reach exactly the same height on the screen. This gives a beautiful effect of harmony. Signs on the far left tower far above these, as does a white circle floating above the middle building (or tower). It is a beautiful pattern in white and black. It reminds one of the cityscapes, often nocturnal, found in the work of Ozu.

Micro-Locales

Tourneur has some of his intriguing micro-locales here. Some of them are more urban than most of these mini-landscapes in Tourneur. The film opens on an urban sidewalk that contains a newsstand (see below). Later, an outdoor fashion show will be staged in an interesting area just outside a building, with staircases and balconies overlooking the site of the show. The fashion show is one of the livelier sequences in the movie. The way the show's announcer keeps describing the color of the gowns on view, in this black and white movie, makes an odd touch. The fashion show has elements of ritual, that recall the ceremonies in I Walked with a Zombie. This scene shows Anne Bancroft's talent, as she performs with human warmth in a mild suspense scene. This is the sort of light hearted suspense typical of Hitchcock's more comic thrillers. Aldo Ray also gets to make beautiful music here, in the sequence's comic finale, where he shows his dynamic self. If more scenes had this sort of spirit, Nightfall would be a lot more fun. The opening dinner with Bancroft and Ray also has a little of the same warmth, especially when the two characters discuss their work. This is another expression of joy in the film.

Judging by the credits, the fashion show takes place at a real Beverly Hills haute couture salon. We see some corridor shots in front of this building at the show's start. The building has a 50's modernist style architecture, anticipating some corridor shots in front of modernist buildings in The Fearmakers. The show itself is full of beautiful lateral tracking shots, which move along with the models to and fro along the outdoor sidewalk serving as a runway. These shots are full of beautiful trees and shrubs, a favorite Tourneur subject. One shot of the bad guys films them through a spiky, modernist steel sculpture, a sinister touch. Later, when the hero and heroine have moved up to street level at the end of the sequence, there are more camera movements parallel to the sidewalk and the characters' path. These too involve beautiful trees. Everything in the whole fashion sequence is visually beautiful.

There are also some striking shots of outdoor staircases at the show. One shot with both Bancroft and Ray has a staircase making a strong diagonal from the upper left corner; this diagonal is continued by a hedge in the lower right. Counterpoised to this, is the opposite diagonal, a gently series of steps on which Bancroft and Ray stand. Both characters look pleasingly glamorous and romantic here, with Bancroft in a spectacular gown. This other diagonal is underscored by a series of banisters moving up from the lower left corner of the screen. This is a delightfully composed shot. The X of the two diagonals gives it a dynamic quality.

A second inventive staircase shot shows Ray and Bancroft running up an outdoor staircase. Behind them, we see a deep focus panorama of the fashion show. When the two heroes run around a huge, visually obstructing concrete pillar, Tourneur tracks to the right, bringing them back in view along the next stage of the staircase. This is a richly complex shot.

Another fascinating micro-locale consists of the opening exterior of the restaurant, on Hollywood Boulevard. This street scene area has an outdoor news stand along one of its walls. This is one of many building exteriors in Tourneur that are full of complex projections, within which the characters wander. The overhead of the news stand forms an area that is both inside and outside, a Tourneur tradition. Tourneur has some "flat wall" shots here, with Ray photographed directly against the newsstand, with the stand forming the entire back of the shot, parallel to the plane of the camera. He also achieves shots at a 90 degree angle to this, with the sidewalk under the newsstand canopy forming a classic Tourneur corridor. Also very intriguing: the rounded corner of the restaurant building. Ray walks along this curve, and it is also prominently featured in other shots. It is a most intriguing piece of architecture, one typical of the complexity of Tourneur's exteriors. This scene includes the arrival of a city bus. Tourneur photographs Ray through the front and back side windows of the moving bus. It is an intriguing piece of photographic imagery.

The bus station forms a third outstanding micro-locale. We see a spectacular Los Angeles city landscape, that includes the bus station, along the right hand side of the long city street that makes up the "corridor" of the shot. This is one of Tourneur's largest corridor shots. We are at an elevated platform of some sort in the foreground; James Gregory maintains his surveillance of Ray from up here; meanwhile, we see Ray crossing the street below, with the huge cityscape receding to infinity in the background. He soon turns at a right angle, and starts along the street to the bus station, as the shot ends. It is very fine!

Once inside the bus station, Tourneur finds a whole series of corridor shots: from the shoe shine stand, from the weight and fortune machine, from the ticket booth. These all lead to long perspective views, with the shots' "corridors" reaching out to distant doorways within the bus station. One spectacular shot combines the "flat wall" and "corridor" approaches in Tourneur. This shot contains murals on a large, interior bus station wall (the flat wall portion of the shot, photographed head on, as usual), with a row of lockers on the right side of the shot. The lockers form a deep perspective view. They form one half of a Tourneur corridor, the right hand half, and they lead to distant doors. However, there is no matching left hand part of the corridor, as there typically would be in a corridor shot. Instead, the whole left part of the image is taken up by the flat wall shot of the giant murals. It is a beautiful and striking image, one that creatively combines two of Tourneur's paradigms.

There is also a "corridor" shot, in the nocturnal sequence showing Gregory staking out Ray's apartment. The "corridor" stretches down Gregory's apartment, all the way to a back window, through which we can see Ray's apartment across the way.

Night of the Demon

Night of the Demon (1957) is one of Tourneur's most vivid horror films.

I am not a believer in the supernatural, while Tourneur is. However, Tourneur does not present much of anything positive about the supernatural in Night of the Demon. All of the devil-cultists we see in the film seem to be purely evil. They are terrible human beings, and out to exploit others. Much more innocent are the briefly seen medium and his wife, the only decent characters involved with anything supernatural in the movie. Similarly, the Voodoo celebrants in I Walked With a Zombie seem innocent. However, nothing good comes out of Voodoo in this film - the consequences are purely disastrous for everyone.

It is a cliché to compare Night of the Demon with the early horror films Tourneur made with Val Lewton. The mother here recalls the mother in I Walked With a Zombie. Both play a far more independent role than one might expect, with hidden depths to their characters. They are not the simple, supportive figures one is used to in the works of other directors.

The cat sequence here also recalls Cat People.

A British Film

Night of the Demon was shot in Britain. It is full of locales that express a strong British atmosphere: Stonehenge, a Stately Home, the Savoy Hotel, the British Museum, an old-fashioned British farm house, Heathrow Airport, Scotland Yard, British lecture halls. The whole effect reminds one of John Ford, always a strong influence on Tourneur's movies. Ford's films are full of ethnographic depictions of a time and place. Ford constantly seeks out locations and activities that express the traditions and rituals of a society. Tourneur includes some of these too. The fete at the country home is a traditional party for the village children. The farm house and its denizens evoke traditional farm life. They are almost a sinister parody of the tradition Irish farms Ford showed in The Quiet Man (1952). The seance is treated as an English folk ritual. Just as Ford includes traditional music in his pictures to evoke other societies, here Tourneur has the seance members sing a traditional English song, "Cherry Ripe", as part of the ritual ("The spirits like it," one of the members declares confidently.) Even the ambulance bell at the end is a traditional British sound, very different from the sirens used in the United States. There is even a close-up of the bell.

Oddly enough, the least British member of the cast is the heroine. She is an English woman, but she has few specifically British traits. Her job of kindergarten teacher is one common to many countries. Her home is not especially English. She is first seen on a plane from the US to Britain, and her nationality seems indeterminate. She represents universal human values throughout the picture, not someone specifically English. One recalls the nurse in I Walked With a Zombie, who also is independent of the island society. Anne Bancroft's sophisticated fashion model in Nightfall also seems independent of the North Woods setting of many of the characters.

Many other Tourneur films are set in a different society. One thinks of the island in I Walked With a Zombie, the Southwest in The Leopard Man, the 19th Century community in Stars in My Crown, and the many small towns in Tourneur.

Characters, Masks and Costumes

Masks are used as imagery throughout the film. Karswell is made up as a clown at the party, and there are shock cuts to kids wearing Halloween masks, too. He recalls the villainous spy dressed as a clown in Berlin Express. Dana Andrews is first seen while sleeping, a newspaper with his photograph over his face. This is a strange image. It perhaps suggest that his public persona as a famed scientist has eclipsed any real feelings or unconscious ideas his sleeping mind might hold. We also seem him getting dressed and grooming himself in his suite. Later, his spiffy suit is damaged by the cat: another image contrasting his public image with private fantasy and horror.

Throughout his career, Dana Andrews often played men who were very well dressed, but whose surface charm hid serious character flaws. His smooth looking characters were downright duplicitous in Otto Preminger's Fallen Angel, Daisy Kenyon and Where the Sidewalk Ends, and in Fritz Lang's Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. He is not a crook here. But his polished, upper middle class exterior is viewed with skepticism by Tourneur. Andrews often played men whose power and authority came from their upper class middle class position. This position comes from their professions: Andrews plays a famed psychologist here, a newscaster and author in Lang's While the City Sleeps, a tycoon in Daisy Kenyon. But this professional standing is symbolized by Andrews' elegant clothes: he is always dressed at the height of upper middle class good taste. On the screen, his social standing seems to come from his appearance. Tourneur suggests that Andrews is using his position to cover up insights into the supernatural unearthed by less upper class characters: the kindergarten teacher, Andrews' less famous colleagues at the conference. His beautiful suits symbolize his social power, a power used to hide and suppress the truth.

The schoolteacher and the colleagues are also middle class, but from its lower reaches. A subtext of the film is a hidden battle between the upper middle classes and the lower middle classes. This will return in the conflict between Andrews and Dick Foran, who represent two styles of 1950's businessmen in The Fearmakers. In some ways, Karswell's devil cult here is a "going business concern", just like Foran's empire in The Fearmakers. Both films pit Andrews' upper middle class gatekeeper against these lower middle class upstarts who've made it big financially. In both films, these upstarts are crooks, who have succeeded through sinister schemes. But there is also a bit of sympathy with them, as Andrews' character looks like an old money establishment figure who is trying to keep them out of the country club.

Andrews' polished clothes and appearance makes him irresistible to women: he always gets the girl in his films. His directors do everything they can to glamorize him, and fully display this side of his characters to add romance and glamour to their films. But they also suggest that there is something false about such glamour. It can be used to depict Andrews as a polished crook, or to suggest that his social authority is illegitimate and based on image alone, as Tourneur does here, or as Lang hints in While the City Sleeps.

Trees

Complex shots of trees are everywhere in Night of the Demon. They are frequently associated with the supernatural in the film. Tourneur loves including trees in his compositions. Their complex forms are often blended with man made structures, to produce elaborate compositions. Trees frequently appeared in Out of the Past and Nightfall, too.

The first shot of Harrington's car speeding down a road at night, is filmed from behind a series of trees. Some of the tree trunks stand straight up; other smaller branches are on diagonals. The complex of strong, thick verticals and gentle diagonals makes a strikingly composed image. The far left of the shot includes a strangely bushy tree, with some horizontals, too. Tourneur gradually turns this shot into a pan along the road. Later, when Harrington is leaving the Karswell home, and presumably retracing his steps, Tourneur includes this same shot again: only it is reversed from right to left. The inclusion of both a shot and its mirror image reverse seems like a highly unusual film technique. I cannot recall anything like it in other films. It produces an echoing effect. It also makes the world of the film seem more geometrical, and more like a self-enclosed world containing the characters. It also allows Tourneur not to "waste" what must have been a very hard shot to set up, compose and light. (Most of the reverse printing I recall from films is due to technical reasons. Much of Roy Del Ruth's The Babe Ruth Story (1948) was reverse printed, to make the right-handed actor William Bendix look like the left-handed ball player Babe Ruth he was portraying. But these shots were only printed once in the film. There were no echoing effects, as there would be in Night of the Demon.)

The windstorm is a striking episode. It links shots of Dana Andrews, to those of the wind blowing in the trees. The later shots of the kids fleeing from the windstorm anticipates sequences in Hitchcock's The Birds (1963).

Curves

There are more curvilinear forms in Night of the Demon than I recall in most Tourneur films. The overhead shots of the British Museum are especially striking. They recall the circular gambling hall in Sternberg's The Shanghai Gesture (1941). Andrews soon moves to a second room, one with reading desks. This is full of circular lamps on high stands, and circular pillars. The regular array of high lamps and trapezoidal desk lamps makes one feel one is in a world of geometric art. Such regular repetition of geometric forms will show up elsewhere in Night of the Demon, as well. Tourneur has three shots that show these. One is a high overhead angle, used just once as an introduction to the room. Next, comes an eye-level view, which is repeated many times. There is also a "corridor shot", with a path down the left of the screen, and a sea of lamps and tables on the right. Later in the sequence, Tourneur shows some complex balustrades, covered with grillwork full of geometric forms. These too convey the effect that one is standing in a large "environment" of geometric art. Andrews is framed against these balustrades. Andrews is often associated with complex geometric forms in the picture.

Andrews' suite at the Savoy is full of curved forms. There are curtains, and an arch over the window. There are tables, lamps, chairs and sofas. All of these make up a complex, "geometric environment" for the hero and his friends. Tourneur regularly makes graceful compositions out of these. The heads of his characters are often associated with the curving curtains in the background of the image.

More semi-circles include the repeated arches in the corridors in the Savoy Hotel. And the complex fire screen, against which the parchment tries to fight.

The bridge outside Karswell's house is also associated with Andrews. The bridge goes over a repeating series of semicircular arches. Like the lamps at the British museum, such repeating forms takes us into a "geometric" world. The bridge is itself a highly obtuse triangle, adding to the geometric effect. It recalls the bridge sequences in Stars in My Crown. The flowing water, falling over a series a dams below the bridge, recalls the emptying aquariums in Experiment Perilous. Tourneur shows this bridge as the final stop in a pan through the countryside. Pans are frequent in Night of the Demon. From the bridge, one can see the grounds of the Karswell home in the distance. The countryside and grounds together make up one of Tourneur's most complex micro-locales, an elaborate landscape in which much of the film's action takes place. We see the gates of Karswell's estate; earlier we saw the gates of the British Museum. These recall the gates of the estate in I Walked With a Zombie, and the grilled gates of the French government offices in Berlin Express.

The balustrade in the Karswell home is full of curves. It is shown during the telephone conversation, in which Mrs. Karswell informs the heroine about Hobart's knowledge of how the curse can be lifted. Such a convoluted way of revealing new layers of knowledge is typical of Tourneur's mystery plots, which reveal layer after layer of truth.

Curves here seem to be related to scenes in which the hero has supernatural experiences. And scenes in which the hero learns something about the nature of the curse being invoked.

Another shot with repeating geometric forms, is the first overhead interior view of the Karswell house. There are checkerboard patterns on the floor, of three different sizes; a series of four cylindrical pillars; and a round chandelier, with repeated light fixtures sticking up from it, along its sides. This too seems like a whole environment made up of repeated geometric forms.

Corridor Shots

Several shots in the film are in Tourneur's "corridor" style: long perspective looks down either an indoor corridor, or an outside path. The opening shots of the road at night include some long straight looks down the road, as well as lateral views. These shots are extremely eerie. We also get corridor shots into Harrington's garage.

At the airport, Tourneur repeatedly shoots down the long central passage of the airport. This is a complex piece of architecture, containing the vast terminal. Tourneur varies this shot in several ways. First we see a straightforward look down the passage. Next we see Andrews exit through a door in another room - also somewhat of a corridor shot - followed by a 90 degree pan by Tourneur, which comes to rest down the long corridor again. Later, Tourneur adds a telephone booth into the mix. He shoots both outside the booth down the long terminal; then from inside the booth, through its glass walls. This last shot seems especially eerie. It combines the small space inside the booth with vast vistas. It perhaps suggests that we are surrounded by complex environments and forces at all times. These airport scenes recall the bus terminal in Nightfall.

At the end of the British Museum sequence, Karswell walks down a rectilinear corridor, like a long box. Tourneur has the image waver here, to convey a "supernatural" effect. This is one of several associations of corridor shots and the supernatural in the picture.

At the Savoy Hotel, Tourneur has one of his beloved porticos at the front entrance. He uses this for a corridor shot, in his typical manner. Soon, another corridor shot goes the exact opposite direction through the portico. Immediately following, inside the Savoy, Tourneur shoots down a series of hotel corridors. These are surrounded by a series of rounded arches, which repeat for a perspective effect. The shots are dramatically striking. They convey a sense of being trapped in an infinite, purely geometric world. A sense of supernatural menace is strong here.

The scene in the farmhouse is in Tourneur's "corridor" style. First Tourneur shoots directly down one side of a table, which is aligned with the walls of the farm house. Then Tourneur gradually moves his camera so it is aligned with the other side of the table.

Tourneur frequently shoots through windows. We see a conversation at Scotland Yard through a window, and the windstorm through windows at the Karswell estate. The chemist's inner room is seen through windows. Its symmetrical large glass windows, and shelves filled with technical bric-a-brac, recall the gas station at the start of Out of the Past.

During the brief telephone conversation between Mrs. Karswell and the heroine, both are shown in corridor shots. The first shot of the Karswell home is horizontal; it shows a series of rooms receding into infinity. A similar shot shows a series of rooms in the heroine's home. A second shot of the Karswell home is quite different, but also a corridor shot. This shoots through the arch, and up the staircase behind it. It too is a very deep perspective view. Early in the film, the first shot of Karswell and his mother had also been a deep perspective view through several rooms of the Karswell house.

The shot of the ambulance going down the road, opens with a corridor shot of the street, framed between two rows of trees. Trees are everywhere in this film. As in the opening shots, these involve a moving camera traveling down the corridor. These shots are not supernatural, but they still convey a great sense of danger and alarm, underscored by the ambulance bell. When the body gets to the lecture hall, there is a long perspective shot with Andrews lecturing in the background, and the body in the foreground.

The finale of Night of the Demon concerns trains, recalling Berlin Express. The finale also has many corridor shots: in the train station (recalling the airport at the beginning), along the portico covered platforms, in the corridors of the trains themselves, and finally, along the tracks. This is the most systematic use of corridor shots in the picture. The long corridors here once again convey a strong sense of the supernatural, that one has wandered into a strange, geometric world far removed from everyday reality.

The Fearmakers

The Fearmakers (1958) turns an anti-Nazi World War II era novel into an anti-Communist Cold War era movie. Such a transformation is perhaps unique in book to screen adaptations. Darwin Teilhet's The Fear Makers (1945) was a popular mystery suspense novel, written during the war.

Once the movie gets to the public opinion agency office, it closely follows the events of the book. The whole story of how our hero lost the agency while he was in the service, and its transformation into something new and sinister, is taken directly from the novel. The book shows us more of the employees of the agency, and its work in actual operation. One suspects that the ultra-low-budget nature of this movie prevented this. The film is restricted to a handful of sets. It loses the opportunity to show us the business as a whole, and its numerous employees.

In the novel, the agency was conducting Nazi-inspired hate campaigns among the general public. These were "whispering campaigns" in which large numbers of operatives spread anti-war effort and racist ideology among the American people. All of this seems entirely lost in the movie, aside from one brief scene in which Andrews wanders into a room where operatives are making racial references. Among other things, it makes the title nonsensical. The Nazi agents were actually spreading fear among the public, causing them to hate and fear minority groups. Nothing like this is occurring in the film. The book also had sympathetic minority characters, both black and Jewish, among the least stereotyped of any in 1940's mystery fiction. These too have been deleted in the movie.

By contrast, the film centers on the idea that phony, slanted or biased opinion polls could have a sinister influence on elections, media and business. Such polls can be used to get TV shows canceled and elect crooked politicians to office. This is an interesting idea. Considered purely as a practical scheme that might actually work in real life, it sounds more plausible than the whispering campaigns of the novel.

The film is different from almost all anti-Communist movies in that the Communists are not running the whole show. The agency in the movie will work for anybody. They are hiring themselves out to promote Communist front groups like the "Ban the Bomb" organization in the movie. But they also work for crooked politicians who are not ideological. The agency seems to be a bunch of apolitical crooks who will offer their services to any bidder. They are not themselves Communist, even though they are in the pay of Communists.

The film's treatment of politics is almost as ambiguous as the maybe supernatural, maybe not elements of Tourneur's early horror films. The hero condemns and rejects the "Ban the Bomb" group because of its Communist sympathies. But its organization's leader makes a passionate speech about the evils of military-based science, a speech that is never refuted by anyone in the film. One suspects that Tourneur has much sympathy with the horror expressed over the bomb, even though he has little sympathy for Communism. Hero Dana Andrews also makes an anti-war statement in the film. Similarly, Berlin Express is one of the few films to show the devastation wrought by bombs in World War II. Both films show areas of American power: Berlin Express took place partly at the American headquarters of occupied Germany in Frankfurt, while The Fearmakers occurs in Washington D.C. Both films suggest armed struggles going on, with a chilling speech about a possible Soviet attack on Washington here. Both Berlin Express and The Fearmakers have finales in public locales of great historical resonance: Berlin Express in a plaza near the Brandenburg Gate, The Fearmakers in front of the Lincoln Memorial, with the Washington Monument in the background. These areas are political examples of Tourneur's micro-landscapes. Both locales involve both automotive vehicles, and characters who move on foot. The movements of both vehicles and pedestrians is carefully staged to create geometric patterns. These patterns are both visually interesting, and suggestive of political attitudes and commentary.

Phantom Raiders also took place in an area of American power, being set near the Panama Canal Zone. Both I Walked with a Zombie and Stars in My Crown take place in communities showing the legacy of slavery. History is very much alive and omnipresent in these locales.

Characters

Dana Andrews and Dick Foran are contrasting types. Andrews seems to be the epitome of the well groomed, sophisticated executive. One can imagine him running a large New York City corporation. This is a type Andrews often played in films, and quite convincingly too, for example in his Fritz Lang pictures such as While the City Sleeps (1956). By contrast, Foran seems to embody the glad handing, genial, hail-fellow-well-met approach of 1950's business organizations and civic boosters. Both of these are archetypes of the 1950's business man. But they rarely collide in a single movie, as they do here. There is a bit of a class distinction. Andrews embodies the ideals of the upper middle classes, while Foran exemplifies middle class business practices. Foran looks very prosperous however, and he exudes money and success here - he is definitely not on the poor side. The distinction also applies to their speech mannerisms. Foran is running off at the mouth, expressing a steady stream of sales like patter, while Andrews restricts himself to a few well chosen executive utterances. The feel of class conflict between the two men is silently integrated into their other conflicts in the movie. The contrast between the men recalls the two very different brothers in I Walked with a Zombie, the aristocratic, moody Tom Conway and the middle class acting James Ellison. In both films, the conflict between the two men is a major center of the plot.

In many films, the hero wears the darkest colored suit, making him stand out and look authoritative. Here, however, Andrews wears the lightest colored suit. This also makes him stand out, and look different from everybody else. His clothes have an upper middle class elegance that the other businessmen's suits do not. Andrews regularly wears a white trenchcoat, as well. This looks terrific. It recalls both the white clothes worn in Phantom Raiders, and the hero's darker colored trenchcoat in Out of the Past.

Andrews' character is explicitly homeless here: his frustrated attempts to find a place to stay in the housing-scarce Washington of the era are part of the plot. In this he resembles many other Tourneur detective heroes, who are homeless and baseless, while they take on a villain who has a well defined base of operations. The hero's perennial attacks of weakness also link him to the ill hero of Easy Living.

Corridor Shots

Their are two of Tourneur's corridor shots in the finale. One is a still life that shows no people, merely the ringing phone on the desk. The lower half of the image is a corridor. On the left is a chair, on the right is the desk, seen in full perspective. There is a corridor of space between the desk and the chair. At the back of this corridor are some fireplace implements. The whole upper half of the image is blank, except for the ringing telephone. Tourneur has the phone framed, placing it in front of what seems to be a small frame sitting on the mantle. The phone is nearly in the exact geometric center of the shot. This fact, and the fact it is in solitary splendor in the upper half of the image, calls great attention to it. The whole shot is beautifully composed: the desk, the phone, the chair, the horizontal grid of lines on the back wall, the fireplace tongs, a vertical line on the left of the image, all form a beautiful, harmonious whole. The shot is one of the key images of the movie. Soon we will see the dying man played by Mel Tormé dragging himself along the ground, trying to answer the ringing phone. It is a visually powerful piece of melodrama. Torme's entrance is at the bottom of the frame, an unusual position.

There is also a corridor shot, showing all the characters leaving the office building. The left side of the shot is the front of the building; the right side, a railing. As is often the case in Tourneur corridor shots, we see the ceiling of this outdoor entranceway. The building is charming in a modern, 1950's style; its surface is broken up into several striking geometric regions. The whole effect is of a geometrical abstraction, with trapezoidal and rectangular regions creating a soft image in the tradition of Mondrian and Constructivism, but gentler and more refined in Tourneur's personal visual style. It is interesting to see Tourneur incorporating this sort of modern building into his corridors; many of the shots in previous movies had dealt with older and more traditional architecture.

There are also "wall shots" in The Fearmakers. The scene where Andrews tries to persuade the heroine to give him the key takes place parallel to the back wall of his office. This is mainly taken up by a large bookcase. Once again, we see two characters at full length, against a wall filled with unusual patterns. This scene starts out with Andrews trying to use his executive rank to get the key from the secretary. This does not work; he then pleads with her to help him, as part of the mystery plot. The tone changes from someone giving someone an order, to a relationship among equals. Tourneur changes the staging as the story develops. First Andrews is seated above the heroine, in a giving dictation pose; then when he asks for help they move to an equal level.

Nick Carter, Master Detective

Nick Carter, Master Detective (1939) is the first of three low budget movies MGM made about the veteran sleuth, who appeared in print since 1886. This one, and its sequel Phantom Raiders (1940), were both directed by Tourneur; the final one, Sky Murder (1940), by George B. Seitz. The two Tourneur films are pretty ordinary. But they do offer new perspectives on some of Tourneur's perennial themes.

Nick Carter, Master Detective takes place at an airplane factory. Its high point is some documentary footage, apparently of a real factory, that is incorporated into the film. I do not know whether these shots are by Tourneur, or not. But Tourneur was a prolific director of short documentaries during this period. And a documentary aspect of a fiction film would perhaps occur naturally to him. We see the experimental airplanes being built from their blueprints. Tourneur loves large machines; this film shows how such machines are created.

There is much talk about how the innovative airplanes there could change the balance of power in the world. While such ideas are the standard stock in trade of a million thrillers, they also anticipate Tourneur's interest in stories about the balance and nature of world power, such as Berlin Express and The Fearmakers. Tourneur also made documentary shorts about scientific discoveries that drastically alter the nature of the world, and how people live: radioactivity in Romance of Radium, vitamins in The Magic Alphabet. In all of these films, we are in a drastically unstable world, one that is about to change in new and unforeseen ways. For a director who is famed for a light and delicate touch, he is willing to take on stories of drastic social change not often seen on the screen.

Nick Carter, Master Detective, Berlin Express and The Fearmakers also deal with the sinister military applications of air power. Nick Carter, Master Detective shows the invention of new war planes; Berlin Express depicts the horrific results of aerial bombardment; The Fearmakers discusses the possibility of aerial strikes against cities. These new scientific horrors are never far from Tourneur's depiction of the 20th Century.

Nick Carter, Master Detective opens with an airplane ride. It anticipates Night of the Demon and The Fearmakers, both of which also open with their hero taking a journey by air. In all of these films, the air journey brings the hero into an irrational and sinister world, a world in which he is not wanted by the strange characters who inhabit it. The airplane is signaled to land by bad guys setting off a huge pillar of black smoke, striking against the intense white desert of the scenes. This anticipates the sinister, tall clouds which envelop the demon in Night of the Demon.

The factory is virtually an entire community. It recalls the town in Stars in My Crown. The factory is both like and unlike a conventional modern city, just like the bombed out German cities in Berlin Express. These films take place in worlds somewhat like ours, but also full of the unfamiliar. Places operating by different rules: much of the exposition in both films explicitly sets forth the new rules these communities live by. The island in I Walked With a Zombie also operates by a whole series of rules unfamiliar to us.

In addition to the new, unfamiliar rules, there is also a mystery plot. Strange events are happening at the factory, and no one knows how to interpret them, or explain their cause. A world that is full of difficult to explain events is a Tourneur standard. In other Tourneur films, this is often linked to medical mysteries: The Magic Alphabet, I Walked With a Zombie, Stars in My Crown. Even the term "mystery" is a bit too clear cut for the events in this film. There is a diffuse sense of perplexity here, a sense that events at the factory are sinister and hard to grasp. Even when light finally dawns at the end, a pervasive sense of strangeness persists.

Later, we meet another of Tourneur's doctors. The doctor makes x-rays, which are shown on screen; they recall the early shot of a key made in Romance of Radium (1937). The nurse is also one of several nurse characters in Tourneur.

There is a "corridor shot" in the parking lot scene. Tourneur shoots straight down a corridor between two rows of parked cars. In the background, two more rows of cars are seen on a hill, towards the top of the image. This makes three "corridors" in all, in this shot.

At one point, Carter tracks the bad guys' car by air plane; a big white cross has been painted on the car's top, making it highly visible. If memory serves, a similar gambit appeared in the comic strip Radio Patrol, early the previous year, 1938, in the episode "A Gem of a Frame-Up".

Addison Richards' factory manager here anticipates the businessmen in The Fearmakers. Both he and Nick Carter often seem to be in matching, three piece suits. Both men have fancy business offices, too, like those in the later film.

The conception of "detective" here never builds up any sociological realism. Nick Carter seems to work for some unseen detective agency. The big selling point of the Nick Carter prose stories, the detective's mastery of disguise, is nowhere in evidence in this film. Such a mastery of disguise was reportedly heavily featured in the early French films about Nick Carter, made by the pioneering director Victorin Jasset. These include a series of six short films about Carter, begun in 1908, under the collective title Nick Carter - Le Roi des détectives (Nick Carter - The King of Detectives). Jasset later made a second series about master criminal Zigomar, also brilliant at disguise; in the second, Zigomar contre Nick Carter (1912), he faced off against the sleuth. Please see Roy Armes' book French Cinema (1985) for details. According to Armes, Jasset's films were a strong influence on Louis Feuillade.

Phantom Raiders

Phantom Raiders (1940) is one of the Nick Carter detective series. This film is not a whodunit: we see the villain right away, and know all his schemes. Still, it is hardly a film noir. It is much closer in feel to movie whodunit series like the Falcon or the Saint. Nor should the word Phantom in the title suggest to anyone that this is a supernatural drama. It is a strictly non-supernatural crime story.

The character types here anticipate those of Tourneur's later Out of the Past (1947). The villain in both films is a smooth, charming, well-dressed gangster, appallingly evil, sneaky and insidious. In both films he has his tentacles in a lot of pies. In both, he has managed to corrupt or control a very diverse bunch of characters, giving him many resources and options for his evil schemes. And schemes is the operative word: he always has well organized plans. He also has an elaborate, well furnished headquarters, where he plots his schemes at ease. This looks like a well-run business enterprise.

By contrast, the hero of both films is a private eye, and in both, he is deeply disorganized. He seems to do whatever he pleases at the spur of the moment, and to have no organized plan or agenda. In both films, he is a slave to passion, more interested in chasing after pretty women than doing his job. He is rarely at his regular office, headquarters or home: instead he seems to be winging it, living out of a suitcase.

I confess, I find Tourneur's hero and his chaotic business life deeply annoying. I do not know if this is what Tourneur intended, or whether it is just my own strong preference for careful business planning coming to the fore. In any case, Tourneur shows the villain as being far more effective than the hero at his job. This certainly suggests some sort of attitude on Tourneur's part. The villain often seems just plain smarter than the hero in both films as well. In this comic little detective story, Phantom Raiders, everything comes out OK for the hero. In the more serious Out of the Past, things do not work out so well for the hero. This too is perhaps a commentary from Tourneur.

Both the hero and his assistant seem cast against type. Walter Pigeon usually played gentlemanly, intelligent, monogamous romantic heroes. His private eye is written to be the sort of constant skirt chaser played by George Sanders in the Falcon films. I confess I enjoy Walter Pigeon more in his regular roles, and found his character's womanizing and chaotic stupidity here unappealing.

The best characterization in the film is that of Nick Carter's assistant, played by Donald Meek. He too is cast against type. Meek's roles were usually as meek as his name. He is still very mild mannered here, but he is surprisingly effective as a detective, often rescuing Nick Carter from his bungling. Meek raises bees, giving his character an eccentric twist. He is introduced on the front lawn of his home, which contains bees. Tourneur often preferred to introduce characters outdoors, in a landscape environment revealing their personality. This is different from other directors, who often associate a character with a room. The front yard is one of Tourneur's micro-landscapes, small, intricately arranged areas full of color and personality.

Sinister Actions

The villain's main sinister machine here is a radio set in his ornate office that can send signals to blow up ships at sea. This is oddly similar to an episode in Louis Feuillade's Les Vampires (1915 - 1916). Feuillade's machine is a canon, hidden in a fancy hotel room, that is brought out to blow up ships in the harbor. In both cases, there is a surrealistic incongruity between the socially proper office or room, redolent of bourgeois self-satisfaction, and its hidden engine of destruction. It is perhaps saying something indirectly about the secret sources of much wealth, built on a concealed foundation of crime. It also has the nightmarish incongruity of a dream.

The film's plot falls into Tourneur traditions. In several Tourneur films, Something Bad is going on. The audience knows this, but the good characters are either in ignorance or denial. The Bad activity is often quite destructive. Eventually the Bad activity can locate itself near water: the sea ships here, the swimming pool in Cat People, the aquariums in Experiment Perilous.

Visual Style

The finale shows some of Tourneur's visual style. One scene shows both Nick Carter and the ship's young captain in the hold, looking through bags of cargo. Both men are clad in white, as are nearly all of the characters in the film: the Panama setting is conveyed by the all white tropical clothes. Nick is in a white suit, the Captain in a white naval uniform. The bags are white as well as the walls of the ship hold. The two good guys are in an all white world, remote from daily life. They are on the left side of the screen, outlined against a white rectangle on the left side of the ship's set. On the right, is a doorway with a light over it. The light is geometrically shaped. The two sections of the screen are in perfect balance.

Later, Tourneur moves his camera 90 degrees, and further down the hold. Now we are in one of Tourneur's "perspective down a corridor" shots. Here the corridor is made by a path through the bags; it leads to a doorway at the far end.

The white tropical costumes have other strange effects on the characters. Walter Pigeon looks less suave and socially proper than he usually does, further changing him from his typical persona. Also different looking: perennial tough guy Nat Pendelton also is in white tropical clothes throughout the film. I'm used to seeing Pendelton in 1930's movies, where he played good natured roughnecks from Brooklyn and the lower East side. He seems so typically urban American, that it is startling to see him dressed in white tropical clothes for this sort of exotic adventure movie. He is still playing his traditional American roughneck here, however. Best effect of all: Donald Meek is in black clothes throughout the movie, the only person on screen not in head to toe white. This makes his character spectacularly eccentric looking, and makes him stand out in every scene.

Later scenes on the ship show large machinery. This is typical of Tourneur's fondness for huge machines. As usual, these shots have a pleasant, cheery quality. They come at a moment of good will in the film.

Harnessed Rhythm

Harnessed Rhythm (1936) is a short film about harness racing in Kentucky. It is the most educational film I have ever seen about horses, and how they run. It explains the different gaits of horses. It shows through regular, slow motion and stop motion photography, exactly how horses run. Each gait involves a different set of positions of the horse's legs. It also shows how horses are trained to do such things. Many of Tourneur's short films are educational. This one is the most visually direct in its educational technique: it shows in detail something it wants the viewer to understand.

The horses here resemble a bit the "large machines" that run through Tourneur's work. Just as those machines often resemble large pet animals, so are the horses here the pets of the heroine. The harness cart attached to the horse is an actual machine. Most importantly, the steady running of the horse sets up a rhythm, that is similar to the rhythmic repeated motions of some of Tourneur's machines, such as the fan in Stars in My Crown and the snow plow at the end of Nightfall.

At the end, the horse loses its cart and driver, and runs on the track alone. This is a bit like other Tourneur films in which animals escape from human control: the dog who goes off on mysterious nocturnal adventures in Killer-Dog, the leopard that escapes in The Leopard Man.

The Grand Bounce

The Grand Bounce (1937) is an enjoyable little short film, about a $1,000 check that is no good. It is a fiction film, but with no dialogue: its silent film footage is narrated by comic Pete Smith, in the manner of his other "Pete Smith Specialties". The film mixes comedy - a somewhat atypical genre for Tourneur - with some eerie atmosphere.

The check's progress from person to person anticipates the sinister parchment in Night of the Demon. Both also wind up with a similar fate. It also recalls somewhat the message on the pigeon at the beginning of Berlin Express, another piece of paper that makes a circuit of different people. That Berlin Express segment is also a silent film with narrator.

The film's ultra-complicated plot reminds one of the complexities of Tourneur's feature film plots. And character types who appear in them also show up here: gangsters, enforcers (Out of the Past), doctors, a pro athlete and his girlfriends (Easy Living). Most of the characters in this film are sure the check is good, and base their actions on this premise the viewers know is false: this is another example of Tourneur's deluded characters. The characters here are of many different social classes, all mixed together: another Tourneur tradition.

The Magic Alphabet

The Magic Alphabet (1942) is a short film directed by Tourneur, which dramatizes the real life story of the discovery of vitamins. It is part of the documentary series The Passing Parade.

The Magic Alphabet shares subject matter with later Tourneur films. First, the film deals with doctors battling mysterious illnesses which they barely understand or control. A major part of the film shows the original discovery of vitamins. Here, Dr. Christiaan Eijkman (1858-1930) is trying to understand the causes of beriberi, a disease which is causing numerous people in Java to sicken and die. These sections strongly anticipate the Tourneur films I Walked with a Zombie and Stars in My Crown. In all of these films, the illnesses which grip patients are horrible, and their causes are not understood. Not only do doctors have to treat patients with these illnesses, but they also are carrying on research to try to understand their causes. They desperately pit their intellects and their training against dimly understood medical disasters. In all the films, the doctor and other heroes operate in a shadowy world, in which they face a lone battle against overwhelming odds.

This point of view is underscored by the frame sequence of The Magic Alphabet. The film opens with three different stories, showing modern day Americans coming down with mysterious diseases. As in later Tourneur films, these diseases lead to a sort of living death for the patients. At the film's end, we revisit these three highly dramatic stories, and learn how a lack of vitamins is the cause. Tourneur leaves these three subplots hanging through the entire film, increasing the sense of a mysterious medical calamity overwhelming his characters. The secretary who gets sick here loses her job, just as Victor Mature will in Easy Living.

The imagery in The Magic Bullet is close to I Walked with a Zombie of the following year. There are people in sick rooms, hushed and tropical, and bodies being carried on litters. Even the prominence given to chickens here anticipates the later film. Chickens are a historically accurate part of the real Eijkman's research. Family groups sitting around tables having meals are also a key image in both pictures; they show up again in Stars in My Crown. Dr. Eijkman was played by the young Stephen McNally, who made several short films during this period.

Other Tourneur films have similar subjects. In Easy Living, apparently healthy football player Victor Mature is stricken with a major illness. It changes his entire life, and the course of the film. Hollywood movies rarely showed men who were so afflicted. The hero of Appointment in Honduras collapses due to malaria. The hero of The Fearmakers also has attacks of weakness. In Experiment Perilous, doctor George Brent has to come to the aid of patient Hedy Lamarr, and her mysterious problems. And Night of the Demon can be interpreted as a scientist battling a mysterious calamity that he does not understand, although here the calamity is supernatural, not medical. There is also a doctor character in Nightfall, who comes to a terrible end. The hero of Nightfall is also severely beaten, and needs medical attention, provided by the heroine. A medical crisis is at the center of such shorts as The Grand Bounce and Romance of Radium.

In most of the films, the medical researchers show arrogance and hubris. The problems facing their patients are deeper than their conceptions of them. In The Magic Alphabet, the doctor is sure beriberi is caused by a microbe, the main model in medical science of the day for the cause of diseases. This is not true. He keeps on futilely researching this while people are dying all around him. Only a chance intervention by outsiders shows him the error of this idea. Medical researchers in I Walked with a Zombie and Stars in My Crown will show similar false ideas and false confidence. So will psychologist Dana Andrews in Night of the Demon.

Both Sternberg and Ford, directors who influenced Tourneur, depicted illness in their films. The troubles in Josef von Sternberg's Blonde Venus (1932) begin with the husband's life threatening illness. However, he is mainly sick off screen, and this film does not especially resemble Tourneur's. However, John Ford's approach is close to Tourneur. Ford's Arrowsmith (1931) is a whole film about medical researchers, including an epidemic, and The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936) has similar scenes in its climax. The prisoners in Ford's movie anticipate those involved with the medical research in The Magic Bullet. Another epidemic occurs in Ford's Doctor Bull (1933). The young boy who has trouble walking in Ford's How Green Was My Valley (1941) resembles the one in The Magic Bullet. There is also the alcoholic doctor in Stagecoach (1939), the equally troubled Doc Halliday in Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946), and Anne Bancroft's gutsy doctor in Seven Women (1966). Like Tourneur, Ford sets his physicians in remote and often tropical areas. Many of Ford's doctors are as fallible as Tourneur's. However, Ford's doctors do not seem beset by the almost metaphysical doubts of Tourneur's. It is the ignorance and helplessness of Tourneur's heroes in the face of the unknown that troubles them.

The Magic Alphabet also shares a tropical setting with other Tourneur films. All of these works show people from Northern countries living in tropical areas: Panama in Phantom Raiders, a Caribbean island in I Walked with a Zombie, Mexico in Out of the Past. Tourneur has rich atmosphere, depicting life in all of these countries.

The emphasis on scientists trying to provide proper food and nutrition for the public returns in Berlin Express, whose hero Robert Ryan is an agriculturist trying to feed the starving Germans after World War II.

Cat People

I have never liked Cat People (1942). The film is an attack on people who are "different". The film treats anyone who is different as psychologically disturbed, vicious, and a threat to others. It states that people who are different need psychological treatment by psychiatrists. Only people who are utterly normal or conventional have value, and anything to contribute to society, according to this movie. The film was made in the 1940's, the era in which Freudian psychology reached its peak of prestige in the United Sates, and it expresses the hate mongering of its day against those who are different from others. Watching it is an unpleasant experience.

The film evokes other prejudices as well, in its attempt to make the audience fear the protagonist. The emphasis on her femininity tries to exploit misogynous fears of women. And making the heroine-villainess a Serbian immigrant appeals to xenophobes who hate immigrants.

I confess that I am not part of the Val Lewton cult. Many studies of Tourneur treat his films for Lewton as the high point of his career, and everything else as some sort of anti-climax. I Walked With a Zombie is an impressive achievement, but most of the Lewton films I have seen, whether directed by Tourneur or others, have just not pleased me. They tend to be cruel, and full of unpleasant material.

The sequence in which the rival (Jane Randolph) is stalked by the cat at night through city streets is famous. The streets are bounded by strange stone walls, and seem to have stone bridges over the streets. One suspects that these streets are passing through the city zoo featured in other parts of the film, but this is not explicitly made clear in the movie. They are certainly an unusual piece of architecture, one that is eerie looking. The sequence reminds one of the opening of Nightfall, in which the characters move along an urban sidewalk at twilight, just as the rival here moves down a sidewalk lit by pools of light from street lights. Both films eventually include a suddenly arriving city bus. In both films, the bus is photographed parallel to the plane of the camera. In both, it moves from right to left through the screen. In both, the camera is outside the bus, and photographs all the way through the windows on both sides of the bus, to show us the sidewalk beyond.

The swimming pool sequence is outstanding. It benefits greatly from Musuraca's photography, showing shimmering shadows reflecting from the water on the walls. This is a scene virtually constructed out of light.