Touches You

Memorable, crazy movie

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Directed by Edward Dmytryk, this film is a mess. First, it stars Dick Powell (!) as a blustering ex-P.O.W. Canadian pilot (!). After the war, he's bent on trying to find the man who killed his wife of only 20 days (must have been some woman!). The plot is unbelievable and so confusing, with so many twists and turns, you'll get whiplash trying to keep up, if you're even interested enough to try. Plus, if you've ever read a Robert Ludlum novel (particularly The Rhinemann Exchange), you'll be sorely disappointed in the intelligence (or lack thereof) and one dimensional nature of Powell's character, and the route he takes to enact his revenge. John Wexley's story and adaptation were scripted by John Paxton.World War II is over and Powell has just returned from his stint as a P.O.W., receiving his year's back pay. He's going to need it too because he'll be canvassing the globe trying to find out who killed his wife, and then tracking him down. When he can't get a VISA to travel into France, he rows (from England across the channel?) there. Of course, he still has his gun (a German Luger!), which he wraps in cellophane (!) so it won't get wet when he sinks the boat and swims to shore. He finds his way to the Prefect's office, which is conveniently run by someone (his Father-in-Law?) who knew his wife. Like nearly everyone he encounters from here on out, the Prefect urges him to forget it and discourages him from his vendetta, which he naturally ignores each time. He then takes Powell to his wife's grave, a site hidden in a cave of French allied persons who were killed by Vichy, French enemies (those that collaborated with the Nazi's). This gives Powell an opportunity to exhibit his acting skills (?), covering his forehead and eyes with his hand as he grimaces ... emotion provided by the film's score./p>Powell learns that Marcel Jarnac, the Vichy trigger-man, is thought dead, but that his boss is believed to be in Paris. He gets to Paris just in time to find that the police have cornered this man. However, by the time he gets there, the man has been killed in a fire. So, he searches through the rumble and (low and behold!) finds the front page of a dossier about Marcel Jarnac. And, because of the date handwritten on it, he's convinced that Jarnac is still alive. He also finds some burnt stationary of a Swiss insurance company with Mrs. Jarnac's name on it. So, he goes to Switzerland and bribes an official at the agency to obtain her last known address. He picks up some of their stationary (!) and writes a letter to her at the address, then stakes it out. Ellen Corby (I Remember Mama (1948)) appears uncredited as the maid at the residence who addresses the envelope with a Buenos Aires forwarding address and puts it on the mailbox for the postal worker. Of course, Powell intercepts it right after she puts it there, and just before the mailman arrives.Powell now travels from Switzerland to Buenos Aires where Walter Slezak, obviously trying to channel Sydney Greenstreet (The Maltese Falcon (1941)), is waiting for him. After brushing him off, Powell goes straight to a hotel where, after checking, he grabs a phonebook and finds a listing for Mademoiselle Jarnac. However, when he dials the number, she won't take his call. Then, with Slezak's "help", Powell meets a string of characters, one after the other (virtually everyone in the credited cast), which are seemingly all "bad" guys because they too try to dissuade him from his mission. Several of them are German (ex-Nazis?). Initially, Powell's character trusts no one, so he listens to no one. However, then (suddenly) he trusts and listens to anyone who has information regarding Jarnac or his "wife". He follows these "hot" leads blindly and recklessly to the film's conclusion. The only bright spot left in this one is the appearance of Byron Foulger, who appears uncredited (& typecast?) as the hotel's night clerk.

I really enjoyed this war-set film noir with avenging angel Dick Powell continent-hopping to track down the shadowy Nazi commander who ordered the killing of his young wife.The plot is a bit labyrinthine and probably peopled with too many characters but director Dymytrk keeps up the tension throughout and genuflects regularly in the direction of film noir with shadowy shots a-plenty, a mysterious woman who may or not be on Powell's side as well as Powell's turn himself as a sort of amateur private eye, getting deeper and deeper out of his depth as he closes in, he thinks, on his prey.Powell doesn't do hangdog like Bogart or style like Grant, but he's deadpan and feisty by turns and does a reasonable job carrying the film from chapter to chapter. I also liked Walter Slezak as a sort of younger version of Sydney Greenstreet, trying to play both ends against each other but coming a cropper by the end as two quite grisly murders are enacted for us.I liked the early location shots in war torn Europe and was otherwise satisfied too, with director Dymytrk doing a good job keeping the plates all spinning and who intelligently treats this terse thriller with a bit more attention to detail than other more slapdash filmmakers.I'll watch almost every noir film I can as it's probably my favourite movie type and consider this effort, if occasionally a touch on the dry side, nevertheless a fine example of this particular genre.

Cornered is directed by Edward Dmytryk and adapted to screenplay by John Paxton from a story by John Wexley. It stars Dick Powell, Walter Slezak and Micheline Cheirel. Music is by Roy Webb and cinematography by Harry J. Wild.Story is set at the end of World War II and finds Powell as demobbed Canadian flier Laurence Gerard who returns to France to discover who ordered the killing of a group of French Resistance fighters, one of which was his new bride. Learning from his father-in-law that it was a Vichy collaborator named Marcel Jarnac, Gerard refuses to believe the rumour that Jarnac is dead and sets off on a trail that will lead him to Argentina where it soon becomes evident that Fascism is alive and well.From the off Powell's intense miserablist Laurence Gerard sets the tone for Dmytryk's no-nonsense picture. Mood is set at revenge bleak and spills over into a humourless detective picture with huge anti-fascist leanings. As Gerard snakes his way from France to Argentina, via Switzerland, and heavy with a black heart, he encounters a myriad of shifty characters and traverses what would become a roll call of film noir locations such as dark streets, alleys and low lighted rooms. Wedge in some murder and grim violence and Cornered clearly isn't a film for those in need of a pick me up! It's also a twisty narrative, a plot that demands the utmost attention to follow what is going on. But that attention is rewarded with a spiky script that lets the number of characters really come to life, especially Gerard, who reels off a number of cutting remarks befitting his gait. Dmytryk (Farewell My Lovely/Crossfire) and Wild (Pitfall/The Big Steal) shoot it mostly as night time set-ups, thus enforcing the murky atmosphere, and Webb's musical accompaniment carries with it a ticking time bomb effect.Powell (also Farewell My Lovely/Pitfall) and Slezak (Lifeboat/Born To Kill) shine in a cast list of mostly unknowns or stock character actors. The former broods convincingly, the latter is the epitome of sweaty untrust. But there are some fine performances in the support slots, notably from Nina Vale as slinky femme fatale in waiting, Señora Camargo, of whom little is known since her film career numbers only three. While Luther Adler (D.O.A./Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye), in the early throes of his career, menacingly strolls into the picture for the last quarter. Good stuff and recommended with confidence to film fans who enjoy some grit and blackness in their viewing diets. 8/10

This film was released within months of the end of World War II, and one suspects that it just showed a world that couldn't quite live without the paranoia it had lived on for a half a decade.The plot is that a Canadian pilot is looking for the Vichy collaborator who ordered the death of his French wife ("A bit too skinny, having been squeezed in between two wars" he describes her.) He is caught up in a web of collaborators and self-serving people trying to wiggle their way past world war II and into the Cold War, I guess.Powell is pretty good in this, showing the effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome before we gave it a fancy name. The notion that Fascism and Nazism had gone to ground was a bit silly. Anyone who got there was just trying to escape a bad decision, not try again.Still, a fun movie to watch, it keeps your interest.