Wow! Such a good movie.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Atmospheric both in Visual Style and Dialog this Film-Noir is One that was Made just at the End of WWII and there are many Lines that Cynically Reference the Conflict with a Snap-Patter that is a Noir Trademark. There are Many Noir Flourishes to Enjoy in this Murky Plot. Amnesia, Drug Induced Mind Control, Low-Brow Settings like a Penny Arcade in Mix with High-Brow Museum Art.Pat O'Brien does His best as a Slightly Miscast and Overaged Lover that Requires some Physical and Emotional Stretches. But when He is not Romanticizing or Climbing Walls, it Works.The Highlights of the Film are Noir. The Surreal Train Sequences, the Creepy Docks, and the Night Time Exteriors are Layered in Shadows and Render Foreboding Scenes. A Strong Cast and a Visually Arresting Movie with some Great Quotable Noir Dialog Elevate this Above a Muddled Plot. It is a Crackerjack Film-Noir and One that has been Mostly Ignored and Given Only Cursory Consideration.Note...Film-Noir was an Organic Style that was Subconsciously Spawned Unknowingly by its Creators in a Collective Conceit Formed Unintentionally by the Artists who Drew from the Ether and Manifested a Sub-Genre of Movie-Making that has Endured. It is was not Pre-Fabricated and that Honesty is Forever On Display in a Genre, that was only Realised After the Fact, and it took French Film Critics to Piece it Together and Fans have been Thankful Ever Since.

Pat O'Brien is typically known for playing priests, the level-headed foil for James Cagney's explosive gangster. In other words, he's usually the least-interesting character in the film. 'Crack-Up (1946)' marks a welcome change-of-pace for the actor. No longer is O'Brien the calm, collected cleric, but a confused art critic at the end of his rope, doubting his own sanity as he battles murder and conspiracy. He perhaps isn't perfect for the role – the film's lurid moments would have been even more lurid had the lead actor been able to act more deranged – but O'Brien receives good supporting back-up from Claire Trevor, Herbert Marshall and Ray Collins. Director Irving Reis (best known for his "Falcon" series, though he also co-directed the annoyingly manipulative 'Hitler's Children (1943)' with Edward Dmytryk) does well to develop the film's mood, not afraid to dabble in a bit of surrealism to help translate the mental confusion and degradation of his main protagonist. There's also a little Freudian psychoanalysis in there, as was popular at the time, but the distraction it causes to the story is only an afterthought.The role of WWII in shaping the film noir style should not be underestimated. In 'Crack-Up,' combat veteran George Steele (O'Brien) remarks that his greater fear in the trenches was that his mind might unexpectedly snap "like a tight violin string." These combat-related fears are here transcribed into a society ostensibly recovering from the war, suggesting that the shadow of the twentieth century's most costly campaign was still bearing over America, a sinister spectre of uncertainty and disarray. The film's undisputed centrepiece, though it is never adequately explained, is Steele's recollection of a train crash, a sequence that almost suggests an episode of "The Twilight Zone." As Steele watches the blazing beams of an oncoming train, time appears to stand still. He sits transfixed, calm and emotionless, a deer in the headlights. In classic film noir fashion, both he and the audience know what is about to happen, but all are powerless to stop it. The train barrels towards its predestined fate, a blistering collision of light and flames. Or does it?Perhaps drawing some inspiration from Lang's 'Scarlet Street (1945),' this film noir concerns itself with the art of art fraud and forgery. The filmmakers' approach to the topic is strictly populist. At the beginning of the film, art critic Steele gives a lecture that openly denigrates the booming popularity of surrealism and "modern art," dismissing the style as being of use only to snobbish social-climbers {an unfair view, since Hitchcock had employed the services of Salvador Dali just one year earlier for 'Spellbound (1945)'}. It is these very same snobs who have planned an elaborate scheme to replace masterpiece canvasses (titled "Gainsborough" and "The Adoration of the Kings," respectively) with worthless replicas, before destroying the copies – not for monetary gain, but because they're snobs, and would like to have the classic works of art all to themselves. If all of 'Crack-Up' was as lurid as the opening sequence and train-wreck flashback, then Irving Reis would have had a masterpiece on his hands. As it is, we are left with an entertaining if occasionally stodgy thriller.

Pat O'Brien is a war veteran and art expert who may just be on the verge of going nuts in "Crack-Up," also starring Claire Trevor, Herbert Marshall, Ray Collins and Wallace Ford. After breaking down the door at the museum where he works and smashing a statue, George Steele (O'Brien) is knocked out. When he comes to, he believes he was in a train wreck. A man on mysterious business at the museum (Marshall) convinces the police (Ford) to release Steele and watch him. Steele investigates matters and begins to undercover some dirty work at the museum.This is an okay noir that has good performances, atmosphere, and a decent plot. O'Brien is a character man who is not usually the lead in a film; it's possible that "Crack-Up" would have been stronger with a true leading man, perhaps Van Heflin, who certainly would have been believable as an art expert and had some panache as well. O'Brien, a solid actor, nevertheless pulls off the role and gets strong support from Marshall and Claire Trevor as his girlfriend, who add the sophistication that befits the high-brow museum plot."Crack-Up" could have used a little more spark, but it's entertaining.

**SPOILERS** Having helped expose a number of forgeries by the Nazis during WWII former US Army Captain George Steel, Pat O'Brian, got involved in the museum that he was working as a lecturer in the finer points of art. Even though the head curator Mr. Barton, Erskine Sanfod,was a bit taken back by his unsophisticated and earthy manner of how he lectured his audience. Where at time it almost lead to fists flying in his direction.It's when Steel cracked up and made a spectacle of himself one night breaking into the museum belting a policemen and almost getting crushed by a falling statue that things started really getting weird. With the opinion by Dr. Lowell, a member of the museum staff, that Steel lost his mind and needs to be institutionalized he's told to take a long vacation. With Steel calming to have survived a train wreck the night of his crack-up it becomes rather obvious, to both the police and Dr. Lowell, that the poor and confused man is either hallucinating of suffering workers burn-out. Steel doesn't take all this lying down by again going through the same motions that he did the night before. Getting on the same train and taking the same ride, to a town called Marlin. Then finding out that he indeed was not making up the story about his mental crack-up. Only that the train wreck, which he found out didn't happen, was somehow for some reason implanted into his brain! but why and by who?We later learn from a secretly on loan to the museum lawman named Traybin (Herbert Marshall), a Scotland Yard inspector of art forgeries, that things aren't exactly kosher with the art exhibits. Later Steel himself gets this cryptic phone call from his friend the museum's co-curator Stevenson, Damian O'Flynn, about a number of switch's of original masterpieces being copied and then purposely destroyed in suspicious fires. One of them is a painting titled Gainsborough, the originals ended up in the private collection of the person responsible for the destroyed copy.Going to see Stevenson at the museum Steel finds him murdered as he's spotted at the scene of the crime, by Mr. Barton, and becomes the chief suspect in Stevenson's murder. Realizing that this scheme of copying original works. At the same time having the copies destroyed in order, for whoever does it, to steal the original without anyone knowing about it. This has Steel going down to the docks where the painting that was the big hit at the museum "The Adoration of the Kings" is being shipped back to England. With Steel feeling that it's going to suffer the same fate that "Gainsborough" did some time before. With a fire suspiciously set in the storehouse, like Steel suspected, on the ship Steel saves the painting and takes it back to the museum. With the help of his friend reporter Terry Cordell, Claire Trevor, and museum technician Mary Ware, playing herself, Steel finds out through X-rays that the painting is indeed a forgery. Leading to the person responsible, an off-the-wall psycho art lover, of having Steel knocked out and then ,along with Terry, kidnapped. The kidnapper has Steel shot up with truth serum to make him talk talk about who else knows about his, the creepy and murderous lover of arts, diabolical plan. So he can have them done in like he's planing to do in both Steel & Terry.This has to be the only movie where the hero sleeps through the big slam bang final with Steel completely out of it, on the truth serum that put him on snooze control. The police and inspector Traybin come to Steel's and Terry's rescue with Steel later waking up, when all the fighting and shooting is over, and wildly throwing punches at the very people who saved his life, Inspector Traybin and police Capt. Cochrean, Wallace Ford. Yet being so drugged out of is head that he almost ends up falling on his head and breaking it.