Truly Dreadful Film

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

This noir whodunnit is manned by Burgess Meredith, who gives a textured performance, and an early career appearance of Claire Trevor, who would go to greater things. Even Sheldon Leonard, as a deadpan cop, is mildly amusing. The amnesia plot, however, wears a bit thin on the nerves, as it so cliched. and was done too often in noir.For a B film, this is not too bad. It keeps your interest for over an hour and is decently paced by the director, Jack Hively. Initially, one thinks the protagonist is the target of gangsters, but we find out quickly it is just trigger-happy cops. There is no explanation, however, as to why Jack transforms into Naehring for a year, and dumps his loving wife for that same year. Despite that hole in the plot, the film is entertaining.

This movie hits all the buttons for Film Noir, and I'm willing to call it so. there are lots of earlier movies with elements that finally fused together to make Film Noir, and many movies that almost hit it around this time (like THE MALTESE FALCON), but Noir was a movement, and it's not leaders that make movements, it's followers, like Jack Hively, the B director of this one.Burgess Meredith is walking down the street when he is knocked down by some rubble from a demolition job. When he gets up, he finds a cigarette case and hat with the wrong initials, and when he goes home, wife Louise Platt tells him he has been missing for more than a year. He goes to the office to get his job back, only to find Sheldon Leonard in hot pursuit. When he goes back to the part of town where he regained his memory, there Claire Trevor is, telling him to get off the street. He's her man and he's wanted for murder.It's based on one of Cornell Woolrich's overwrought crime novels and, as usual, Burgess Meredith plays a nice, amiable fellow, rather wasted. Claire Trevor has all the good lines, and Sheldon Leonard is fine in a straight role. Despite that voice, meant for Runyonesque hoods, he was a good actor.If the answer to the mystery is milked a bit to make the movie last a few minutes longer, the answer still came as a surprise to me. I expect you'll enjoy it, not only for its early, pure Noir, but for a fairly played, if mildly hysterical, mystery.

This early film noir starts off intriguing, bogs down into the slow processing of information, and turns the tables in a surprising way. Back when he was a leading man and not a grumpy old one, Burgess Meredith was quite unique. Here, he is both a quiet accountant and a mystery man being sought for murder. It appears that he had amnesia once before, snapping into his alleged real identity when a construction site briefly knocks him unconscious. A forgotten wife and career interrupts his determination to find out if he's guilty of this murder or not. The sudden return to his old neighborhood reunites him with old girlfriend Claire Trevor and brings him to the scene of the murder where the only one willing to help is a bedridden mute old woman (Adeline De Witt Reynolds) who blinks in certain ways to answer his questions.Intriguing but perplexing, this is unrelated to the 1930 Paramount drama with William Powell and Kay Francis. Meredith is of course excellent, and Trevor also very good, playing several sides to her mysterious femme fatale. Sheldon Leonard is the obsessive detective on Meredith's case, with Jerome Cowan and Frieda Inescort as De Witt's greedy son and daughter-in- law. This is the type of film to try to remain patient with because the denouncement is pretty surprising. While Manhattan seems to be the setting, obviously fictional cross streets off of the main drag adds to the conclusion. Technically superior as well, this starts off high, sags briefly, but concludes way up in outer space with twists that add a true wallop and leave you with a sense of pity for the guilty party.

Street of Chance is directed by Jack Hively and adapted to screenplay by Garrett Fort from the novel "The Black Curtain" written by Cornell Woolrich. It stars Burgess Meredith, Claire Trevor, Louise Platt, Sheldon Leonard, Frieda Inescort and Jerome Cowan. Music is by David Buttolph and cinematography by Theodor Sparkuhl.After being felled by falling wreckage from a New York building, Frank Thompson awakes in the street to find he has some sort of amnesia and his life may not be as he thought. As he starts to piece together his life he comes to realise he may have committed a murder and is actually on the run!An early entry in the original film noir cycle, Street of Chance takes what would become a familiar film noir theme, amnesia, and seasons it with betrayal and the vagaries of fate. It's also a point of interest to note that it's the first filmic adaptation of one of noir hero Woolrich's literary works, while the visual marker set here by Sparkuhl (Among the Living) signposts the influence of German Expressionism on the noir film making style. The visuals range from low lighted cramped rooms to the various diagonal and vertical shadows that psychologically patternize the spaces inhabited by the lead characters.The story itself is not so hot, once the narrative settles into a steady and unspectacular rhythm, as the key ladies in Frank Thompson's life come into play, there's a distinct lack of mystery or suspense. Which is a shame as the acting is of good quality even if the principals aren't asked to stretch their respective thespian skills. Still, with the visuals so strong and the satisfying Woolrich feel to proceedings (though the finale is changed here from that of the novel), it's worth seeking out by noiristas. 6.5/10