Touches You

Lack of good storyline.

Boring

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

The title is a misnomer. Edward Anholt's ingenious plot has nothing to do with a diary, but it's an excellent screenplay anyway with a very fast-moving and difficult to spot the murderer plot. Terse dialogue and some very interesting characters provide plenty of great moments for a fine array of players. Whit Bissel has a particularly meaty role – and he takes full advantage of all his opportunities. There's also am amusing little cameo by Sid Tomack as an unregenerate pickpocket. My old favorite, Fred F. Sears (who later became a director), can be fleetingly glimpsed as a detective. Adele Jergens plays the femme fatale with all her usual dash. Lois Maxwell too does well as the drab heroine. Baxter fills out the title role with more ease here than he displayed in many of his "A" pictures. Director Seymour Friedman keeps the movie moving at a fast clip. There are also some appealing lighting effects by photography Vincent Farrar. There is no sign of stinting on the art director's part either. The sets look convincingly real and there are plenty of scene changes. Film editing is nice and smooth. Music score is attractive. Altogether a first-class "B" entry, And yes, the writer is none other than Academy Award winner (for Panic in the Streets) Edward Anhalt.

A good whodunit should have a bit of originality in the plot, and the solution should not be too easy to guess. And it shouldn't be too long. Under those criteria, this last episode in the "Crime Doctor" series holds up very well.The plot is about a convicted arsonist who gets an early release from prison. The agent of his good fortune is the Crime Doctor himself, who believes the man is guilty but considers him redeemable. Ignoring the advice of the doctor and others, the man rashly sets out to prove his innocence. Soon he's in bigger trouble than ever, and it all looks just a bit too convenient.Warner Baxter, whose career was drawing toward an end, is considerably grayer than in his previous "Crime Doctor" films, and he doesn't get involved in much action. But he doesn't seem frail. He has a stylish presence that compensates for the movie's fairly spartan production values.The two women in the ex-con's life, who turn out to be important to the mystery, are played by Lois Maxwell and Adele Jergens. Maxwell is better remembered today, because of her later role as "Moneypenny" in the James Bond films. But in 1949, Jergens, a former burlesque queen, was a much bigger name in movies. She certainly gets the more glamorous treatment here.

As has earlier been commented, Whit Bissell's performance here as an aspiring and mentally challenged composer is a scene-stealer. He intuitively takes the film to another plane with a blissful unawareness that is inadvertent and yet elevating. Along with the tragic end of his character Tom Lister in "Brute Force" this is one of his most affecting performances of the forties. Probably the second most affecting. He seems to inhabit this role as opposed to the other actors in the film who seem to just be going through their paces robotically and quite superficially with little or no special touch of humanity other than to move the story along so they can pick up their check. The film stops when he comes on the screen and you do a double take because you sense this performance is a silk purse in a sow's ear of a film. His character Pete Bellem, touching, halting and muddling along, stays with you when everyone else in the film just fades away into cardboard kitsch heaven. And that song of his so conscientiously crumbles upon itself that it takes on a profound, sad and yet sweet resonance which belies its silliness. Whit was a talented pianist, by the way. He puts that to use here (and in some other roles through the years). He was also a fencing enthusiast in real life. His character Pete Bellem, harmless and hampered and even harassed here by those who have no time of day for him and, in their self-anointed intellectual superiority, belittle what they feel are his mental limits, may be in a world of his own but in this world of charlatans and floozies and hucksters, his seems a better, kinder world. His fingers are his intellect. He loves his ditty no end and to the exclusion of all critique. He is a man-child in this not so promised land and (toot-toot) one you root for. He is the heart and very much the only soul of this film and definitely the only one who stays with you as the credits roll. Great job. Rest in peace, Whit.

One thing that makes this final entry in the Crime Doctor series better than average, aside from the interesting collection of players, is the writing, a mixture of 1940s crime dramas with a few throwbacks to 1930s comedies.On one hand we have a spattering of old-timey cops-and-robbers lingo, with terms like "moll," "dip," "binnie", "pigeon," and "prowl car". Plus, there's the gratuitous use of firepower to pursue an obviously unarmed suspect which wouldn't be tolerated in today's televised police procedure.On the other hand there are several laugh-out-loud zingers and one-liners that are clever in context but would make no sense if repeated here.With a less convoluted plot than previous entries in the series, there is still a sufficient number of suspects to keep one guessing as to the perpetrator; but this tale depends less on our good doctor's crime-solving abilities than on a device introduced midway through the action at which one's immediate reaction is "evidence".