Mar 211952
 
four reels

Jed Towers (Richard Widmark) is an angry, crude man, dumped by Lynn, his hotel singer girlfriend (Anne Bancroft). Nell Forbes (Marilyn Monroe) is the troubled—very troubled—niece of Eddie, the elevator operator (Elisha Cook Jr.). Eddie arranges for Nell to babysit a wealthy couple’s daughter at the hotel as they attend a banquet downstairs. Jed hits on Nell, after seeing her through the window, but is not ready to deal with her as things become dangerous and violent.

We never leave the hotel, an upscale hotel the drips hopelessness. A sad singer sees no future, and we can’t see one for her. Jed lacks empathy and hates the world. He wants Lynn, but there’s no affection, just need. The elevator operator is described as nervous. He’s just trying to survive, and doing a poor job of it. And then there’s Nell, and something is off about Nell. These are broken people in a broken world. As for the rest of the hotel residents, they are filled with melancholy and ire, or they are wealthy elite who don’t even notice those lesser people. It’s a dark world, and it only gets darker as Nell slips away from reality.

For a film about a babysitter and a broken relationship, this is an amazingly tense film. I could feel a drumbeat under it all, pounding, and slowly, slowly getting faster and faster as things fall apart.

Widmark was a master of the angry young man role and he displays that mastery here. Yet for an actor who can control the screen, he manages to slip into the support role and let Monroe dominate. And dominate she does. She didn’t get many chances like this, to play something far from her fun and frolicsome image and she nails it. She keeps her sex appeal (how could she not) which makes her all the more creepy. I couldn’t look away from her. I love her sex-pot comedies, but I’d have loved to see her in a few more films like this.

In the end perhaps this isn’t pure Noir. Maybe what was shown at the beginning wasn’t the world, but just one way of seeing it. Maybe there was hope. And those “maybes” elevate an already smart and compelling movie to something more.

 Film Noir, Reviews Tagged with: