BIG HOUSE FILM REVIEWS ~ Roger Westcombe
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THE MAN WHO CHEATED HIMSELF (1950)
Starring Lee J.Cobb, Jane Wyatt, John Dall; dir: Felix Feist
The 1950s saw film noir's economic function as reliable, budget-priced program filler begin to be taken over by TV crime shows, as the increasingly suburbanized audience changed its viewing habits to home consumption. Most ‘B’ films of this period evinced a response through apeing TV’s bright monochrome visuals (qv Private Hell 36 [1954], Kiss Me Deadly [1955], Murder By Contract [1958]) while remaining true to the tough, doom-laden complexities of 1940s narratives.
The Man Who Cheated Himself is the polar opposite: richly photographed in both night and day environments yet with content whose glib development and pat characterizations presage the disposable requirements of weekly television programming. Which is a shame, as its premise – two sibling cops as big brother/little kid on parallel tracks to cover up/reveal the same crime - is rich with psychological promise.
It’s a bit of a teaser actually, as there are morsels of better things scattered throughout: suburban noir , with the brothers shacked up together pre-wedding like man and wife ("you married my car", Dall accuses Cobb at one point); Double Indemnity – "no communication from now on", Cobb instructs paramour Wyatt before melting in a clinch; and forensic pioneering a la He Walked By Night with the audience privileged to see the ballistic matches through the microscope.
Star Lee J.Cobb deserves better material, while the supporting actors, here promisingly cast against type, basically reveal their limitations. Jane ( Pitfall ) Wyatt’s ridiculous misfire as a femme fatale is histrionic – more late, sad Bette (in her Robert Aldrich phase) than Babs Stanwyck, while John (Gun Crazy) Dall’s attempt at straight-arrow, standup guy is just hokey.
Too cheap to develop the promising setup, The Man Who Cheated Himself settles for endless variations of ‘suspense through conjunction/proximity’ of the guilty and sleuthing parties.
Beautiful to look at, of all the San Francisco-set thrillers, with its panoramic skyline vistas, it’s Dirty Harry (1971) that The Man Who Cheated Himself most reminds us of today. There’s an interesting motif of escaping ‘upward’ – climbing up fire escapes to evade cops and a similarly feline strategy in the climactic scene in the tower under the Golden Gate Bridge (which can’t help but conjure up Vertigo). This deserted building where the fugitives flee looks to be the same setting used for the nighttime climax to Point Blank (1967), adding to the site's enigma: Was it a prison? A fort? Some blue-collar penal colony for bridge workers?
In the end it’s digressive questions like these (and the pleasure of seeing all those Nash Metropolitans beetling around!) that hold the interest more than the shallow machinations of this disappointing throwaway.Roger Westcombe's own website is at: http://www.bighousefilm.com/
For additional material on 'The Man Who Cheated Himself' you might want to look at:
http://www.filmmonthly.com/Noir/Articles/ManWhoCheatedHimself/ManWhoCheatedHimself.html - A. K. Rode, 'The Man Who Cheated Himself', Film Monthly
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