In a Dark Corner

Suppose you discover you've a rival for your spouse's affection. Wouldn't it be nice if your rival disappeared? But murder can be untidy. You could solicit someone to kill your rival. But people get caught and squeal. What if you could goad someone into killing your rival? Someone with no connection to you. You'd have the plot that drives The Dark Corner, a noir film of 1946.

The film stars Lucille Ball, Clifton Webb, William Bendix and Mark Stevens. Stevens plays "Bradford Galt," an ex-con turned private detective; Ball plays "Kathleen," Galt's receptionist/secretary and the woman behind the successful detective. You see, Galt goes into a funk when he discovers he's being followed, when someone tries to run him over with a car, and when someone frames him for murder; Kathleen picks him up each time. Clifton Webb plays "Hardy Cathcart," a wealthy gallery owner and the husband to "Mari Cathcart," played by Cathy Downs. Mari Cathcart is carrying on an affair with "Anthony Jardine," played by Kurt Kreuger. Hardy Cathcart wants Jardine to disappear, and he engages the "guy in a white suit," played by William Bendix, to goad Galt into killing Jardine. Galt and Jardine were private eye partners before Galt went to prison.

For those weaned on re-runs of Lucille Ball's "I Love Lucy" and William Bendix' "The Life of Riley" TV shows of the 1950s, it can be a surprise to see Ball and Bendix in these roles. Ball carried off an important, serious role without a single pratfall; Bendix played an effective thug, instead of an amusing, bumbling TV-dad. Instead of comedy, they did a melodrama; before some melodramas became known as film noir.

Something that distinguishes a noir film is its visual style: its lighting, and its composition of scenes and individual frames. It isn't difficult to find interesting stills in these films. The Dark Corner exemplifies and illustrates noir's visual style beautifully. The film can be seen on DVD, which includes a viewing with voiceover commentary by film historian Alain Silver and author James Ursini. They talk about the film's lighting, characters and plot, and, while doing so, they compare and contrast The Dark Corner with other noir films. Silver and Ursini collaborated to write several books, including The Film Noir Encyclopedia

Judson Hirsh's The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir is considered by some to be the go-to intro to film noir.

I must have enjoyed the film; it held by attention, and it was interesting to see Lucille Ball in a serious role. My copy of the DVD was obtained from a library, and I saw it (upscaled) via a blu-ray player (Sony S570) to a 1080p hi-def TV. The film's aspect ratio is 1.33:1, so it is letter-boxed, left and right. I didn't notice any scratches or dust, so some work went into the transfer from film to digital. There is little, if any, grain visible, which might lead one to suspect that considerable noise reduction was applied during the transfer, especially considering the film may have been shot on Tri-X film; without seeing the original, projected film, it's difficult to know for sure.