This is sometimes cited as Lewton's best movie. It has some of his best scenes and is his darkest and most despairing work. It is undoubtedly haunting, but exemplifies his one slight weakness: his poor story sense. He doesn't always tell a story coherently and doesn't always tell a coherent story.
I appreciate that scenes have been cut and that the screenplay makes slightly more sense than the movie, but it is still poorly constructed and needed a complete re-write to realise its full potential. There are a number of problems.
Firstly, whose story is this supposed to be? Initially there is no doubt. It is Mary's story.
It starts with her trying to trace her missing sister, Jacqueline. We follow her from school to New York. She meets her sister's business parter, whose assistant directs Mary to a restaurant where Jacqueline has been seen. Mary goes there and learns that Jacqueline took a room but has never lived in it. She enters the room and sees the noose. She goes to the missing persons bureau, where she is accosted by a private detective, August, who offers to help. She declines, but his suggestions lead her to check the morgue. There she learns that Gregory Ward has already asked after Jacqueline. This leads her to his office and their first meeting. Next, August turns up again and takes Mary to the perfume factory, where he is killed. She runs off but sees August's body being carried away on a subway train.
At this point we have followed Mary for about twenty five minutes and the movie has been told almost entirely from her viewpoint. We only know what she knows. However, we then cut to Louis Judd in Ward's office who says that Jacqueline is alive and under his protection. The perspective has abruptly changed and for the first time the audience is getting ahead of Mary.
Mary has a couple more important scenes but has less and less to do as the investigation proceeds. Increasingly, the detective work is done by the men. It is almost like a relay race: Mary passes the baton to Ward, who passes it to Jason Hoag, who passes it to Judd. Mary becomes ever more marginal to her own story.
Later the perspective abruptly switches again - from the pursuers to the cultists and we suddenly have a scene in which none of the protagonists is present and the audience gets information that they do not have. The baton has been passed again. Finally, when Jacqueline has been reunited with her sister, she takes over the story and the perspective switches to that of a character to whom we have only just been introduced.
These transitions are so ill-prepared that the movie just doesn't seem to flow properly. This is exacerbated by a related problem. Individual scenes do not follow through on what has gone before and the dialogue (frequently good) often misses the point. For example, why does Ward not immediately tell Mary he and Jacqueline are married. There is no plot reason for this. Why do they talk so little about Jacqueline? Why doesn't Mary ask any of the obvious questions? Again, after Mary has witnessed the death of August, why does she not immediately go to the police? This has changed everything. It is no longer a matter of tracing a missing person - it is murder. But no-one reacts as if there is now a real threat if they continue with their investigations.
Part of the problem is that Lewton is so afraid of of cliché that important points are barely hinted at. Hoag and Ward are both in love with Mary, but the movie is so reticent that this never registers and we would scarcely have guessed it without being told. This doesn't need dialogue; a simple look would have done, but everyone is so subdued that there is little for the audience to pick up on. Similarly, the cultists are treated so discreetly that we see nothing about them that might have attracted a sensation-seeker like Jacqueline or that might remotely justify her having to die.
I also feel that the screenplay is cluttered with surplus characters. Do we really need three private detectives? Couldn't the characters of Judd and Hoag have been combined in some way? What is the point of Hoag? Overall, there are seven different characters searching for Jacqueline (not to mention the cultists).
The flow of the story is also disrupted by the two big scare scenes that seem to have been inserted simply to allow the movie to be marketed as a horror/thriller. The death of August comes too early in the story and creates problems of plausibility thereafter. The stalking of Jacqueline seems to be there only because these 'walk in the dark' scenes had become a trademark of the RKO horror film. In context it makes no sense. She refuses to commit suicide, runs away from her assassin, meets Mimi and decides to commit suicide after all.
Finally, what the hell has been going on in Jacqueline's life? When did she go missing? Where has she been all the time? How many times did the cultists capture her? It is pointless going on. The screenplay is a hopeless muddle.
This is frustrating because a re-write could have fixed these problems and there is more than enough in the movie to show it could easily have been the masterpiece that some already think it is.
I appreciate that scenes have been cut and that the screenplay makes slightly more sense than the movie, but it is still poorly constructed and needed a complete re-write to realise its full potential. There are a number of problems.
Firstly, whose story is this supposed to be? Initially there is no doubt. It is Mary's story.
It starts with her trying to trace her missing sister, Jacqueline. We follow her from school to New York. She meets her sister's business parter, whose assistant directs Mary to a restaurant where Jacqueline has been seen. Mary goes there and learns that Jacqueline took a room but has never lived in it. She enters the room and sees the noose. She goes to the missing persons bureau, where she is accosted by a private detective, August, who offers to help. She declines, but his suggestions lead her to check the morgue. There she learns that Gregory Ward has already asked after Jacqueline. This leads her to his office and their first meeting. Next, August turns up again and takes Mary to the perfume factory, where he is killed. She runs off but sees August's body being carried away on a subway train.
At this point we have followed Mary for about twenty five minutes and the movie has been told almost entirely from her viewpoint. We only know what she knows. However, we then cut to Louis Judd in Ward's office who says that Jacqueline is alive and under his protection. The perspective has abruptly changed and for the first time the audience is getting ahead of Mary.
Mary has a couple more important scenes but has less and less to do as the investigation proceeds. Increasingly, the detective work is done by the men. It is almost like a relay race: Mary passes the baton to Ward, who passes it to Jason Hoag, who passes it to Judd. Mary becomes ever more marginal to her own story.
Later the perspective abruptly switches again - from the pursuers to the cultists and we suddenly have a scene in which none of the protagonists is present and the audience gets information that they do not have. The baton has been passed again. Finally, when Jacqueline has been reunited with her sister, she takes over the story and the perspective switches to that of a character to whom we have only just been introduced.
These transitions are so ill-prepared that the movie just doesn't seem to flow properly. This is exacerbated by a related problem. Individual scenes do not follow through on what has gone before and the dialogue (frequently good) often misses the point. For example, why does Ward not immediately tell Mary he and Jacqueline are married. There is no plot reason for this. Why do they talk so little about Jacqueline? Why doesn't Mary ask any of the obvious questions? Again, after Mary has witnessed the death of August, why does she not immediately go to the police? This has changed everything. It is no longer a matter of tracing a missing person - it is murder. But no-one reacts as if there is now a real threat if they continue with their investigations.
Part of the problem is that Lewton is so afraid of of cliché that important points are barely hinted at. Hoag and Ward are both in love with Mary, but the movie is so reticent that this never registers and we would scarcely have guessed it without being told. This doesn't need dialogue; a simple look would have done, but everyone is so subdued that there is little for the audience to pick up on. Similarly, the cultists are treated so discreetly that we see nothing about them that might have attracted a sensation-seeker like Jacqueline or that might remotely justify her having to die.
I also feel that the screenplay is cluttered with surplus characters. Do we really need three private detectives? Couldn't the characters of Judd and Hoag have been combined in some way? What is the point of Hoag? Overall, there are seven different characters searching for Jacqueline (not to mention the cultists).
The flow of the story is also disrupted by the two big scare scenes that seem to have been inserted simply to allow the movie to be marketed as a horror/thriller. The death of August comes too early in the story and creates problems of plausibility thereafter. The stalking of Jacqueline seems to be there only because these 'walk in the dark' scenes had become a trademark of the RKO horror film. In context it makes no sense. She refuses to commit suicide, runs away from her assassin, meets Mimi and decides to commit suicide after all.
Finally, what the hell has been going on in Jacqueline's life? When did she go missing? Where has she been all the time? How many times did the cultists capture her? It is pointless going on. The screenplay is a hopeless muddle.
This is frustrating because a re-write could have fixed these problems and there is more than enough in the movie to show it could easily have been the masterpiece that some already think it is.