Between the Pages

This 1944 tells the story of Detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews), who is investigating the murder of a beautiful young woman, Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney).  The film opens after the murder, and the audience follows Mark as he conducts his investigations, and Lydecker explains how he first met Laura (with retrospective scenes).  There are a few potential suspects – Laura’s errant fiance Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price), her friend and mentor Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb, in a scene stealing performance) and her aunt Ann Treadwell (Judith Anderson) who is also in love with Shelby.  Mark finds himself becoming drawn into Laura’s life and falling under the spell which she cast over so many men.  However one night something happens which causes him to change the direction of his investigation…

I had heard so many good things about this film before I saw it – and maybe that’s why I was unfortunately slightly disappointed.  On the one hand, the acting was fine – as aforementioned, Clifton Webb provides the stand out performance as the acerbic newspaper columnist Lydercker, and Judith Anderson also made the most of her role as Ann Treadwell.  However, the story seemed slightly misjointed, almost as if some scenes had been cut out.  Although I knew it was part of the plot before I started watching, McPherson’s growing fascination with Laura seemed to come out of nowhere.  Also, McPherson did something near to the end of the film (I won’t say what for fear of revealing spoilers) which did  not seem to make sense and only seemed to work as an obvious plot device.

There were some good parts though – I genuinely did not guess who the guilty party was, and several people seemed likely at various points in the film.  There was plenty of tension and as a whodunnit, it worked well.  (In fact I felt that it would have played better as a straightforward crime drama, rather than with the aspect of the detective falling for the murder victim.)  So not brilliant then, but an enjoyable enough film with a big twist that I certainly did not see coming!

Year of release: 1944

Director: Otto Preminger

Writers: Vera Caspary (novel), Jay Dratler, Samuel Hoffenstein, Elizabeth Reinhardt

Main cast: Dana Andrews, Gene Tierney, Clifton Webb, Vincent Price, Judith Anderson