After the Great Depression and a second World War, our relatively young and optimistic country was realizing (and attempting to comprehend) humanity’s great potential for evil and immorality, bigotry and fear. And so, American culture in the 40s and 50s finally created a major art form to reflect the fear, ambivalence and cruelty we seemed to find in the world: film noir.Now maybe that’s an over simplification of film noir’s roots and purpose, but whatever its origins, film noir is understood to be melodramatic, suspenseful and ultimately unhappy renditions of “gritty” or “hard-boiled” characters. Morals in film noir are often ambiguous, and the “good guys” rarely own white cowboy hats. In attempting to explore the genre, I recently watched “Sorry, Wrong Number,” the 1948 movie starring Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster.
Based on a 1943 radio play, “Sorry, Wrong Number” stars Barbara Stanwyck as a spoiled but invalid heiress named Leona who overhears a telephone conversation about a murder planned to take place at 11:15 that night. Through the course of several telephone conversations and flashbacks (which sometimes occur within each other), Leona becomes convinced that she is the intended murder victim.
Now, if this were, say, a Hitchcock film rather than film noir, there might be a lot that could be done with this premise. Instead, it’s a pretty straightforward story about a spoiled, domineering woman and the desperate husband who hates her. There are no plot twists or surprises – even with flashbacks within flashbacks, the story unfolds almost uneventfully. It’s a decent example of film noir; both Stanwyck and Lancaster, as Leona’s husband, convincingly play selfish and desperate people. But they have very little to play with: there are really no interesting character foils or plot twists, as in Double Indemnity, a film noir classic that far better utilizes Ms. Stanwyck’s talent and toughness. Here, the characters don’t even get to do much – much of the “action” takes place in phone booths or Leona’s bedroom – much less actually tangle with moral ambiguity, thwarted plans, or clashes between strong characters.
The most fun thing about the movie is actually what makes it a mediocre movie, even for film noir: the story’s radio play roots. The original play was about a third of the length of this movie (even though the film clocks in at only 89 minutes), which means a lot of the story seems to simply be spinning its wheels until the dramatic finish. The last ten minutes definitely transform the movie into a nail-biter, and make you almost forget how slow the rest of the movie was. But not quite.
But it is fun to watch the movie realizing that almost the entire story could be heard instead of watched. Heavy narration and extensive use of radio play-type sound effects make the whole movie seem more like an opportunity to watch a radio play, which is actually pretty exciting since the radio play is an art form rarely encountered by modern American audiences (although if you are fascinated by this movie/radio play, I highly suggest you find some radio plays online to listen to. Many are public domain because of poor copyrighting, and BBC radio still airs new plays in its regular programming). But if you’re looking for a high quality example of film noir, Barbara Stanwyck, or Burt Lancaster, you’ll have to look elsewhere.
2 Stars.
