Crossroads | |
---|---|
Directed by | Jack Conway |
Screenplay by | Guy Trosper |
Story by | John H. Kafka Howard Emmett Rogers |
Based on | the screenplay of the film Crossroads by John H. Kafka |
Produced by | Edwin H. Knopf |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Joseph Ruttenberg |
Edited by | George Boemler |
Music by | Bronislau Kaper |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Loew's Inc. |
Release date |
|
Running time | 83 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $846,000 [1] |
Box office | $2,321,000 [1] |
Crossroads is a 1942 American mystery film noir directed by Jack Conway and starring William Powell, Hedy Lamarr, Claire Trevor and Basil Rathbone. Powell plays a diplomat whose amnesia about his past subjects him to back-to-back blackmail schemes, which threaten his reputation, job, marriage, and future. [2] The film was inspired by the 1938 French film Crossroads which had also had a British remake Dead Man's Shoes in 1940.
In 1935, rising French diplomat David Talbot (William Powell) and his beautiful much younger bride Lucienne (Hedy Lamarr) are celebrating their third month of marriage. They are interrupted by a note from the mysterious Carlos Le Duc (Vladimir Sokoloff) demanding one million francs from David in payment of an old debt. Never having met Le Duc, David has him arrested for attempted extortion. During the trial which follows, Le Duc claims that he knew David in 1922 as a petty criminal named Jean Pelletier.
Talbot maintains that amnesia he sustained in a devastating train accident that same year prevents him from remembering anything from that time. Talbot's identity is affirmed by the psychologist who treated him following the wreck, Dr. Tessier (Felix Bressart), ever since a family friend. Talbot's strategy is foiled by a psychologist for the defense, Dr. Alex Dubroc (Sig Ruman), who tricks Tessier into conceding the unreliability of a diagnosis of amnesia. He suggests Talbot fabricated his to hide his real identity. In fact, no one really knows, as two similar men had boarded the train but only one survived. Was it Pelletier or Talbot?
Michelle Allaine (Claire Trevor), a glamorous night club chanteuse, is introduced on behalf of the defense. Upon studying David closely she looks startled and identifies him as Pelletier, her former lover. The situation is saved by a surprise witness, Henri Sarrou (Basil Rathbone), who produces documentation proving that he and Pelletier were roommates in an African hospital and that Pelletier died of illness. Le Duc is convicted.
Shortly after, Sarrou confronts David privately. He contends that David really is Pelletier, and corroborated with Sarrou and Le Duc in a decade-old robbery in which a courier was killed. He saved David at the trial only because he wants the million francs for himself; unless paid he will recant his testimony. Allaine separately corroborates that David and Pelletier are the same man, and that she still has feelings for him. Offended by David's hostile response, she shows him a locket containing a photo of the two of them together, adding that she will offer this important piece of evidence to Sarrou.
Not long afterwards, Mlle. Allaine makes a surprise appearance at the Talbot home, implicitly threatening David with exposure and planting suspicions in the mind of Lucienne. David conceals his worries as much as possible from his wife, but has begun to doubt his own identity.
Anxious to see Allaine again and draw her out further, David clandestinely visits her at the nightclub where she works. Still treating him as Pelletier, she accuses him of faking amnesia to justify the betrayal of his former friends, adding that his mother is living in penury in an adjacent neighborhood. David goes to the address Allaine gives him and meets the aged Madame Pelletier. She claims that he is not her son, but her demeanor suggests otherwise. Meanwhile Sarrou and Allaine confer together. The real Pelletier is dead and they are perpetrating a fraud on David, including the employment of an actress to play Madame Pelletier.
David, whose unhappy and furtive behavior has begun to worry Lucienne, collects his passport and tries to leave the country alone. Sarrou finds out what he is doing and blocks his attempt to escape, demanding his money.
David protests that he does not have access to such a large sum, then unwarily mentions the government funds stored in his office. Sarrou says that he can take the million francs from David's safe and make it look like an outside robbery.
The pair sneak past the guards at the foreign ministry and open the safe. Lucienne has been following David and now tries to intercede, but their argument is interrupted by the arrival of the police. The Talbots, Sarrou, and Allaine are all brought to headquarters, where David confesses to the old robbery and says he and his two accomplices must be punished for murder. Allaine panics and admits that David is not really Pelletier.
David reveals that he steered Sarrou to the idea of the robbery, then told the police to set an ambush in the office. His doubts about his identity were laid to rest when, looking at his passport photo, he realized that the picture in the locket was a fabrication - allegedly taken before his accident, it shows him with a hairstyle he only adopted to cover the scar on his head.
The actress who played Madame Pelletier is also arrested. With all four blackmailers behind bars, Talbot is cleared and his marriage and ambassadorial career are saved.
According to MGM records, the film cost $846,000 to make, and earned $1,523,000 in the US and Canada and $798,000 elsewhere, for a total of $2,231,000, making the studio a profit of $1,473,000, or 175% of its production costs. [1] [3]
When the film was released, the staff at Variety magazine praised it, writing "This is a Grade A whodunit, with a superlative cast. The novel story line, which would do credit to an Alfred Hitchcock thriller, has the added potency of Hedy Lamarr and William Powell ... It’s good, escapist drama, without a hint of the war despite its Parisian locale, circa 1935, and evidences excellent casting and good direction. The script likewise well turned out, though better pace would have put the film in the smash class. Its only fault is a perceptible slowness at times, although the running time is a reasonable 82 minutes, caused by a plenitude of talk." [4]
The film was adapted for a Lux Radio Theatre broadcast on March 29, 1943, starring Jean-Pierre Aumont and Lana Turner. [5]
Ninotchka is a 1939 American romantic comedy film made for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer by producer and director Ernst Lubitsch and starring Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas. It was written by Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, and Walter Reisch, based on a story by Melchior Lengyel. Ninotchka marked the first comedy role for Garbo, and her penultimate film; she received her third and final Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. In 1990, Ninotchka was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2011, Time also included the film on the magazine's list of "All-Time 100 Movies".
Philip St. John Basil Rathbone MC was an Anglo-South African actor. He rose to prominence in the United Kingdom as a Shakespearean stage actor and went on to appear in more than 70 films, primarily costume dramas, swashbucklers, and, occasionally, horror films.
Hedy Lamarr was an Austrian-born American actress and inventor. After a brief early film career in Czechoslovakia, including the controversial erotic romantic drama Ecstasy (1933), she fled from her first husband, Friedrich Mandl, and secretly moved to Paris. Traveling to London, she met Louis B. Mayer, who offered her a film contract in Hollywood. Lamarr became a film star with her performance in the romantic drama Algiers (1938). She achieved further success with the Western Boom Town (1940) and the drama White Cargo (1942). Lamarr's most successful film was the religious epic Samson and Delilah (1949). She also acted on television before the release of her final film in 1958. She was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.
Ecstasy is a 1933 Czech erotic romantic drama film directed by Gustav Machatý and starring Hedy Lamarr, Aribert Mog, and Zvonimir Rogoz. Machatý won the award for Best Director for this film at the 1934 Venice Film Festival.
Algiers is a 1938 American drama film directed by John Cromwell and starring Charles Boyer, Sigrid Gurie, and Hedy Lamarr. Written by John Howard Lawson, the film is about a notorious French jewel thief hiding in the labyrinthine native quarter of Algiers known as the Casbah. Feeling imprisoned by his self-imposed exile, he is drawn out of hiding by a beautiful French tourist who reminds him of happier times in Paris. The Walter Wanger production was a remake of the successful 1937 French film Pépé le Moko, which derived its plot from the Henri La Barthe novel of the same name.
Experiment Perilous is a 1944 American melodrama film set at the turn of the 20th century. The film is based on a 1943 novel of the same name by Margaret Carpenter, and directed by Jacques Tourneur. Albert S. D'Agostino, Jack Okey, Darrell Silvera, and Claude E. Carpenter were nominated for an Academy Award for Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White. Hedy Lamarr's singing voice was dubbed by Paula Raymond.
A Lady Without Passport is a 1950 American film noir film directed by Joseph H. Lewis and starring Hedy Lamarr and John Hodiak. Written by Howard Dimsdale, the film is about a beautiful concentration-camp refugee who waits in Cuba for permission to enter the United States. An undercover immigration agent uses her as an informant to entrap the leader of an alien-smuggling ring.
Comrade X is a 1940 American comedy spy film directed by King Vidor and starring Clark Gable and Hedy Lamarr. The supporting cast features Oskar Homolka, Felix Bressart, Sig Rumann and Eve Arden. In February 2020, the film was shown at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival, as part of a retrospective dedicated to King Vidor's career.
Felix Bressart was a German-born actor of stage and screen whose career spanned both Europe and Hollywood.
John Loder was established as a British film actor in Germany and Britain before migrating to the United States in 1928 for work in the new talkies. He worked in Hollywood for two periods, becoming an American citizen in 1947. After living also in Argentina, he became a naturalized Argentinian citizen in 1959.
H. M. Pulham, Esq. is a 1941 American drama film directed by King Vidor and starring Hedy Lamarr, Robert Young, and Ruth Hussey. Based on the novel H. M. Pulham, Esq. by John P. Marquand, the film is about a middle-aged businessman who has lived a conservative life according to the routine conventions of society, but who still remembers the beautiful young woman who once brought him out of his shell. Vidor co-wrote the screenplay with his wife, Elizabeth Hill Vidor. The film features an early uncredited appearance by Ava Gardner. In February 2020, the film was shown at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival, as part of a retrospective dedicated to King Vidor's career.
White Cargo is a 1942 American drama film starring Hedy Lamarr and Walter Pidgeon, and directed by Richard Thorpe. Released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, it is based on the 1923 London and Broadway hit play by Leon Gordon, which was in turn adapted from the 1912 novel Hell's Playground by Ida Vera Simonton. The play had already been made into a British part-talkie, also titled White Cargo, with Maurice Evans in 1930. The 1942 film, unlike the play, begins in what was then the present-day, before unfolding in flashback.
I Take This Woman is a 1940 American drama film directed by W. S. Van Dyke and starring Spencer Tracy and Hedy Lamarr. Based on the short story "A New York Cinderella" by Charles MacArthur, the film is about a young woman who attempted suicide in reaction to a failed love affair. The doctor who marries her attempts to get her to love him by abandoning his clinic services to the poor to become a physician to the rich so he can pay for her expensive lifestyle.
Dishonored Lady is a 1947 American film noir crime film directed by Robert Stevenson and starring Hedy Lamarr, Dennis O'Keefe and John Loder. It is based on the 1930 play Dishonored Lady by Edward Sheldon and Margaret Ayer Barnes. Lamarr and Loder were married when they made the film, but they divorced later in 1947.
Her Highness and the Bellboy is a 1945 American romantic comedy film directed by Richard Thorpe and starring Hedy Lamarr, Robert Walker, June Allyson and Rags Ragland. Written by Richard Connell and Gladys Lehman, the film is about a beautiful European princess who travels to New York City to find the newspaper columnist she fell in love with six years earlier. At her posh New York hotel, she is mistaken for a maid by a kind-hearted bellboy. Charmed by his confusion, the princess insists that he become her personal attendant, unaware that he has fallen in love with her. Her Highness and the Bellboy was released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the United States on July 11, 1945.
Prix de Beauté is a 1930 film directed by Augusto Genina. The film is notable for being the first sound film made by star Louise Brooks, although all of her dialogue and singing were dubbed. This film is an early example of sound film in France, along with L'Age d'Or and Under the Roofs of Paris.
The Conspirators is a 1944 American film noir, World War II, drama, spy, and thriller film directed by Jean Negulesco. It stars Hedy Lamarr and Paul Henreid, features Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre in supporting roles, and has a cameo of Aurora Miranda singing a Fado. The Conspirators reunites several performers who appeared in Casablanca (1942).
Dead Man's Shoes is a 1940 British mystery drama film directed by Thomas Bentley and starring Leslie Banks, Joan Marion and Wilfrid Lawson.
Let's Live a Little is a 1948 American romantic comedy film directed by Richard Wallace and starring Hedy Lamarr, Robert Cummings and Anna Sten. Written by Howard Irving Young, Edmund L. Hartmann, Albert J. Cohen, and Jack Harvey, the film is about an overworked advertising executive who is being pursued romantically by his former fiancée, a successful perfume magnate, who is also the ad agency's largest client. While visiting a new client—a psychiatrist and author—to discuss a proposed ad campaign, his life becomes further complicated when the new client turns out to be a beautiful woman, who decides to treat his nervous condition.
The Female Animal is a 1958 American CinemaScope drama film directed by Harry Keller and starring Hedy Lamarr, Jane Powell, Jan Sterling and George Nader.