Siodmak brilliantly interweaves expressionistic décor with American idiom.
--Blake Lucas, Film Noir, Overlook Press (1979)
Phantom Lady, a powerful adaptation of a Cornell Woolrich novel, lacks several key elements of a true film noir, especially the fatalism and the bleak ending, elements found in later Siodmak films such as The Killers (1946) and Criss Cross (1949) -- I wrote about The Killers on June 29, 2015 and Criss Cross on Aug. 4, 2015. The film noir was in many ways a reflection of the disillusionment of the post WWII period, when returning veterans found that things had not changed much, except perhaps for the worse. Phantom Lady, made during the war, is a pretty good B movie with some strong elements of later films noir -- the expressionistic photography (in this case by Woody Bredell, who also photographed Siodmak's later films), the loneliness and danger of nighttime city streets slick with rain, a Germanic sensibility (Siodmak was born in America but grew up in Germany, leaving when Hitler took over, and was considerably influenced by German silent films) -- but functions more as a wartime film that ends up reassuring the audience that a plucky woman can save a man from the electric chair, that only a madman would kill and that justice, with the help of the police (!) will prevail. Elisha Cook, Jr. has an intensely dark role as a drummer who reaches orgasmic heights with his drum solo while courting Ella Raines, an executive masquerading as a floozy in her search for the killer.
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