Fyodor Ozep's last movie feels like a Russian novel, with its themes of retribution and conscience. And music. There's a great Romantic concert that plays with the denouement, and if it were more Russian, it would have made my point too clearly for any subtlety. Ozep was a Russian film maker who had left the Soviet Union in the early 1930s, but while in his homeland, he had done startlingly original work, in Germany and France and the United States, he drew his works from the Russian novelists: Tolstoy and Dostoevski and Pushkin.
It all begins when news reporter Mary Anderson is assigned a brief story. Mimi D'Estee had once been a well-regarded actress. However, when her husband was killed in what appeared to be an accident, she retired and has spent the rest of her life saying it had been a murder. Now she has been struck by a car and is in bad condition. Miss Anderson next approaches local philanthropist Paul Lukas, who is busy arranging for Helmut Dantine's premiere of his concerto. Dantine's wife is driving him batty; he can't work. Eventually he leaves and Miss Anderson comes in. Lukas is sympathetic. After she leaves, he calls the hospital and discovers Miss D'Estee has died. He calls his friend, John Pratt, Miss Anderson's editor, and suggests there's no point in raking up ancient scandal. Pratt agrees, but Miss Anderson is going to continue her investigation.
So far, there's nothing to indicate.... well, anything. Nineteen minutes of the movie have passed before Miss Anderson goes to Miss D'Estee's apartment and barely misses Mr. Lukas, who has broken in. Since she will not give up the story, Mr. Lukas will just have to convince Mr. Dantine to kill her.
Ozep has directed the script to his actors' benefit. People -- aside from the increasingly deranged Lukas -- behave the way people behave. Their conversation sound real. The reactions sound real. The nuns gliding by on the street look real -- the movie was shot in Quebec. There are lovely moments, like the paternal manner of John Pratt towards Miss Anderson, the way a florist's delivery boy waits for his tip, Mr. Dantine's embarrassment at the flop house he is staying at, even the way Miss Anderson stares in horror at Mr. Lukas, come to murder her. People always remain people in this movie, even at the most bizarre moments, and Ozep's handling emphasizes that. Moments like those are far more cinematic to me than the most involved Busby Berkeley visual extravaganza and this movie has plenty of them. They do things and we, the audience, infer. That draws us into the story and the characters far more surely than a three minute exposition.
