Cross-Up

American reporter Larry Parks starts an affair with mysterious Lisa Daniely. She's shot with her own pistol, and Parks finds a contact list with criminals written in code. Now they're after him. If only he realized how beautiful his smart assistant, Constance Smith is! But she never takes off her glasses.

It's a fair thriller under the direction of John Gilling with a strong noir air, aided by Eric Cross' camerawork. Parks was trying to find work after he had been blacklisted in the United States, and Miss Smith had been dropped from her Fox contract when her movies hadn't found much favor with the public. This one didn't help their careers. Parks made one more movie, and Miss Smith's career dwindled out in the late 1950s. With Cyril Chamberlain, Donald Stewart, and Thora Hird.

The action is fast, the drama tends to constantly accelerate, the villains are unpleasant enough, one of them appropriately sadistic and stupid at that, the murders tend to multiply, the car chases tend to constantly involve more cars, both the ladies are attractive and lovable enough, although one gets killed and the other gets out of any trouble without a scratch, the plot is thick enough and constantly gets thicker, while we never learn anything about the "committee" which all the villains seem frightened to death of, so the main intrigue is actually missing, suggesting some monkey business in counterfeit money and laundry. Lisa Daniely as the first lady in the parade actually cautions Larry Sparks not to ask any questions, while he commits the mistake of insisting on getting something out of her, which triggers all the problems and plunges him into a gruesome mess of unpleasantness. Larry Parks as the journalist is actually very much reminding of Jack Lemmon, they are the same type, and there is a lot of humour refreshing this film. Larry Parks was actually one of those many exiles from the US during the McCarthy witch-hunts, and like so many others he did better in British films than at home.

Although reportedly a travesty of the late John Mair's 1941 novel, this film version still packs plenty into just 85 minutes; particularly when it develops a Hitchcockian sense of humour that anticipates 'North by Northwest' at about the halfway mark, at which point heroine Constance Smith also assumes a more prominent role. (A fourth-billed Cyril Chamberlain too has a much more prominent role than we are accustomed to seeing him in.)

The first of two films made by Larry Parks during his European exile (the second being John Huston's 'Freud' in 1962) after being blacklisted in 1951; the scene where he gets roughed up on behalf of the sinister "committee" by a bunch of mean-looking goons who want to know "Where's the contact list?" must have instilled in him a sense of deja vue.

John Desmond is an American newspaper journalist who has arrived in London to report on the British perspective of stateside politics. He begins dating an attractive brunette named Anna Ray, but she is secretive and volatile and often ends their dates prematurely. During an argument, Desmond snatches up her diary and Anna draws a gun on him. She is killed in the ensuing struggle and Desmond absconds with the diary. Anna, however, was mixed up with a gang of international counterfeiters and that diary contains a coded list of their contacts. Helped only by his secretary Jane, Desmond goes on the run and tries to decode the list in his search for answers.

John Gilling directed and co-wrote this chase thriller for Robert B. Baker and Monty Berman's Tempean Films, based on John Mair's novel Never Go Back. It's in the Hitchcock vein of North By Northwest and The 39 Steps and, though it cannot equal those classics (I'm on a lifelong quest to find a film that does), it certainly brings a fair bit of excitement and humour. Larry Parks had starred as crooner Al Jolson in two biopics for Columbia Pictures but, as a communist, he was blacklisted by all the major Hollywood studios and had to come to Britain to find work. He makes for an unmemorable lead here, however, but is supported well by the beautiful Constance Smith. Her character, Jane, is coolly efficient at the top of the film and becomes a plucky and resourceful heroine in the face of danger.

There are a whole bunch of good scenes in this one, including a bit in which Jane is followed on her way to a rendezvous with Desmond and outwits the heavies and even pulls her tongue at them! There's also a tense scene in which Desmond is kidnapped and roughly interrogated. He's up against a couple of old-school English bad guys (Cyril Chamberlain and Alexander Gauge) who are all silky-voiced suavity and chilling politeness ("Battered but unbowed, eh, Desmond? Why don't you speak up and spare us all this unpleasantness?"). He manages to confuse them enough to escape and is chased onto a railway line, where he starts offing the heavies. There's a nice bit of comedy when he hides out in a farm and meets a young Thora Hird (well, younger than we're used to - she was never young-young, was she?).

Until about three-quarters of the way in, I thought I was looking at a four-star film here. Even the comedic sequence in which Desmond is in hospital and apparently suffering with amnesia is good enough. For all that, however, the ending is underwhelming. There's a fight with Desmond and a heavy immediately before it, but there's no sign that it's the final fight. A car chase with the police doesn't feature Desmond, so feels perfunctory. There's a bit of ambiguity in the ending, too, and the message is one of regret, which leaves a bit of a bad taste in the mouth. Nevertheless, this is worth seeing and I think anyone who sat down with this film would have a good time.

I had never heard of Director John Gilling - who also has a hand in the screenplay in TIGER BY THE TAIL - but his is a name that I will look out for from now on: he managed a work of real quality in the areas of acting, cinematography, editing, script, and art direction.

The acting, especially by Cyril Chamberlain as the quietly evil Foster, alias Dr Wainwright, and by the stunningly beautiful Constance Smith, deserves plaudits. On a lesser level, Thora Hird (who would subsequently shine on British TV), Donald Stewart as a kind of childish and British Dan Duryea, and the central male lead Larry Parks, who fills the then necessary American quota but actually neither looks nor sounds convincing enough for the part, let alone to catch a scrumptious dish like Constance.

The latter is the epitome of the British secretary's efficiency in the film, and the epitome of British feminine class and beauty, and I could watch her elegantly move about for the rest of my life.

Cinematography by Eric Cross is superb, well judged editing, and the soundtrack by the uncredited Stanley Black reflects quality and purpose even if rather subtle and often silenced off somewhat too soon.

Perhaps the ending could have been clearer but to me it does not damage the rest of the flick. Really enjoyed it!