The Man with a Cloak (1951)

It's 1848. Young Frenchwoman Madeline Minot (Leslie Caron) arrives in NYC to see Charles Francois Thevenet (Louis Calhern). He is the wealthy grandfather of her fiancé and had been with Napoleon. His grandson hopes that he's willing to support the Republic. She is introduced to Lorna Bounty (Barbara Stanwyck) who manages his affairs and tries to keep Minot away from him. She pushes her way in to ask for money to help the cause. Bounty and the butler Martin seems to be waiting for the old man to die and leave the fortune to them. They are not happy that Minot is invited to stay. The only man who helps her is the broke Dupin (Joseph Cotten), the man with a cloak. Minot tells him that they're trying to kill Thevenet.The movie starts very simply and there is no mystery. There is some overacting and unimpressive writing at the beginning. The movie does improve a little. Stanwyck is quite good as a cold calculating character. She's like a black widow spider. However it's not as dark as it needs to be. I wanted the Dupin character to be more complicated and more murky. The movie never gets truly interesting. There is a reveal of the name at the end but I don't see it as that fascinating or that enlightening. It answers a question that nobody is even asking.

While not in the top drawer of mystery films of the era, the film should come as a pleasant surprise for those interested in the period and definitely will register with films of the noir genre. The plot is difficult to sum up quickly but rest assured that it is literary and interesting, involves at least one or two good twists and sports a fine cast of players better known for work in more famous films. Joseph Cotten is particularly fine as the man of mystery who foils an attempt to rob the inheritance related to the demise of an old reprobate (Louis Calhern) in 1840's New York. Throw in Barbara Stanwyck at her most sultry and Leslie Carone at her most innocent and you have a film that does not exactly match the excitement generated by the opening scenes but holds one's attention nonetheless.

Joseph Cotten has the thankless eponymous role in this plodding, talky, and aridly cerebral botch of a thriller. He's a "mysterious stranger," a poet recently arrived in New York whose name, the film explicitly states, is an alias. The opening title card claims that at the time in which the film is set he was obscure, but that his "real name" would soon "become immortal." Moreover, one of the scenes, which are almost-exclusively expository, implies that Cotten's Dupin is deliberately misleading Leslie Caron's Madeline when he allows her to infer that he's a French expatriate.False or not, Dupin's name helps him ingratiate himself with Caron as an emigree from Paris in deep distress, fearing for the life of her elderly host and benefactor, played with scenery-chomping brio by a shamelessly scene-stealing Louis Calhern. Caron believes, but can't be certain, that one of the household staff who despise the old man (Barbara Stanwyck, in one of those spine-of-steel caricatures she would exploit so well on television; a wonderfully creepy Joe DeSantis; and the marvelously naturalistic Margaret Wycherly) is trying to dispatch him prematurely.The film, however, appears to have been intended not so much as a whodunit per se as a who's-gonna-do-it (and what is this guy in the cloak gonna do about it?). It's less a murder mystery than a suspense drama: the old man doesn't die until the third act. Perhaps the film's focus, whatever the filmmakers may have intended that to be, got lost in the course of adapting a story by John Dickson Carr. Carr could be aptly described as a Poor Man's Cornell Woolrich; he is best remembered today -- if at all -- as the co-developer and first story editor of the classic dramatic radio program "Suspense." That series began with Agatha Christie-ish drawing room whodunits, but Carr introduced the format, later perfected by others, that earned "Suspense" its amazing two-decade run: closed mysteries, sometimes even told in internal monologue from the point of view of the criminal as he plans and carries out his evil deed, building tension by holding the central reveal until the twist ending. (Incidentally, one of those others who perfected the format was contributing writer Lucille Fletcher, who wrote the most famous of all "Suspense" dramas, "Sorry, Wrong Number," Hal Wallis's Paramount adaptation of which gave Stanwyck one of her biggest hits in 1948.)Perhaps this Carr story, "The Gentleman From Paris," was never adapted for "Suspense" -- unlike so many other of his works -- because waiting for that central reveal isn't all that suspenseful: why are we supposed to care who that really is in the cloak? And even if we could be made to invest in Dupin's true identity, whatever suspense the question might have generated is vitiated by the clues the film plants, which are so ham-fistedly obvious that merely describing them here would result in spoilers.Other flaws aggravate the film's flaccidity and slackness. Genuinely effective suspense -- as Hitchcock's notes and storyboards show us -- has to be paced and edited to within an inch of its life. Yet "Cloak"'s screenplay seems to meander off in several directions at once, with screen time equally divided among them. This gives rise to the pure speculation on this writer's part that the film was re-cut by M-G-M. Every scene feels chock-a-block with exposition, as if each were included not in service to the picture's overall rhythm and pacing, but simply so that the final cut could make any sense at all.What else can explain why Jim Backus as a bartender, largely superfluous to the plot, seems to spend as much time on screen as Louis Calhern and his laughably unconvincing French dialect? Equally curious is that Stanwyck seems not to get much more play than any other name in the main titles. Her part -- reportedly turned down by Marlene Dietrich -- seems written as the second female lead after Caron's Mlle. Minot, yet Stanwyck gets leading lady billing.Further indicative of the film's structural problems is that it devotes as much screen time to Dupin's alcoholism (Cotten has to play most of his tedious speeches while guzzling and weaving); his true identity; and his teasingly aloof yet seductive relationship with both Caron and Stanwyck, as it devotes to whatever danger Calhern might be in.Most revealingly of all, at 81 minutes "Cloak" has a suspiciously short running time for something that doesn't quite look like a 'B' picture. (Contrary to suggestions elsewhere among these comments, neither Cotten's nor Stanwyck's star had yet dimmed: he would go on to many 'A' leads, including "Niagara" opposite Marilyn Monroe, and Stanwyck still had Fritz Lang's "Clash By Night" and John Sturges's "Jeopardy" in her future.) The short length plus the "de-facto ensemble cast" that belies Cotten's and Stanwyck's star billing make one wonder if "Cloak" weren't once a longer, weightier film from which much was deleted.All this suggests that the sumptuously photographed but visually pedestrian "Man With a Cloak" may have been a troubled production. And perhaps it was. It's the third of only four features directed by radio wunderkind Fletcher Markle, who achieved a certain notoriety as an alcoholic in ex-wife Mercedes McCambridge's memoir, "The Quality of Mercy." McCambridge candidly portrayed her years with Markle as a kind of "Days Of Wine and Roses" existence which aggravated her own struggles to remain sober. But no matter what the reason, booze or better prospects in television, for which medium Markle directed as well as produced many series, following the dismal "Cloak," Markle would not direct another theatrical feature for twelve years. Suffice to say that his penultimate directorial effort delivers its payoff in its final scene, but by that time, even after only 81 minutes, the viewer no longer cares.

Cotten is the title character, confessing to be a poet and living on the charity of his landlady and the local barman. He feels great affection and admiration for Caron's character, who's come from France to try to secure an inheritance from her fiance's grandfather (Calhern) for her husband-to-be so he can use it to help his people, or something like that. Anyway, a faded theatre diva (Stanwyck) and the manservant are counting on that inheritance and won't let Cotten and Caron get away with it. Some very contrived moments, but on the whole a mood and tone consistent with its 1840s setting, and a story that is interesting to watch. Calhern is a standout as the dying man. The film's most memorable scene is when Calhern, on his deathbed, concocts a potion to end his life with, only to watch his lawyer unwittingly drink the drugs and die before him in the prime of life. Calhern's character can't speak, and this scene generates a very high level of suspense. Good show all around.