Whispering City (1947)

Intriguing thriller in Quebec involving all kinds of suspense tricks including old murders and new, fake murders and phantoms, haunting memories and romance, suicide and a poor brilliant pianist working on his debut under the terror of his intolerably intolerant wife. The intrigue is difficult to follow as it develops all the time with surprising turns into upside down turbulence, but it nevertheless sticks together and adds up in the end. If you regard the piano concerto ('the Quebec concerto') as the hub around which everything evolves, you'll find it a rather masterful composition of intrigue, cinematography and music - in brief, nothing is actually missing in this intricately spiced stew of a very complicated but exotic repast. It's even worth watching again for enjoying the details.

I did not expect too much, when I picked this one up on ebay for about a $ 1,50 plus a little extra for postage. The artwork on the case did appear "noirish" and looked a little better than on most of these features from the forties and fifties that belong to public domain. I already found a couple of well written positive comments here on IMDb that convinced me to give it a try. The technical quality of the only available print on DVD (from Alpha Video) is far below average, which is a pity indeed. It's that bad that it looked like copied from an ancient super 8 print – as somebody else stated out. Though that was a reasonable disadvantage the movie took me in from the very start, and I went through it without having a break.Let me ask a question. Why did Alfred Hitchcock choose Mary Anderson for "Lifeboat"? Because she really could act. She is that good in "Whispering City" that I got hooked by surprise. Paul Lukas and Helmut Dantine also deliver strong performances in a story based on a solid script with some interesting twists and turns all along the way to the very end. The final climax was a bit abrupt and all too easily done, so the movie didn't quite got an ending that did suit the whole story fairly, which I think is disappointing. And though I hardly found anything far beyond belief while watching it, a few things come along much too quick in the end.Besides that, this movie is a nearly forgotten and obviously ignored gem that definitely needed to be rediscovered and completely restored like "Woman On The Run" or "Kansas City Confidential" with whom it can compete. It is not those dark and grim type of film noir like "The Killing" or "Force Of Evil" - both are in fact superior movies. But in my opinion "Whispering City" belongs without a doubt to the better half of that period and I'd recommend it to everybody, who is interested in that. "Whispering City" also proves that way back then the Canadians were hard drinkers too. Well, that might also be a fact, because its director was a Russian immigrant. Watch that movie, and remember Fyodor Otsep, because he did a fine job.

This is a very good Canadian film. On the face of it, one would expect a strictly routine lady reporter investigating some unusual doings, but it's much more than that. I won't spoil the intricate plot, but it does take concentration to follow. Paul Lukas is, of course, his usual magnificent self The camera work is especially good and the backdrop of a city that most Americans didn't see very much of on the screen is quite good. The classical tone set by Helmut Dantine's character's composition, The Quebec Concerto, is very impressive.One realizes who the villain is from his first appearance and yet the movie achieves not quite Hitchcockian suspense by the end. This is indeed an unjustly overlooked film.

Whispering City's locale is Quebec City, that odd European fortress set high over the St. Lawrence River; it comes to Gallic life more fully here than in Alfred Hitchcock's I Confess, made a few years later.The death in an auto accident of a long-retired actress spurs crime reporter Mary Anderson to work up a feature story; the woman was sent to a sanitarium years before for insisting that her fiance's death was actually murder. Pursuing a lead, Anderson interviews a prosperous benefactor of the arts (Paul Lukas), who seems curiously bothered by the visit. Currently, Lukas serves as the patron of an impoverished young pianist/composer (Helmut Dantine; the two actors both appeared in Watch on the Rhine). Dantine is working on something called The Quebec Concerto; an oddly scored work, its orchestra features a Sousaphone rearing its brassy bell.An overcomplicated but still compelling plot involves Dantine's disturbed shrew of a wife, who's dependent on injections to make her sleep; the discovery of her suicide, which is made to look like murder (well, it seemed to work once); a blackmail scheme to engineer another murder; and a faked death made to look like yet another murder. (Eagle-Lion was not known for the elegant simplicity of its plots.)Oddly, it all works, if a bit creakily. Mary Anderson suggests two-thirds Teresa Wright and a third Bonita Granville; the latter impression no doubt derives from her sleuthing around in a jaunty tam, like Nancy Drew. She has the distinction (as does the director, the short-lived Fedor Ozep, as he's credited here) of helping to make the best Nancy Drew mystery ever released. That's faint praise, but praise nonetheless.