Phantom Lady (1944)

I went to the NYPD-festival at Film Forum, one of NYC's best small venues for cinema. Film forum is a small, friendly place that shows an interesting range of films, abeit some crappy ones too (don't get me started). Anyway: Phantom lady is the kind of sleazy film noir working with dark atmospheres and cuddly romance. A lightweight formula: yes. Entertaining: absolutely. As the film starts, we are informed that the protagonist, an engineer, has had a rough day. He's at a bar, looking all haggard. He has tickets to a show, and decides to ask a lady in a funny hat whether she'd like to join him for the show. Off they go. The man knows nothing about the mysterious lady. The man comes home, and finds his wife - dead. Strangled. As the NYPD officers question him, he thinks he has an obvious alibi. But it turns out nobody saw the mysterious woman, and so he is found guilty for murder. The man's co-worker, secretly in love with him, starts to look into the case.... As funny it is to watch this movie, afterwards, I was thinking about how violence against women are often recurring in these movies, but the circumstances around it, jealousy, hatered, rage - is often touched on with very light streaks, dodging or hinting at the darkness at hand. But I guess that remains one of the aspects of the noir genre: some things are resolved, mysteries are no longer mysteries, while the deepest root to doom & gloom are never quite brought to the surface. All in all, Robert Siodmak made a beautiful noir picture, elegant, with witty dialogue. A lot of details in the film bear a stint of surrealism. In one scene, a lengthy jazz number is performed in a dingy space. The drummer, A MYSTERY MAN, bangs awhttp://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=6248144908294922985ay at his set, for several minutes, while the camera deliriosly follows the movements. In another scene, in a court setting, the camera tracks from the central events to the curious and blasé audience; a loud sneezing makes the gravely decision comnpletely inaudible.
What you have to live with if you intend to watch this film is that the story is utterly nonsensical. As a New Yorker reviewer complains, this movies lacks reason. But who needs reason anyway?