Dangerous Crossing

I decided to watch and review Dangerous Crossing, an old noir mystery thriller (noir being the somewhat forgotten cinematic genre adjacent to Hardboiled Detective; in other words, the Chandler/Hammett school), and not only because I liked the still frame of Patricia Crain's face (her expression was one of shocked horror), but also it featured the tall, handsome, Klaatu himself--Michael Rennie of The Day the Earth Stood Still fame. The one with Gort. Not Will Smith.

The film uses as its premise a reworking of a familiar urban legend, one dating from Victorian times, wherein a girl and her mother visit Paris, check into a hotel room, and the mother, taken ill, implores the daughter to fetch a doctor. She does so and, returning a short time later, is astounded to find that her mother has disappeared--the room and all of their possessions have been cleaned out, and the staff of the hotel acts unaware and puzzled at the assertions of the strange young American woman that claims she checked into the hotel with her elderly mother. The creepy little tale ends with the young woman being confined for life to a French mental asylum (one hopes they serve only the finest cuisine) raving forever more about her mother--who, based upon each listener's individual interpretation, either vanished into an alternate dimension (or perhaps the daughter "crossed over" from her dimension into a mirrored, but slightly altered, "reality") or never existed except in the crazed confines of her daughter's skull.

(A more plausible explanation might be that the mother took ill with some strain of typhoid or even bubonic plague--and that the staff, to forego widespread panic, quickly decided to "dispose" of her, strip the room bare, and clean it, and act as if she never existed at all. But, either way, it's one for Ripley or Rod Serling even.)

Getting back to the film, Ruth and John (Jeanne Crain and Carl Betz) book passage on a steamer. We're never told what final port the ship is destined to dock at--or, at least, if we are, I missed it. However, this is their honeymoon, and he lifts her and carries her over the threshold of Cabin B16. he then tells Ruth to go out on the deck and wave to no one in particular. She does so, and then the real fun commences.

John disappears, and the stewardess (Mary Anderson as "Anna Quinn") assures everyone that Ruth is batshit insane, that John doesn't exist, and that Ruth boarded and booked Cabin B18, and did so alone. Ruth, her internal dialog audible to all of us, begins to seem unhinged, as the Captain, and Dr. Manning (Michael Rennie, looking as tall, hawkish, regal, English, and Sherlock Holmesian as he ever did), try to find "John" (who, it is suggested is a figment of her imagination conjured up over trauma related to her very wealthy father's death). John telephones a couple of times, cowering in the fog-shrouded darkness on deck.

Or so we believe. But perhaps Ruth simply is crazy.

The mystery of it all is wound up tighter than a seaman's jib. (Or some such.) The film, which is not long, moves past you at a good pace, being the sort of picture that is already halfway done before you even realize it. (At least, you don't find yourself wanting to pause it and do other things before it's over.) Performances are adequate and appropriate to the material, and the sound effects, set design, and general aesthetics are undeniably pleasing. The images are beautiful, noirish, black-and-white, and "A Woman in Danger" is always the setting for a tantalizing, if abbreviated, mindbender. Based on a 1943 play by John Dickson Carr, Cabin B-13, and directed by John Newman, who directed This Island Earth, audiences at the time may have unaccountably been lukewarm to it--or reviewers might have been less than thrilled. But what did they know? They've all set sail in uncharted waters, long, long ago.

Dangerous Crossing (1953)

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