{"id":34570,"date":"2016-08-28T08:07:07","date_gmt":"2016-08-28T13:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/?p=34570"},"modified":"2017-07-28T16:52:26","modified_gmt":"2017-07-28T21:52:26","slug":"in-pursuit-of-the-chase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/2016\/08\/28\/in-pursuit-of-the-chase\/","title":{"rendered":"In pursuit of THE CHASE"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Club<\/a><\/p>\n

The Chase<\/strong> (1946).<\/em><\/p>\n

DB here:<\/p>\n

While writing my book on Forties Hollywood, I often felt that every movie I talked about was based on a bestseller, a Broadway play, or something by Cornell Woolrich. Many of the best, or at least strangest, films of the era come from his haunted imagination.<\/p>\n

T\"Blackhe Chase<\/em> (1946), long a cult film maudit<\/em>, is for some aficionados the ultimate noir. It manages to be even more peculiar\u00a0than its source novel, Woolrich\u2019s The Black Path of Fear<\/em> (1944). Although I began reading Woolrich as a teenager, I didn’t catch up with the film until the 2000s, in a so-so DVD. It has come to occupy a minor place of honor in the book (due out next fall, thanks for asking).<\/p>\n

Kino Lorber has recently released The Chase<\/a><\/em> in a nicely cleaned-up DVD\/Blu-ray edition. So all hail UCLA\u2019s efforts restoring this neglected item, as well as its rescue\u00a0of other worthy titles: Renoir\u2019s The Southerner<\/em><\/a> (1945, also from Kino Lorber),\u00a0\u00a0Too Late for Tears<\/a><\/em> (1949), and Woman on the Run<\/a><\/em> (1950), the last two from the estimable Flicker Alley. Kino Lorber has decorated the Chase<\/em> release with commentary by Guy Maddin and recordings of two radio shows based on the Woolrich novel. (A pity we don\u2019t have the Hedda Hopper radio show promoting the film, but maybe that\u2019s lost.)<\/p>\n

My book features The Chase<\/em> because it poses with extreme prejudice the question of how far narrative innovation could go in the 1940s. Sometimes, as I\u2019ve argued with The Great Moment<\/em> and All about Eve<\/em><\/a>, filmmakers go too far and get pulled back. But then readjustments necessary in postproduction may create twitches of novelty too. The Chase<\/em> is another example of innovation by accident.<\/p>\n

In the book, I mostly analyze the film. But I\u2019ve also done a little digging into its production and promotion, as a way of explaining some of its captivating oddities. I came up with some information I haven\u2019t seen discussed anywhere, so I thought I\u2019d pass it along in a blog entry.<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t located any scripts, alas, but our archive at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research holds other intriguing documents, including correspondence, a typescript synopsis, and a gorgeous presskit. Elsewhere I came across a document that gives clues about\u00a0what the script and, at one stage, the film were like. There are reasons to think that\u00a0an\u00a0early version of the film was even stranger than the finished movie.<\/p>\n

There must be spoilers<\/strong>, for both The Chase<\/em> and The Woman in the Window<\/em> (1944). Oddly enough, as we\u2019ll see, contemporary reviewers of these movies didn\u2019t worry about spoilers, so maybe I shouldn\u2019t either.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Die in Havana, wake up in Miami<\/b><\/p>\n

\"Chuck<\/a><\/p>\n

The Black Path of Fear<\/em> begins in a fraught situation. Bill Scott enters a Havana club with an American woman. As they kiss, she is suddenly stabbed to death, and he\u2019s the prime suspect. He escapes from police questioning and takes refuge in the tenement apartment of another woman, nicknamed Midnight. Scott recounts his backstory in a brief flashback, and then he sets out to find the people who have killed his woman and framed him. His effort takes him into the opium racket run by Eddie Roman from Miami. The bulk of the action takes place in Havana, with the flashback and a penultimate episode set in Miami.<\/p>\n

The Chase<\/em> shifts the book\u2019s flashback material to its chronological place. The film begins with navy veteran Chuck Scott down on his luck. He finds a wallet belonging to crooked businessman Eddie Roman, returns it, and for his honesty is rewarded with the job of a chauffeur. He meets Eddie\u2019s wife Lorna, and soon they are plotting to run away to Havana.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when things get strange. On the night of the couple\u2019s planned escape, Scott stretches out to read a newspaper. Fade out and up to Eddie, also stretched out, listening to a phonograph record–first in extreme long shot, then in mid-shot.<\/p>\n

\"Chuck<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"Eddie<\/a><\/p>\n

Eddie\u2019s assistant Gino comes to Scott\u2019s room and finds him gone. He reports to Eddie, showing the telltale travel folder.<\/p>\n

\"Gino<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"Eddie<\/a><\/p>\n

As the recorded music continues, we are taken to a ship, where in a stateroom Scott is playing the same tune on a piano. Lorna is with him and they are evidently on their way to freedom.<\/p>\n

Once the lovers are in Havana, The Chase<\/em> follows the original novel, up to a point. Lorna is stabbed to death in the bar, Scott becomes the main suspect, and he flees the police by hiding in Midnight\u2019s apartment. Soon Scott discovers that Gino is in Havana. He has arranged Lorna\u2019s murder and the\u00a0frame-up of\u00a0Scott.<\/p>\n

But now comes an astonishing twist, not in the novel. Gino finds Chuck hiding behind a curtain, shoots him, and dumps his body down a trap door. The body lies lifeless on the stair.<\/p>\n

\"Chuck<\/a><\/p>\n

This is plotting in extremis<\/em>. An hour into the film, both heroine and hero have evidently been killed and the unsavory characters have won. How to get out of this impasse? A telephone in the cellar rings. Cut to a ringing telephone on a desk, and track back. Chuck Scott is waking up, still on his bed with his newspaper.<\/p>\n

\"Phone<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"Phone<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"Chuck<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"Chuck<\/a><\/p>\n

He has dreamed the entire thirty-minute escape to Cuba, and we weren\u2019t told he had fallen asleep.<\/p>\n

This is the sort of twist modern filmmakers don\u2019t advertise in advance, and indeed online accounts\u00a0of the Kino Lorber disc, such as the shrewd review by Glenn Erickson<\/a>, have been admirably discreet about it. Yet contemporary reviews openly revealed the device. Six out of seven trade-paper reviews I\u2019ve found announce the dream twist. Daily Variety<\/em> claimed that this \u201cwild and disordered narrative\u201d consumes \u201cmore than half the picture\u201d (no) and \u201cthrows audience for a loss\u201d (yes). Motion Picture Herald<\/em> was less condemnatory\u2014\u201cthe whole tangle untangles in a satisfactory manner\u201d\u2014but somehow found that Scott \u201chas been dreaming a dream inside of a dream.\u201d<\/p>\n

Critics in the general press were likewise unafraid of spoilers. Life<\/em> was a bit coy: \u201cIts highly improbable plot has the eerie sensation of a bad dream.\u201d The New York Times<\/em> was more explicit: \u201cAll the foregoing horrors, however, are only a nightmare of Cummings\u2019 ailing brain.\u201d Of the violence, the Los Angeles Times<\/em> noted, \u201cMost. . . occurs in a dream sequence, which proves puzzling at first\u2026.\u201d So perhaps some audiences, primed by reviews, were actually waiting for the twist. The film\u2019s presskit does include suggestions for dream stunts exhibitors might try.<\/p>\n

In any case, the dream has taken its toll on Chuck. Now he has amnesia, which spread among 40s movie heroes like a plague. Forgetting his promise to help Lorna escape, forgetting even how he got the chauffeur job with Eddie, he returns to his navy doctor for help. \u201cIt\u2019s happened again,\u201d Scott tells him. Dr. Davidson says he has \u201canxiety neurosis,\u201d dismisses the Havana material as \u201cdream-stuff,\u201d and reassures him that he\u2019s getting better. But from the spectator\u2019s standpoint, the entire plot is put on hold.<\/p>\n

The climax carries coincidence to new heights. Dr. Davidson takes Scott to a restaurant for a drink. Pieces of Chuck\u2019s memory return, chiefly the name Lorna. At that moment Eddie and Gino stroll into the restaurant, having locked up Lorna at home. As Davidson chats with Eddie, Chuck finds the tickets to Havana in his pocket and remembers more. Rushing to Eddie\u2019s mansion, he frees Lorna and takes her to the ship. Eddie learns of their plan and races to get to the pier, but en route his car is struck by a train.<\/p>\n

Unlike Woolrich\u2019s novel, The Chase<\/em> takes place almost wholly in Miami, with the Havana dream as an interlude. The epilogue returns to the Havana nightclub and Chuck and Lorna in a carriage at the curb. As they embrace, Chuck says, \u201cWe\u2019ll be together forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There doesn\u2019t seem to be any beginning<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Dock<\/a><\/p>\n

The Chase<\/em>, released 22 November 1946, followed a series of and-then-I-woke-up pictures: The Woman in the Window<\/em> (1944), The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry<\/em> (1945), and Strange Impersonation<\/em> (March 1946). All of these thrillers depend on a double bluff. They seamlessly move from waking life to a dream scenario without tipping us off. They return to real life in a symmetrical fashion, while\u00a0letting us observe\u00a0how we were misled.<\/p>\n

Hooks<\/a> are very helpful here. For example, in The Woman in the Window<\/em>, Professor Wanley asks a club servant to remind him when it\u2019s 10:30. He settles down to read. Dissolve to the clock chiming 10:30.<\/p>\n

\"Woman<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"Woman<\/a><\/p>\n

Wanley is still reading when the servant\u2019s voice from offscreen tells him the time. The camera pulls back as the servant enters the frame.<\/p>\n

\"Woman<\/a><\/p>\n

The transition is imperceptible. At the climax of\u00a0the dream, when Wanley has sought to commit suicide with an overdose of sleeping powder, we get a parallel situation: He\u2019s seated in a chair at home, and the camera tracks in. He seems to die, as the lighting changes.<\/p>\n

\"Woman<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"Woman<\/a><\/p>\n

But the servant\u2019s hand comes in to shake him, he awakes, and we hear the club clock chiming 10:30. The camera tracks back, and the glass in Wanley’s\u00a0hand in the dream has become the sherry glass he held in the framing scene.<\/p>\n

\"Woman<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"Woman<\/a><\/p>\n

Like its predecessors, The Chase<\/em> doesn\u2019t signal its dream transition. No whirling superimpositions lead into it, no outlandish compositions announce\u00a0that we\u2019re in the middle of it. (For comparison, see Stranger on the Third Floor<\/em>, 1940.) As in The Woman in the Window,<\/em>\u00a0the shift is cunningly concealed. Here offscreen music on Eddie Roman\u2019s phonograph is continued as an auditory hook into the start of the dream.<\/p>\n

In retrospect, we might argue that the Havana episode hints at its subjective status.\u00a0Chuck yawns slightly\u00a0as he’s reading his newspaper, though\u00a0I don’t think most viewers take that as a dream cue. The concerto music, issuing from a phonograph in Eddie\u2019s living room, is, implausibly, picked up by Scott, who plays the tune on board the ship. The light falling on Lorna and Scott in their cabin is markedly unrealistic, with a shadow dropping and rising on the porthole.<\/p>\n

\"Porthole<\/a><\/p>\n

Scott tells Lorna to \u201cForget time,\u201d and the song to which the couple dance in the club contains the line, \u201cLike the stars in a dream song.\u201d And when Dr. Davidson asks how it all began, Scott replies: \u201cThere doesn\u2019t seem to be any beginning\u201d\u2014as if acknowledging the surreptitious segue into his\u00a0imaginings. The Chase<\/em> wouldn\u2019t be the first 1940s film to flaunt its own artifice.<\/p>\n

The Chase<\/em> revises the dream schema in a couple of intriguing ways. For one thing, The Woman in the Window<\/em> and Strange Impersonation<\/em> make the dream the bulk of the film; the lead-in and lead-out are fairly perfunctory. Many other films make the dream a brief one, enclosed within long stretches of real-life action. The Chase<\/em> gives us something midway between, a thirty-minute dream that functions as a block almost exactly equal to the chunk\u00a0of real-world action that precedes it. We have to trace our steps backward to an earlier point of departure and then reckon how new action connects to it. Something similar happens with Uncle Harry<\/em>, but there the dream comes so late as to supply the film\u2019s climax.<\/p>\n

Moreover, in the other films, the dream doesn\u2019t actually alter the real-world situation that gave birth to it. Here, though, the dream has a causal function: It triggers the recurrence of Chuck\u2019s amnesia.<\/p>\n

The Chase<\/em> goes a little farther than its predecessors in another way, The other films in the cycle keep the visual narration attached to the dreamer before and after the transition; that is, the dream\u2019s first scene shows us the dreamer continuing to act. Both\u00a0Woman in the Window<\/em> transitions keep us fastened on Wanley. But the first scenes in Scott\u2019s dream feature not Scott but Eddie and Gino. We accept this shift of attachment partly because from the start the film\u2019s narration has been fairly unrestricted, crosscutting between Scott and Eddie. Early in the dream, this\u00a0departure from Scott\u2019s range of knowledge seems to confirm the objectivity of what follows.<\/p>\n

Scott, it turns out, can dream what the bad guys are doing, and because of this we can get a moment of even sneakier duplicity. Within the dream, Gino finds Chuck gone. The beer bottle and discarded newspaper help\u00a0reaffirm the reality of the scene because an earlier scene of Scott rising included the same props: the beer bottle on the nightstand, and a newspaper in\u00a0Chuck’s lap.<\/p>\n

\"Gino<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"Chuck<\/a><\/p>\n

With the turn to the amnesia device, things become no less dislocated. After Scott visits Dr. Davidson, he becomes surprisingly telepathic. When Eddie learns that Lorna wants to leave, he beats her and locks her in. Dissolve from her sobbing on the floor to Chuck\u00a0at the bar, staring into space and remembering her name.<\/p>\n

\"Lorna<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"Chuck<\/a><\/p>\n

Immediately after we\u2019ve seen Eddie\u2019s car smashed by the train, Scott is waiting with Lorna in a stateroom that recalls the dream flight. He\u2019s seized by a calm confidence, as if he intuited their salvation. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter now.\u201d From that we segue to the two kissing in the carriage outside the Havana club.<\/p>\n

For all its attractiveness, Scott\u2019s Cuban adventure doesn\u2019t resolve the main plot. It postpones the Miami action by motivating\u00a0his new bout of amnesia. Once Chuck loses his memory and flees Eddie\u2019s house, the couple\u2019s planned escape is scotched and the film has to start over by introducing a new character, the therapist Dr. Davidson, and relying on massive coincidence to bring Eddie and Gino back into the action. Perhaps this is why trade critics complained that the last stretch of the film was clumsy.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The case of the missing flashback<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Tickets<\/a><\/p>\n

So far, so weird. But I think that an earlier state of The Chase<\/em> was even weirder.<\/p>\n

First, some background. Judging by the press coverage, it seems that the figure of authority\u00a0on the film was the producer Seymour Nebenzal (below). He was a venerable figure, having produced many German classics\u2014M <\/em>(1931), The Threepenny Opera <\/em>(1931), The Testament of Dr. Mabuse <\/em>(1933)\u2014before fleeing the Nazis. He spent some years in France, producing among other films Mayerling<\/em> (1936) and Ophuls\u2019 Roman de Werther<\/em> (1938). Emigrating to the US, he continued to work as an independent producer, with such films as We Who Are Young <\/em>(1942), Prisoner of Japan <\/em>(1942), and the Sirk films Hitler\u2019s Madman <\/em>(1943) and Summer Storm <\/em>(1944).<\/p>\n

\"Nebenzal<\/p>\n

Screenwriter Philip Yordan had bought the rights to Maritta Wolff\u2019s 1941 novel Whistle Stop<\/em>, prepared a screen adaptation, and sold the whole package to Nebenzal. Nebenzal had just reconstituted his Weimar company Nero Film, and Whistle Stop<\/em> (January 1946) was its first release. Yordan applied the same packaging strategy to The Black Path of Fear<\/em>. He bought the rights to Woolrich\u2019s novel, then sold them and his adaptation to Nero. Director Arthur Ripley became involved after halting work on his adaptation of Wolfe\u2019s Look Homeward, Angel<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Yordan was said to have had a financial interest in the film, and apparently Nebenzal promised him the credit \u201cPhilip Yordan\u2019s The Chase<\/em>,\u201d which didn\u2019t come to pass. Most of the publicity spotlighted Nebenzal, who was credited with many of the creative decisions.<\/p>\n

The Chase<\/em> was not a low-budget project. It was promoted and distributed as an A picture. Boxoffice<\/em>, the exhibitors\u2019 trade paper, called it a \u201cgrade-A gripper, aimed at class houses.\u201d The presskit reveals a tie-in with the Arthur Murray dance studios, which would teach patrons a new step, \u201cThe Chase.\u201d (See at very bottom.) At worst the picture might function as a \u201cnervous A\u201d because of the relatively second-tier status of its stars (though Robert Cummings had profit participation in the project).<\/p>\n

The production budget, according to an October 1947 financial statement in the WCFTR Collection, was $898,300.60. That doesn\u2019t include debt service of about $40,000. In public statements, Nebenzal claimed<\/a> that he boosted the film\u2019s budget to $1.2 million. In all, these figures are in line with a mid-range A picture for the period; the average negative cost for all feature films in 1946 was $665,863 (in an era with a lot of B\u2019s at $300,000 or less).<\/p>\n

As befits its budget, The Chase<\/em> contains\u00a0solid miniature work and big sets, like Eddie Roman\u2019s mansion and the Habana Club. Reviews praised its high production values, achieved by shooting at the Goldwyn studio. There are a couple of impressive crane shots, and Daily Variety<\/em>\u00a0reported that three camera booms were used on some scenes. There was time for finicky reshoots during and after principal photography.<\/p>\n

In the course of production, Nebenzal issued a stream of press releases. The most important for our purposes appeared in\u00a0Daily Variety<\/em> of 16 September 1946.<\/p>\n

Producer Seymour Nebenzel, believing market is glutted with flashback pictures, has ordered film editor Edward Marin to eliminate flashback sequence in Robert Cummings starrer, \u201cThe Chase.\u201d Script was written so action could start from scratch, instead of starting with chase and then flashing back to start of action, as is done in the Cornell Woolrich novel.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Huh? What flashback?<\/p>\n

When I found this item some years ago, I thought: Of course. The novel has a flashback to Miami, and the film moved it up to be part of the opening Setup. But then I realized: \u00a0The flashback to Miami would have made sense only if the bulk of the film’s action were in Havana. But the film as we have it curtails the novel’s Havana action\u2014most drastically, by killing off the protagonist. Was it possible there was a whole alternative film in which Scott\u00a0survived and tracked down Roman\u2019s opium-smuggling ring, as in the book? Was all that footage shot but jettisoned?<\/p>\n

More likely, the bulk of the action was always going to take place in Miami. (The chase is a relatively small part of The Chase<\/em>.) For one thing, Jack Holt was signed to play Davidson in early July. Davidson is the catalyst for the action leading to the climax, so once Holt was aboard, the final stretch of the film seems locked to Miami.<\/p>\n

So maybe Nebenzal\u2019s remark about taking the \u201cflashback\u201d out was just loose talk. He did display a general pattern of shilly-shallying. He publicly pondered, for instance, whether Lorna should live or die. He claimed to have requested two versions of the script: one in which Lorna remains dead at the end (as in the novel) and one in which she isn\u2019t really dead (to be managed somehow). He said he\u2019d leave it to preview audiences to decide.<\/p>\n

This seemed to me a big tease. Nebenzal originally wanted Joan Leslie for the part and pursued her intently before discovering that she was unobtainable. Mich\u00e8le Morgan, though a minor figure in the States, was\u00a0a star in France; she won an acting prize at Cannes shortly before The Chase<\/em> was released. By the fall Nebenzal sought to sign her to a longer-term contract. Keeping Lorna alive for more screen time, as happens in the film\u2019s final Miami section, would be a good buildup for Morgan. In an April press release, Nebenzal had already seemed inclined\u00a0toward letting Lorna live.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter all,\u201d he reasoned, \u201cpeople want to be relieved of their daily troubles when they go to the movies. They don\u2019t want to see their favorite actor or actress killed off.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

By September, Lorna definitely survived. Another press release:<\/p>\n

Seymour Nebenzal shot 3 endings for \u201cThe Chase,\u201d showing Robert Cummings and Mich\u00e8le Morgan fleeing by land and sea. One ending had them scramming aboard ship, another on a train, the third on a bus. So far the bus flight is favored.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The shipboard option was chosen, obviously, but the mention of alternative escape vehicles entails that by early September, Lorna was intended to survive one way or another.<\/p>\n

All this on-again, off-again made me disregard the item about \u201celiminating the flashback\u201d as guff or misreporting. That was a mistake.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The film beneath the film<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Negative<\/a><\/p>\n

Then as now, one way to promote a new Hollywood release was to publish a novelization: not the original book that the film was based on, but a new literary text derived from the film. As I write this, Alexander Freed\u2019s novelization<\/a> of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story<\/em> is available for preorder. Then as now, the novelization would be timed to arrive when the film was released.<\/p>\n

\"MOVIE<\/a>In late June Nebenzal told United Artists officials that he had arranged for a \u201cfictionization\u201d of The Chase, <\/em>to be published\u00a0in Movie Mystery Magazine<\/em>. That periodical\u2019s inaugural issue, dated December-January 1946, did appear on newsstands in November, during the film\u2019s release.<\/p>\n

Novelizations, then as now, were typically prepared not from the finished film but from a script or treatment. And indeed Nebenzal indicated in his letter that he would be sending the magazine a copy of the script.\u00a0It seems likely, then, that the version of the film \u201cfictionized\u201d in MMM<\/em> reflects the state of the script in the summer of 1946. If we read the MMM<\/em> version, what do we find?<\/p>\n

We find a narrative structure that\u2019s far more peculiar than the finished film. Here\u2019s how it goes.<\/p>\n

The novelization starts with Chuck and Lorna in Havana, en route to their ship. Their carriage stops at the La Habana club, they go in for a drink, and Lorna is stabbed. Arrested, Chuck escapes from the police and takes refuge with Midnight in the tenement. She asks him what brought him to this pass, and in a flashback he tells her. This takes us back to Miami, where he finds Roman\u2019s wallet, meets Lorna, falls in love, and flees with her. The flashback ends with the couple in their cabin aboard ship.<\/p>\n

All this conforms to Woolrich\u2019s book, and it strongly suggests that Nebenzal wasn\u2019t blowing smoke when he said in September that he was making the editor \u201celiminate the flashback.\u201d Evidently Chuck\u2019s flashback existed in both a shooting script and an early version of the film. Its position must have been fairly firm for some time, if as late as September Nebenzal could move it to the front of the film.<\/p>\n

Does the novelization follow the Woolrich original\u00a0after the flashback closes? It does up to a point. From the scene of Chuck and Lorna in their cabin aboard the ship, we return to the present, in Midnight\u2019s apartment. There she advises Chuck on how to investigate Lorna\u2019s death. He finds the photographer dead.\u00a0Then comes the deviation. Chuck discovers Gino at Mrs. Chin\u2019s shop, burning the incriminating photograph. \u00a0In the novelization, Gino beats Chuck unconscious and dumps his body down to a cellar.<\/p>\n

Now for the big twist. Chuck wakes up in his room in Roman\u2019s mansion. Scott\u00a0is now back in Miami, completely befuddled. All he can do is stumble to the phone, take some pills, and call Dr. Davidson. The\u00a0novelization goes on to adhere pretty closely to the rest of the film as we have it.<\/p>\n

In the novelization, in other words, the entire<\/em> action up to this point, in both Havana and Miami, has been Chuck\u2019s dream. Here\u2019s the outline, just to be clear. What’s in green is veridical, what’s in red is not.<\/p>\n

{Chuck\u2019s dream begins: No front framing situation.}<\/span><\/p>\n

Havana (dream): Lorna murdered at the Habana club, Chuck flees, and he meets Midnight. This contains:<\/span><\/p>\n

Miami flashback (accurate up to the couple’s flight): Chuck hired by Eddie, meets Lorna, escapes with her\u00a0on ship.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Havana (dream): Chuck investigates, is killed by Gino.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dream ends: Chuck wakes up in Miami with amnesia.<\/span><\/p>\n

Chuck goes to Dr. Davidson, who takes him to bar. Chuck rescues Lorna, and Gino and Eddie die in crash.<\/span><\/p>\n

Epilogue: Couple freed, en route to Havana on ship.<\/span><\/p>\n

Two things make this pattern striking\u2014one minor, one pretty scandalous.<\/p>\n

First, there\u2019s no \u201cfront frame\u201d: no situation that puts Chuck in a pre-dream reality. By convention, we don\u2019t have to see him actually fall asleep, but it\u2019s usual to provide circumstances that we can understand retrospectively as preparation for sleep. This is what we get in The Woman in the Window <\/em>and other then-I-woke-up films. But this movie starts inside<\/em> the dream.<\/p>\n

Nowadays, of course, we\u2019re used to sequences in which a dream is signaled only after the fact. In Out of Sight<\/em> (1998) we see Karen Sisco sneak up on Jack Foley and then fall to kissing him in his bathtub; then the scene is revealed as a dream. But in the Forties, and even today, it wasn\u2019t usual to have a dream launch the film and go on for over fifty minutes before revealing itself as<\/em> a dream.<\/p>\n

Second, the scandalous aspect. In the novelization\u2019s version of the plot, and presumably the script and an early draft of the film, the dream includes the flashback to Miami. The framing dream material is fantasy, but the flashback is for the most part veridical. Eddie, Gino, Lorna et al. really did most of what we see them doing, even if the encounter with Midnight, the Habana murder, and Chuck\u2019s fight with Gino aren\u2019t real. The only stretch of the Miami flashback that isn’t real is the couple’s flight (which hasn’t happened yet in the waking world).<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s why, I suggest, we get those two lines when Chuck visits Davidson. \u201cThere doesn\u2019t seem to be any beginning,\u201d Chuck says. Right: because we never saw a beginning, an opening frame for the long dream stretch. And Davidson is at pains to reiterate that the Havana adventure is \u201cdream-stuff\u201d while Roman and Lorna are definitely real. Davidson\u2019s remarks would have served as redundant confirmation for the audience that most of the Miami flashback could be trusted.<\/p>\n

During the 1940s, filmmakers competed to find outlandish variants on subjective viewpoints, dreams, and flashbacks. Embedding real scenes as a flashback within a larger, definitely unreal but unmarked dream constitutes a genuine, if screwy innovation for the era.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Fixing it, sort of, in post<\/strong><\/p>\n

On all this circumstantial evidence, I surmise that the novelization\u2019s weird structure was in the script as planned and in the film as initially shot during the summer of 1946. At some point, however\u2014perhaps after previews\u2014Nebenzal thought the better of it. He instructed the editor to move the Miami flashback to the front of the film, where it serves as a conventional chronological introduction to the action. But now what do you do with the Havana stuff? Are you going to kill off Lorna?<\/p>\n

No. Clearly Nebenzal and his team had decided to keep the dream idea, but confine it wholly to the Havana episode. That allows Lorna to live at the film\u2019s close. But now they would need to set up the dream within the Miami stretch. So they provided a frame that\u2019s not in the novelization: the scene of Chuck stretching out on his bed as an equivocal prelude to the dream. In other words, a reshoot was called for.<\/p>\n

Correspondence between Nebenzal and Paul Lazarus, Jr., head of advertising for United Artists, suggests considerable last-minute reworking. Nebenzal, invited to show some reels at a 19 August New York City trade event, declined, saying that nothing was in final shape. Having agreed to come to the event, he then demurred, saying he needed to start retakes on Monday 12 August. He promised to deliver the film \u201cbeginning of September,\u201d but midway through that\u00a0month he was shooting three endings, announcing a budget increase, and claiming he was eliminating the flashback. Not until 7 October did Lazarus finally get to see the film (which he praised). The trade press viewed The Chase<\/em> on 11 October: a tight squeeze.<\/p>\n

These events suggest\u00a0that having decided to eliminate the flashback, Nebenzal arranged reshoots and postproduction adjustments to set up\u00a0the dream with framing scenes in Chuck\u2019s bedroom. Interestingly, those framing scenes show the bedroom as slightly different than we\u2019ve seen it earlier. The lead-in to the dream shows the room as it looks in the later waking-up scene.<\/p>\n

\"Chuck<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"Chuck<\/a><\/p>\n

These show consistent placement of the phone on the desk, along with a chair and Chuck’s suitcase open on it.\u00a0But earlier views of the room include different furnishings–no second chair by the desk, a floor lamp, a wastebasket by the bed, the phone in a different spot, a book supporting Chuck’s bedside lamp.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

No big deal, of course; these shots are from earlier in the story than the night of Chuck’s departure. The hitch is that when Gino comes in after Chuck has left (that is, following<\/em> Chuck’s lying on the bed in the first shot above), the room is as it was in the earlier<\/em> scene. In the shot before Gino enters, we can see there’s no extra chair, all the stuff on the night table is\u00a0as earlier in the film, and the Schlitz bottle is there–as it isn’t when Chuck stretched out before his departure, or when he wakes up thereafter.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"Gino<\/a><\/p>\n

The dream presentation of the room is identical with\u00a0the earlier purportedly non-dream\u00a0room. (As you’d expect if both setups were once\u00a0part of the “real” flashback.) But those views are\u00a0not identical with the look of the room when the dream began.<\/p>\n

I’m not suggesting that the audience would notice these continuity lapses. I’m suggesting that they’re evidence of an imperfect reshoot. Here it appears that both the entry into the dream and the movement out from it weren’t filmed as they would normally be:\u00a0in conjunction with\u00a0the other scenes in the same set. It seems that some time after doing the first round of bedroom scenes, Nebenzal rebuilt\u00a0or redressed the set and shot the first frame situation, that of Chuck going to sleep, and at the same time shot the closing situation, of him waking up. Nebenzal\u00a0may have had one version of the wakeup\u00a0scene already, since it was required by the earlier screenplay version. But perhaps he hadn\u2019t completed it yet, or perhaps he just reshot it in the redressed set to be on the safe side. As far as I can tell, all the shots during Chuck’s return to consciousness are filmed in the redressed set, the one with the open suitcase.<\/p>\n

I suspect that there was a change in the Havana sequence\u00a0too. The novelization doesn\u2019t have Chuck murdered, only struck unconscious. The film as we have it revises that to a kill. But the manner of presentation of his death\u2014behind a curtain, with offscreen gunshots and an odd axial cut to the curtain\u2014suggests some adjustment in production or postproduction. If the reshoot did have Chuck killed rather than clobbered, the change drives home the irreal nature of the dream. Nothing proves itself a fantasy more vividly than killing someone off in it and then revealing they\u2019re still alive.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Endless love<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Knife<\/a><\/p>\n

If I\u2019m right, the most ambitious storytelling innovation of the project, the veridical flashback swaddled inside an irreal dream sequence, was scotched. There are other incompatibilities between the finished film and production documents.<\/p>\n

For example, The Black Path of Fear<\/em> includes a moment when, after Lorna and Scott have escaped to the boat, they receive a telegram with a single message: LUCK. \u2013ED It\u2019s meant to suggest that Roman is aware of where they are and where they\u2019re going, thus amping up the suspense. This moment is replicated in the MMM<\/em> novelization, the typescript synopsis, and the synopsis in the presskit.<\/p>\n

In the novelization, Scott burns the telegram.\u00a0The moment is missing from the film, but something like this scene seems to have been planned for Chuck\u2019s encounter with Midnight. Daily Variety<\/em> reported:<\/p>\n

Toughest camera job of the week, according to Franz Planer, lens chief for Seymour Nebenzal\u2019s \u201cThe Chase,\u201d is keeping the camera in focus during a 90-degree angle pan from a cablegram burning on top of a stove to a scene between Robert Cummings and Yolanda Lacca in a Havana tenement flat. It took 20 takes to get a perfect shot. The shot got added complication from the intense heat and the fact that the cameraman had to keep his eye glued to the eyepiece while moving from standing to sitting position.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This suggests that the film showed Chuck burning Roman\u2019s message not with Lorna on shipboard but with Midnight in her apartment. The burning telegram might even have been a transition out of Chuck\u2019s flashback explanation of what happened in Miami.\u00a0That\u2019s pretty speculative on my part, but here\u2019s something more plausible\u2014a fairly clear byproduct of all the last-minute reshuffling of scenes.<\/p>\n

Once Eddie and Gino have been killed on the highway, we could end the film by showing Scott and Lorna embracing in their cabin, this time headed for Havana. That\u2019s in fact the way the novelization and the synopses\u00a0end. The film adds an extra epilogue of Eddie and Lorna embracing in the carriage outside the club. These shots are plainly recycled from early footage. Perhaps there was no suitably romantic footage of the\u00a0couple’s reunion on shipboard. The shots we have don’t seem especially intimate, certainly not typical of a finale.<\/p>\n

\"Cabin<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"Cabin<\/a><\/p>\n

Or perhaps Cummings and Morgan were unavailable for retakes.<\/p>\n

In any case, by providing the scavenged tag we have, the film raises the question: How can the real nightclub we see in the epilogue\u2019s happy ending be, in a sort of Bu\u00f1uelian recursion, the same one that Scott dreams in advance? How did Chuck know the very same bored driver would be there? The question becomes more pressing because the situation at the end seems to replay an\u00a0exact moment\u00a0in the dream, when the couple embrace in a carriage before going into the club. The carriage shots in the dream and in \u201creality\u201d are uncannily similar. All that’s varied from the earlier scene is the order of the shots.<\/p>\n

\"Opening<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"Opening<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"Opening<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Closing<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"Closing<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"Closing<\/a><\/p>\n

The last scene continues the romantic\u00a0dialogue of the first Habana visit, as if nothing had happened in between. And the epilogue even uses a line that was in the opening<\/em> of the novelization, and perhaps the screenplay: Chuck says he will love Lorna forever.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Maybe the filmmakers thought that audiences wouldn\u2019t notice the near-identity with\u00a0the earlier scene, and would just take it as Hollywood\u2019s familiar here-we-go-again gimmick. But the effects are disconcerting. This nearly identical replay gives Chuck\u2019s dream the power of prophecy. Or perhaps\u00a0this last scene just starts\u00a0the dream over again\u2014and leads to the same fate for Lorna. The dream may have taken away Scott\u2019s immediate memory of his affair with Lorna, but it has given him, through the film\u2019s recycling of motifs, an uncanny power over the final bit of the narrative. He can intuit Eddie’s death and revisit in reality the scene of passion and murder he imagined.\u00a0Were these associations fully intended by the filmmakers? Say rather that by shuffling together, somewhat desperately, characteristic 1940s devices, The Chase<\/em> takes us into a winding labyrinth of alternative\u00a0stories.<\/p>\n

A later entry<\/a> on the film offers some more evidence for the production changes that resulted in its peculiar structure.<\/p>\n

\n

First, many thanks to Mary Huelsbeck, Assistant Director of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, for helping me find valuable documents in the United Artists Corporation Records. It would be too lengthy to cite all the specific items I used, but the principal ones are in Series 3A: Producers Legal File, 1933-1936; Series 4D: The Paul Lazarus, Jr. Files, 1943-1949; and Series 5.3: United Artists Dialogues, 1928-1956.<\/p>\n

The most important press releases are the one about the three endings, in \u201c\u201dJust for Variety,\u201d Daily Variety<\/em> (3 September 1946), 4, and the one about the elimination of the flashback, in \u201cHollywood Inside,\u201d Daily Variety<\/em> (16 September 1946), 2. The film reviews I\u2019ve quoted are \u201cThe Chase,\u201d Daily Variety<\/em> (14 October 1946), 3; \u201cThe Chase,\u201d<\/a> Motion Picture Herald<\/em> (19 October 1946), 3262; \u201cMovie of the Week: The Chase<\/em>,\u201d <\/a>Life<\/em> (11 November 1946), 137; Archer Winsten, \u201cChase through a Maze,\u201d<\/a> New York Times<\/em> (18 November 1946), 39; John L. Scott, \u201c\u2018The Chase\u2019 Suspenseful,\u201d Los Angeles Times<\/em> (25 January 1947), A5.<\/p>\n

The Movie Mystery Magazine<\/em> version includes some passages\u00a0not in the final film, including internal monologues, flashbacks, and a delirious montage when Chuck is on his way to see Dr. Davidson. These are all pretty common techniques of the period, so it\u2019s possible that the script, or an earlier version of the film, contained them.<\/p>\n

Philip Yordan doesn’t have anything to say about these matters in the published interview with Pat McGilligan in Pat’s Backstory 2: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1940s and 1950s<\/a><\/em> (University of California Press, 1991), 330-381. Yordan’s screenplay collection<\/a> at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences apparently doesn’t include The Chase<\/em>. Of course, if anyone knows where a script of the film may be found, I’d be grateful to learn of it.<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t mentioned one of the strangest items in the film. Eddie Roman is the ultimate backseat driver, and he has installed an accelerator and clutch back there that allows him to override the driver\u2019s control and speed up at will. He uses the gadget\u00a0to test Chuck\u2019s nerves during an outing, and it becomes the means by which he inflicts death on himself and Gino during their race to the dock. Me, I think it would have been a better payoff to let Chuck and Lorna, trussed up in the back seat while Eddie is driving, use the same mechanism to force the car to crash. But The Chase<\/em> is the sort of movie that makes you spin off alternative scenarios as you please.<\/p>\n

For in-depth information on Cornell Woolrich, the definitive source is Francis M Nevins, Jr.’s Cornell Woolrich: First You Dream, Then You Die<\/a><\/em> (New York: Mysterious Press, 1988). Not a bad title for The Chase<\/em>, actually. For more on flashback construction in the 1930s and 1940s, see “Grandmaster Flashback”<\/a> and “Chinese boxes, Russian dolls, and Hollywood movies.”<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Dance<\/a><\/p>\n

The Chase<\/strong> (1946) United Artists pressbook.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Chase (1946). DB here: While writing my book on Forties Hollywood, I often felt that every movie I talked about was based on a bestseller, a Broadway play, or something by Cornell Woolrich. Many of the best, or at least strangest, films of the era come from his haunted imagination. The Chase (1946), long […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[224,119,57,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1940s-hollywood","category-directors-lang","category-hollywood-aesthetic-traditions","category-narrative-strategies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34570"}],"version-history":[{"count":38,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37390,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34570\/revisions\/37390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}