Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Blonde Hair Goes My Bail

Lady on a Train (1945)
directed by Charles David
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

Lady on a Train has something for everyone. Deanna Durbin, as I understand it, was a Hollywood actor particularly popular with teenage girls. Lady on a Train seems like a fairly typical vehicle for her, in that Durbin is more her real-life public self than any stretch of a fictional character. She witnesses a murder and takes advantage of a weekend away from Daddy to solve it. She’s plucky, unafraid of a little danger, and she likes to see how far her innocent good looks and socialite flair will take her.

There are two big musical numbers, and they couldn’t address more disparate audiences. In one scene, Deanna, who is vacationing in New York for Christmas, calls her father in San Francisco. She wants to tell him she’s enjoying her trip, and while he has her on the phone, he requests that she sing a song for him. “Silent Night” is delivered almost as if she were in a church, with a delicate, pretty voice framed by a misty close-up. It’s the picture of innocence.

Later, to crack open a couple of reticent crooks, Deanna sneaks into a nightclub and usurps the usual performer’s routine. A quick dress change and suddenly she’s an underage vamp, wowing a roomful of lecherous men with a slinky serenade. The movie ends with her marriage to the playboy mystery writer she enlists to help her solve the crime, who practically pants beside her as he waits for his teenage bride to wrap up his latest manuscript in time to deliver the honeymoon signed and sealed.

So one can only guess at what the crowd for the afternoon matinee looked like at that one. Hollywood was a strange place, but Lady on a Train is a great winter movie, surprisingly quiet between tracks and numbers with its muted snowdrifts and blonde cascades.