Monday, October 25, 2010

Give Your Lady Fair a Little Smile

The Seventh Victim (1943)
directed by Mark Robson
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from the vaults

I enjoyed that Val Lewton book a lot. It suggested, among other things, that Lewton's elevation of minor characters gave the actors who played them a permanence in the mind's eye of folks in the theater and people at home. Darby Jones, as Carre-Four in I Walked with a Zombie, inspired the most compelling chapter because of what Carre-Four says about race, and what that says about movies: "As a slave, Carre-Four is presented as a sacrifice without transcendence... minor characters die without fanfare. They are not heroes, and their only glory is down."

But if Zombie is Lewton's most beautiful film, The Seventh Victim - directed by Mark Robson because Jacques Tourneur was promoted to A list at RKO - is the one to watch when an October evening is not full of ghosts and voices on the wind, but rain and loneliness and the first early darkness of the season. Like the rather pedestrian band of devil worshipers who gather to drink tea and sit in cozy chairs, no one in The Seventh Victim ever quite fits in. Some try more than others, but no one can be said to find much happiness, even in the warm rooms of small Italian restaurants where a meal can be had for a song. In some ways, it is a picture about finding your place in a city. In others, yes, it is about the second World War. But most of all it's a love letter to beautiful actresses who try for happiness in the land of dreams but end up lost in the crowd. Still one of my favorites.