robert-temple-1 Review of Where Danger Lives

Where Danger Lives (1950)

Brilliant direction, spellbinding performances

[9/10 · 24 December 2007]

This is in the top rank of noir films. John Farrow's direction is absolutely brilliant, and raises this film to its high level of excellence. Faith Domergue, aged 26, is at her most succulent, petulant, and at the very highest end of the fatale spectrum. Her luscious lips are lingered over by the camera, her misty eyes, her welcoming and lingering look, how could Robert Mitchum resist? And he doesn't. But in noir, the bigger-eyed and more soulful the dame is, the deeper are her problems. Faith turns out to be seriously psychologically disturbed, indeed psychotic, whingeing that 'nobody pities me' after smothering her much older husband to death. Claude Rains is perfect as the husband. He is not on screen for long (Faith sees to that), but he sets the tone for the whole ensuing saga of desperate, paranoid fear and flight. It is true that this film, while appearing to show reality in a brutally frank and straightforward manner, becomes increasingly surreal. There is a brilliant cameo by Tol Avery as 'Honest Hal the used car salesman', which is terrifying in its contrast of bonhomie and jollity with sinister and unscrupulous manipulation. As Mitchum and Domergue run and run, trying to reach the Mexican border, they seem to be taking parallel journeys inside their own minds, which is truly 'where danger lives'. Mitchum has much more opportunity to do some real acting in this film than usual, and does it very well indeed. He spends much of the film concussed after a blow on the head with a fire poker, and he is particularly convincing at being confused, which helps the reality distortion grow and proliferate with such effect. This is very much an edge-of-the psychiatrist's couch thriller, and is harrowing in the extreme. The two characters are not only running from the police, they are running from something archetypal, from the bear, from the wolf, from whatever the monster is in the dream, the one that pursues us all and has done since we lived in caves and it tried to get in and eat us. The power of a woman to reduce a hulking hunk to a heap of jelly, to pulverise the intelligence of a sensible doctor and make him into an idiot, are well shown here. In the end, it works because Domergue is so utterly convincing as the character Margo Lannington. As my wife said to me while watching this film: 'I'm not ever going to let you meet any women called Margo.' Everyone can agree that, faced with Faith Domergue as she was in 1950, any man would be powerless to help himself. And by the way, Faith Domergue was her real name. She didn't even have to invent it, any more than she needed to invent her siren qualities. Just think how many of us are safe now that she's gone!