"Repeat Performance" (1947) - être noir ou juste noir et blanc

 

This is supposedly categorized as noir, but I think it is missing some key components. There is a crime, but it lacks the cynical attitudes and motivations. There are aspects of the lighting style which are in the neighborhood of noir, but it is more about the dramatic effect of the set design. I guess there is a femme fatale (maybe two of them), but she is an antagonist to the heroine more than a key element. You could have swapped them out for any number of alternatives. I don’t think this is noir - just black and white.

This movie is a fantasy film similar to the Frank Capra flick. It is about doing the year 1946 over. There is a very short, narrated voice over when the time jump happens that tells the audience - Joan Leslie is the only one who will know. She is second billed, but this movie is ALL her.  She is attempting to avoid the tragic circumstances of the previous year - and makes a very believable case for what a human person would do in that situation. Her husband is a lush and distraught over his professional failure and so he drinks, is abusive, and has an affair.

If there is one thing that didn’t make sense to me is what either Joan Leslie or Virginia Field saw in him. Ms Field is a female cad, but a successful and driven professional … so I never quite understood why she would want that sot in the first place. Joan's loyalty made some sense, but she could clearly do better.

Natalie Shafer is here. At 47 years old she looks gorgeous. She was 64 on “Giligan’s Island” (13 years older than Jim Backus - and supposedly concerned enough about that to make demands on how she was lit & shot). It is not much of a part - she is playing a dramatic version of Lovey Howell. Tim Conway is supposedly also in this movie, but he would have been ~13, so while I looked for him, I don’t think I recognized him.

There was a remake of this thing made for NBC in 1989 - I found a Spanish dubbed version on YouTube (“Regresar al Pasado”). It is not as good as the original, but it is faithful to the story & characters. Even in Spanish at 2x playback it made me remember when we used to have TV movies like this. It stars one of the great [Ladies of the 80’s] Connie Sellecca. If we had Mount Rushmore for 80~90’s leading ladies; well … I can’t see her bumping off Anne Archer, Bonnie Bedelia, Kathleen Turner or Angela Bassett, but she would be in the conversation. Tourists would argue with each other at the gift shop about her being overlooked.