disgusting, overrated, pointless

A Brilliant Conflict

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

Paul Henreid starred and produced this okay film noir crime drama. This is Henreid's movie as he dominates most of the scenes obviously looking to escape his nice guy-good guy image for something far darker. He's not bad but the preposterous script did not provide much assistance; It's just too much of a leap of faith for the viewer to accept for this storyline to work. Henreid no sooner is let out of prison than he can't wait to organize his gone-soft mob to knock off the biggest gambling racket in town run by feared gangster Rocky Stansyck. The heist is a surprisingly low budget shoot; it goes wrong and Henreid is on the run from Stansyck's crowd. He happens upon a look alike shrink except for a facial scar and plans to steal his identity. In the process of stealing the identity Henreid accidentally scars the wrong side of his face. No matter - nobody notices! Tough Joan Bennett is the shrink's secretary in a good role. Lovely Leslie Brooks has a throw-away role. Herbert Rudley as Marcy is quite good though as Henreid's right hand man in his mob. The rest is fairly predictable. The exceptionally dark nourish shoot and atmosphere were very good and bailed out the mediocre script and plot to some degree. This is okay for film noir buffs.

This movie is also known as THE SCAR and as well THE MAN WHO KILLED HIMSELF. Very interesting crime drama, with top lead actors in Paul Henreid, who plays two roles, and Joan Bennett. Henreid pulls double duty as he plays John Muller, who has been released from prison and goes back to his ways of crime with his old buddies. A gambling club robbery doesn't come off as planned and Muller is on the run with at least part of the money. He meets a psychiatrist that could be his twin, except for a noticible scar on his cheek. With fear of being found by the far reaching gangster he wronged, Muller maims himself and kills Dr. Bartok and assumes his identity. He happens to fall in love with the doc's secretary Evelyn(Bennett), who isn't so fooled by the switch. Once again the plan is flawed. This flick is directed by Steve Sekely and is above average Film-Noir. A very dramatic climax that makes you want to root for the bad guy. (After all he is a thief and a killer). Also in the cast: John Qualen, Herbert Rudley, Charles Arnt, Leslie Brooks, Eduard Franz and a small uncredited role for Jack Webb.

You can be forgiven if your heart sinks a little when the titles roll: "An Eagle-Lion Film." The plot could have been cooked up in its outlines during a bull session of a few hours. Nothing is likely to discourage the impression that this is a pretty slow and not very interesting second feature -- except maybe the photography by John Alton, which is pretty good, full of noirish shadows and sometimes odd angles. And there's a touching moment near the end when a charwoman apologetically asks if Henreid's scar isn't on the wrong cheek.Paul Henreid is one of those smart crooks who started out well -- medical school -- and then turned back and was finally convicted for a stick up from which he's now being released. Maybe he's not so smart after all. Giving up a career in medicine for the life of a hold-up man? In any case, the moment he's out of the slams, he gets his old gang together for a big heist at some gambling casino. Something goes wrong, as usual. The guy who runs the casino is unforgiving and he soon learns Henreid was behind the deal. Mister Big knocks off the other three gang members and Henreid is on his own. He hold various menial jobs, like gas station attendant. (No mention of all the dough he made off with after than big heist. Maybe he lost his wallet.)In Los Angeles he stumbles across a curious coincidence. He has a Doppelganger who is a psychoanalyst. The only difference is that the psychiatrist has a scar on his, the shrink's, left cheek. Henreid, desperate to change identities, looks into the shrink's background then knocks him off and takes his place. He romances the shrink's secretary and hangs out at the shrink's clubs. So far so good, except that, at the end, there is an O. Henry twist that satisfies the Breen Office or whatever the Cinematic Superego was called at the time.Paul Henreid's career certainly came like water and like the wind it went. He will always be Victor Lazlo and nobody else. The babe is Joan Bennett who is smoothly believable.There are some curious incidents. One is that, upon his release, Henreid is picked up by a friend who offers him a cigarette. Henreid brushes it away, saying, "You know I never smoke." But half-way through the movie, schmoozing with his secretary, all charm and guile, he gently removes a cigarette from her fingers and begins smoking it himself. He smokes like a volcano throughout the rest of the movie.Another thing is that, had the laws of physics been observed, Henreid would have wound up putting his scar on the correct cheek instead of the wrong one.Here's how he does it in the movie. He hold up a full-face photo of the shrink. The scar is near the right-hand border of the photo. Next to the picture, Henreid holds up a mirror and draws the scar on his own right-hand cheek to duplicate the one in the picture. The problem is that the image we see in the mirror is always flipped. In a mirror, our real right hand seems to be the left hand of the image we're looking at.However, nobody behind the movie REALIZES this! Later, Henreid shows up at the photo shop to collect the negative and they're afraid to tell him that they mistakenly flipped it when they printed it! In other words, he is creating a scar on the CORRECT side of his face, due to the incompetence of the two men at the photo shop and the ignorance of the film's writer.Got that? If the photo shop hadn't flipped the negative around, and if Henreid knew what the hell he was doing when he created that new scar, the scar would have been on the wrong side of his face. But because two mistakes were made, in real life the scar would have been accurately placed. And they say two wrongs don't make a right!

Hollow Triumph (1948)Maybe Hungarian/French/American actor Paul Henreid (of "Casablanca" fame) knew by 1948 that he was not going to be an American movie idol. So here he went all out and produced this film and starred in two (two) of the leading roles. No one could stop him. And it almost works. There is no making up for his styrofoam abilities, but he is serviceable, at least, and the photography (by John Alton, a noir great, see "The Big Combo") makes it worthwhile alone. Joan Bennet is not cast well, I suppose, but she has her own kind of cheerful innocence that works fine.Not to trip over myself with superlatives. This is a decent movie with maybe an overly clever (and highly implausible) plot getting mostly in the way. And yet, with all these issues it still is involving. It partly succeeds because it uses the best of the era--great Hollywood studio machinery top to bottom--so it looks and feels very professional. And there are some terrific location scenes that are worth the ticket alone. Hungarian director Steve Sekely was and is little known and yet he clearly makes the most of what little he had to work with here...enough to wish we could get his pre-war Hungarian films on DVD for a look. Probably lost to American audiences forever.This is officially a B-movie, produced at a smaller studio, but it feels very professional and really A-movie in technique (thanks largely to Alton, I think). If you like noirs, and you like brooding dark and eventually depressing material, I wouldn't hesitate to watch this, but keep in mind the caveats.