L'emprise

This is a film that manages to keep the viewer's interest through well- conceived plot twists and a well-played romantic relationship between the two lead characters. Preston Foster is believable as a tough cop with a hard-nosed exterior who has a complicated emotional entanglement with an enigmatic and dangerous woman. Foster does a great job in the role.

A now rather obscure actress named Belita gives a studied and endearing performance as the ex-con blonde noir babe who maybe does or does not love the cop. She manages to convey a vulnerable yet dangerous persona that is not easy to maintain for an entire film length but she pulls off this feat with remarkable consistency and aplomb. The multi-talented Belita also gives us a fine and professionally done figure skating routine wherein her rather tall, lean and graceful style reminds me of the great Olympian Peggy Fleming. And its good to see noir icon Charles McGraw in a supporting role.

I found "The Hunted" to be a rewarding blend of constant emotional tension between the characters and plot tension related to the twists and turns of its basic noir story line. View it if you get the chance.

Police detective Johnny Saxon (Preston Foster) is on high alert when his former girlfriend Laura Mead (Belita) is released on parole for a bank heist which she was found guilty of four years earlier. Despite always having proclaimed her innocence, at the trial she had threatened to kill those she thought were responsible for her conviction, including boyfriend Saxon who helped put her away for the crime. Despite his misgivings Saxon again becomes involved with Mead when she appears in his apartment after arriving back in town. Though she is seemingly repentant, Saxon remains suspicious of her motivations. When a body turns up, Saxon pegs Mead as the likely suspect and figures he might be next. Did she do it or not?

A crime, mystery and melodrama mixture, this film could be described as a niche noir. The casting with the well into his forties Foster and Belita as his 21 year old girlfriend is on the surface a bit odd since the premise of the film teeters on the chemistry of the two characters. The older Foster, a definite candidate for a smoking cessation program, is spot on as the hard boiled cop and former boyfriend. The big surprise is Belita. 'The Hunted' is the third in a trio of crime programmers the former skating champion did for Monogram / Allied Artists. After watching this film it's hard to understand why her career never gained much traction. She certainly had the screen persona even though not what might be described as a classic Hollywood look.

Even though there is some padded fluff (superfluous ice skating sequence) and an over-extended early scene where the characters rehash their previous relationship, the movie is also a stylized and entertaining trek though the post war era of tough-guy detectives and dangerous dames. Again, not a straight up noir film but for viewers who enjoy filmdom's golden age of grit and duplicity it will likely check off enough boxes to make them happy.

Imported from her native England as a second-string Sonja Henie, ice-skating novelty star Belita soon found that there was little call in Hollywood for her to lace up her blades. After a couple of ice musicals, she landed in three Poverty-Row noirs. In the first of them, Suspense, her skating skills were worked, however awkwardly, into the plot. But in the second, The Hunted, her prowess on the ice was a mere afterthought – she briefly shows off her twirls and figure-8s because what audience she could still command expected them of her.

Too bad, because on the solid ground of The Hunted, Belita's not bad (with a tough, long forties face) and no longer needed the gimmickry. She's just finished a four-year stretch in Tehachapi for her part in a jewel robbery (she may have been framed). When her bus pulls into town one night, waiting for her, unseen, is Preston Foster, the cop who once loved her but sent her up anyway. He's convinced that Belita will come gunning for either him or the prosecuting attorney (Pierre Watkin). But when she has no place to go, he lets her bunk at his apartment, and lands her a gig skating during intermissions at hockey games. He slowly relents, thinking she's on the straight-and-narrow. Then Watkin is found murdered, and all the evidence points her way. When Foster turns against her once more, she lams it to Arizona to sling hash in a diner....

Jack Bernhard, who two years earlier had the good fortune to have Jean Gillie and the script for Decoy fall into his lap, directs this much less flamboyant script. He's good on atmospherics (dark highways in hard rains, cheap apartment houses) and keeps the story moving along (near the end of the movie, an uncredited Charles McGraw turns up as a hard-nosed cop). Bernhard made one or two more low-budget entries of passable interest (Blonde Ice among them), but Decoy's lightning was never, alas, to strike him again.

Internet Rule 34 says if there's a subject on the Web, there's porn about it. Maybe we need something like that for Film Noir: if it exists in the movies, there's a Film Noir about it. I suppose that's why this one has Belita as a femme fatale who does ice dancing routines.

Four years ago, cop Preston Foster arrested his girlfriend Belita for a jewelry robbery. Now she's out on parole, and he's gotten her a job at a hockey rink, teaching and performing. She says she was framed. He yearns for her and drinks. Eventually they reconcile, but then the defense attorney she claims threw her case is murdered.... and Belita's ring is found at the murder site.

Foster was at the end of his starring days. He was in his late 40s, and had been mature-looking when he entered the movies in the early days of sound. Fortunately, his solid presence would keep him working in star character roles. Belita is all right, but awkward off the ice. Longtime B cinematographer Harry Neumann (more than 300 films from 1918 through 1959) offers a lot of night-time shots, particularly a carnival midway sequence, for shadowy film noir lighting.

It's not a great movie -- Monogram didn't distribute those -- but it is a solid film noir for fans of the genre.

One of those very good, but forgotten film-noirs, it's a relatively strong story, of a girl who spent 4 years in prison for a crime she may or may not have done, and a cop who loved her and turned her in. It has good, tight execution and it's a film for film-lovers. The female lead is excellent in her portrayal, and it's too bad she only got used in several films, mostly for her skating and dancing abilities; and you should keep an eye out for the name of Jack Bernhard, the director, as he has other great noirs, such as The Decoy.