Crack-Up *** (1946, Pat O’Brien, Claire Trevor, Herbert Marshall) – Classic Movie Review 3,318

RKO’s entertaining 1946 Hitchcock-style American film noir espionage thriller film Crack-Up stars Pat O’Brien in rather unlikely casting as George Steele, a small museum art expert and curator probing what turns out to be a forgery scam. 

Director Irving Reis’s entertaining 1946 Hitchcock-style American film noir espionage thriller film Crack-Up stars Pat O’Brien in rather unlikely casting as George Steele, a small museum art expert and curator probing what turns out to be a forgery scam. Herbert Marshall is much more convincingly cast as Traybin, a Scotland Yard man posing as a visiting art expert.

George has an apparent mental breakdown one night, convinced he was in a train wreck. In flashback, he plans to X-ray old masters the museum has on loan but is called on an unplanned nocturnal train trip and another train is steaming full speed ahead…

The story, based on Fredric Brown’s original short story Madman’s Holiday (first published in the 1943 Detective Story Magazine), provides a suitably convoluted mystery, in which non-stop action and a complex flashback structure disguise some illogicalities in the plot.

It is all sped along nicely by neat directions and with several excellent performances – especially O’Brien, Marshall, Claire Trevor, Ray Collins, Erskine Sanford and Wallace Ford. Robert De Grasse’s noir shadowy cinematography is a very considerable asset.

Crack-Up is directed by Irving Reis, runs 93 minutes, is released by RKO Pictures, is written by John Paxton, Ben Bengal and Ray Spencer, based on Fredric Brown’s original short story Madman’s Holiday, is shot by Robert De Grasse, is produced by Jack J Gross, and is scored by Leigh Harline.

Release date: September 6, 1946.

The cast are Pat O’Brien as George Steele, Claire Trevor as Terry Cordell, Herbert Marshall as Traybin, Ray Collins as Dr Lowell, Wallace Ford as Lt Cochrane, Dean Harens as Reynolds, Damian O’Flynn as Stevenson, Erskine Sanford as Barton and Mary Ware as Mary.

Irving Reis is remembered for directing several Falcon movies of the early 1940s, including The Gay Falcon (1941), A Date with the Falcon (1942) and The Falcon Takes Over (1942).

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3,318

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/