102 - The Man Who Cheated Himself (1950)

This film noir mystery, directed by Felix E. Feist, was produced by Jack M. Warner for Twentieth Century-Fox in 1950. It stars Lee J. Cobb, John Dall, and Jane Wyatt. Cobb had just scored a triumph as Willy Loman on Broadway in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman (1949). Dall had scored with Hitchcock’s Rope (1948). Wyatt had done a lot of television and, for those of us of a certain age, found her niche as our favorite television mother in Father Knows Best in 1954.

In the film, wealthy San Francisco heiress Lois Frazer (Wyatt) has a husband who wants her dead. He has a new gun stashed away in his closet; and after telling her he is flying out of town, he has it set-up so he can get back in the house, use the gun and kill his wife. He seems unaware that Lois has a boyfriend, upright policeman, Lt. Ed Cullen (Cobb). She calls him over and in a set-up that foreshadows Agatha Christie’s play Dial M for Murder (1952), he breaks in, tries to kill his wife but is shot by his wife instead. To protect Lois, Cullen takes the body to the airport and leaves it lying in the parking lot, trying to make it appear he had been robbed and murdered. Unfortunately a couple see Cullen, his car, and the body.

Cullen’s younger brother, Andy (John Dall), is joining his brother as a detective and the murder of the man in the airport parking lot becomes his first case.  As the film progresses, Andy begins unraveling the lies that his brother has constructed.

Part of the fun of the movie for me are the black and white scenes shot on location in San Francisco, echoing the color location work of Hitchcock in Vertigo (1958). I was particularly pleased with the climatic episode at the end of the film which takes place inside Fort Point which Hitchcock lovers will recognize as the building at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge where Kim Novak goes to jump into the Bay and be rescued by Jimmy Stewart. The building works wonderfully with film noir and has arch after arch of shadows. One shot especially evokes one Hitchcock would have enjoyed of Andy walking through several rooms from light to shadow over and over.

The sets for the Frazer home are glamorous and memorable (who wouldn’t like a closet door which pivots open with all the clothes and hangers brought to the front). Another memorable setting is the artist studio apartment of Andy and his new wife Janet (Lisa Howard). As can be seen in a still from the movie, it has a great vertical window wall and steep stairway, framed with a pictures and a screen. It reminds me some of the artist’s studio in Hitchcock’s Rear Window.

The acting in the film is not particularly memorable, especially considering the power of Cobb in some of his other roles. Wyatt is surprisingly unexpressive and doesn’t register a lot of emotion even in tense situations. But the power of the film is its story, which as film noir shows us that bad women can make good men do anything.

As the guilty couple flee the cops, they end up at Fort Point,
same location Hitchcock used in Vertigo.

The film is free to watch on YouTube and through the link below. The set-up is good and the ending has suspense.

The Man Who Cheated Himself (1950) ****