I saw this movie on local TV maybe 25 years ago and thought it superb. But Paramount movies, with a few exceptions, aren't shown much anymore. So I was excited to find it resurfacing.
Watching it was a little less exciting. It's not really a film noir. It's a thriller. William Holden is good, very good, but the supporting cast leaves something to be desired.
I've seen Nancy Olson only in this and, also with Holden, in "Sunset Boulevard." She has a quality that can bring June Cleaver into the darkest, most cynical movies.
The actress playing the kidnapped blind girl overdoes it. That may well not have been her fault. It may have been the script and the direction of the usually superb Rudoph Mate'. However, she is played as foolish as well as blind. I wish to state with authority that the two do not go hand-in-hand -- though maybe they were perceived more as doing so in 1950.
The film is suspenseful. Sort of. But I have to say I anticipated its every step -- and not because I'd seen it decades ago: All I remembered before today was that a young blind woman is kidnapped and that it takes place in a train station. There, I was correct.
Oh! And that strange Murchison name appears again. I'd thought this was an MGM in-joke, but here we find it at Paramount too.
Watching it was a little less exciting. It's not really a film noir. It's a thriller. William Holden is good, very good, but the supporting cast leaves something to be desired.
I've seen Nancy Olson only in this and, also with Holden, in "Sunset Boulevard." She has a quality that can bring June Cleaver into the darkest, most cynical movies.
The actress playing the kidnapped blind girl overdoes it. That may well not have been her fault. It may have been the script and the direction of the usually superb Rudoph Mate'. However, she is played as foolish as well as blind. I wish to state with authority that the two do not go hand-in-hand -- though maybe they were perceived more as doing so in 1950.
The film is suspenseful. Sort of. But I have to say I anticipated its every step -- and not because I'd seen it decades ago: All I remembered before today was that a young blind woman is kidnapped and that it takes place in a train station. There, I was correct.
Oh! And that strange Murchison name appears again. I'd thought this was an MGM in-joke, but here we find it at Paramount too.