Episode 825: Phantom Lady (1944)

The one woman who can clear an innocent man has vanished, and nobody who saw her will admit it. Noirvember continues with Phantom Lady (1944), Robert Siodmak's adaptation of the Cornell Woolrich novel, published as William Irish, and the first film produced by Hitchcock veteran Joan Harrison. Alan Curtis is the man convicted of strangling his wife; Ella Raines is the secretary who turns detective; Franchot Tone is the friend who joins her search for all the wrong reasons.

Rahne Alexander and Earl Jackson join Mike to follow an outrageous hat from a bar to a milliner's shop, and to marvel at Elisha Cook Jr.'s drum solo, the closest thing to a sex scene 1944 allowed. Earl lays out how much darker Woolrich's novel runs and traces Siodmak's style back to his Weimar films. Rahne makes the case for a queer camp remake. Along the way: closed doors, a trial told in shorthand, echoes of The Big Clock (1948) and Black Angel (1946), and a happy ending that sounds like a life sentence.

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