Watch The Chase For Free

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Although she had a long association with the genre, Michele Morgan is not a star one usually associates with film noir, so it comes as something of a surprise to find her playing the tragic heroine in Arthur Ripley's extremely weird, "The Chase" (1946). Adapted from a Cornell Woolrich novel and stylishly photographed by Franz Planer, the movie grips the attention almost right up to its bizarre conclusion. It's at the point Jack Holt (giving a remarkably listless performance) enters, that tension starts to unwind. Nonetheless, the opening scenes (especially that with Lloyd Corrigan trapped in a cellar) and the noirish interlude in Havana are so powerful that they carry the viewer right through to the end. Aside from Holt, all the players are most impressive, particularly Steve Cochran, Peter Lorre and all the really memorable players (including even the extras) who appear in the Spanish sequences. Robert Cummings, as the luckless lead, delivers his best performance ever! (9/10 DVD available from VCI).

This film "The Chase" showed on UK night time TV. The casting looked good which suggested a good film ahead. I instantly fell in love with the French female star Michelle Morgan age 26, tall, blonde, good- looking, a sort of poor man's Ingrid 'Casablanca' Bergman, then I lost the plot. So did the Director, it had at least ten story lines which we learned later was a Walter Mitty type dream sequence involving a nightclub stabbing, two murders one using a savage dog, the Police and a back street chase through Havana which the audience thought was real. After one hour had passed the dream sequence then stopped and the true film commenced which was a nasty psycho-trick on the viewing audience. Others have called this long dream sequence the 'Film-Noir'part of the film. I hope this film experiment is never again repeated. All the actors tried there very best with a crazy script. Peter Lorre had a bit part well beneath his great talents and well deserved fame, Robert Cummings throughout the film looked as if he had a train to catch, I wish he had, and the great actress star was the elderly faded Russian gypsy type woman who owned the alleged antique shop in Havana (actually a Hollywood film shed) her small cameo role rescued an awful film.

Let's not forget, folks, these noir pictures were churned out by the dozens by fast- buck studios eager to cash in on the latest trend with bargain basement actors and hackneyed scripts. In the case of The Chase, that adds up to an hour and a half of incomprehensible twaddle and ridiculous plot twists, all served up in an atmospheric stew of dark shadows and preposterous sets. If you can make it through the first ninety or so minutes, you'll be rewarded with some of the goofiest faces ever made by an actor, courtesy of Peter Lorre in his pre-Roger Corman days. But that's not all folks. You also get a veritable monument to coarse acting by Bob Cummings and Steve Cochran. Anyone who claims to be able to follow the plot is lying, because there isn't one. Three stars only because the over-the-top sets add a few minutes of sporadic interest. If you watch through to the end in hopes of figuring out what actually happened, trust me, you'll be as baffled at the end as you were at the start.

The Chase finds Robert Cummings as a down on his luck veteran who finds a wallet with $81.00 in it. This was the opening gambit of the Bing Crosby musical Double Or Nothing where he is one of only four people who return a wallet with $100.00 in it. But this is for real and Cummings shortly has reason to think he'd be better off to have kept the money.Instead all Bob does is get a meal and return the wallet with $79.50 to gangster Steve Cochran who lives in a nice palatial estate with French born wife Michelle Morgan. Cochran if not impressed is intrigued by his honesty and hires him. After that Cummings gets enough knowledge to know that this is not a guy he'd like to be working with. A lot of people seem to be intrigued by the false ending where it is discovered Cummings has dreamed it all and winds up in the helpful hands of Navy psychiatrist Jack Holt for help. For myself I don't think it added all that much to what was an already interesting film.Cummings, Morgan, Cochran and Peter Lorre who plays Cochran's number 2 guy all give interesting performances. Lorre is as ruthless as Cochran if not quite as psychotic. As for Cochran he's the ultimate backseat driver who for amusement has some controls built into the rear passenger seats so he can take over driving from the chauffeur, something that startled Cummings and would startle just about anyone else. Of course you can't see the road all that well and that's something Cochran will regret.This independent United Artists film doesn't get the plaudits from me that it does from others. Still more than fans of the principal players should like it.