Long Dark Hall (B&W)

Long Dark Hall (B&W)
Customer Review: British Noir from Half a Century Past
You wonder how the two stars could face each other playing the parts they did, only a few years after Rex Harrison was caught with his pants down and Carole Landis lay tragically dead, a suicide? Lilli Palmer stuck by her man and she and "Sexy Rexy" were banished from Hollywood--at the time, people thought, forever. Here they play a married man with a gorgeous wife who just can't keep from straying. He's having a passionate affair with a young showgirl, who just happens to wind up murdered, and because his knife is left at the scene of the crime, a seedy theatrical boarding house run by Brenda de Banzie, the coppers come for him, shocking his wife. Lilli's parents come to survey the emotional wreackage left in the wake of the revelation of Rex's affair. Funny how she's German of course, but she has conventional English parents (no explanation given for her wobbly accent). The real killer is disclosed early on, and he becomes obsessed with Lilli Palmer and manages to insert himself into her life little by little. This is the chilling, creepy part of the movie, quite suspenseful, but most of the picture is a kind of dull trial drama set in a frame story of an American anti-capital punishment journalist who begs his UK confrere for one last story to use as the final setpiece in a book he's writing about unfairly condemned men. "I've got just the case for you, old chap, the Rex Harrison story," and the movie begins. In a sense THE LONG DARK HALL is a replay of Hitchcock's THE PARADINE CASE, and they probably skimped by using the same Old Bailey set and the same motheaten barrister wigs and robes. Rex seems to be acting out the tortures of the damned, while Lilli sometimes wears a look on her face that says, serves him right, the cheating schweinhund. The "long dark hall" of the title is strangely underused, considering it's pretty atmospheric and positively cries out for a second scene in which the killer tries to strangle Lilli Palmer there. Alas no! Nonetheless it's a hardcore noir affair and well worth watching for its damned-if-you-do, nobody-cares attitude towards individual fate and collective responsibility.
Customer Review: A curiosity
Although this film has some curious similarities with the real life of 2 of its major actors ( Harrison and Palmer ) it's not really good enough to merit serious attention otherwise. The plot is very B movie and melodramatic and the acting by modern standards pretty wooden. The true relationship between Harrison and his lover is fatally never fully described, though this is more the fault of prevailing social censorship than anything, with the consequence that Palmer's dogged devotion to her husband appears merely conventional. A pity because there was the chance of a really good movie here. A case for a remake?