December 29, 2024

A wealthy man is half way up his library ladder when he is taken ill and dies. Nobody quite knows where the now deceased "Danemore" made his fortune so his assistant "Bishop" (Robert Mitchum) decides to find out more about his enigmatic employer. He's somewhat taken aback by just how little the widow (Genevieve Page) knows about things, but there is perhaps one clue in Vienna. Once he gets there, though, he is quickly embroiled in some post-war m… read the rest.

A wealthy man is half way up his library ladder when he is taken ill and dies. Nobody quite knows where the now deceased "Danemore" made his fortune so his assistant "Bishop" (Robert Mitchum) decides to find out more about his enigmatic employer. He's somewhat taken aback by just how little the widow (Genevieve Page) knows about things, but there is perhaps one clue in Vienna. Once he gets there, though, he is quickly embroiled in some post-war machinations that takes him to Sweden where a recent suicide amidst a wealthy family, taking a shine to the daughter of the house "Brita" (Ingrid Thulin) and the behaviour of his newly acquired gadfly "Spring" (Frederic O'Brady) only muddles things up even more. Mitchum is quite effective here delivering his best less-is-more style of characterisation, but I found neither Page nor Thulin really made much impact on a story where the roles of the women were actually a lot more important than in many of these post-war noirs. It's a but too wordy and the pace could also be doing with a bit of it's own electric shock treatment as it struggles to build or sustain much momentum. There is some nice photography to accompany the travelogue elements of the story and the mystery just about delivers, but it's nothing much to write home about.

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