Phantom Lady Reviews

B-picture director extraordinaire, Robert Siodmak, crafts this taunt little thriller about a devoted secretary (Ella Raines) going above and beyond to clear the name of her framed boss. That’s essentially the beginning and the end of the film aside from a few sequences of tremendous visual and tonal power. Phantom Lady isn’t exactly an undercover gem waiting for rediscovery and extraction, but it’s better than its limited reputation would suggest.

The opening scenes suggest the oncoming post-war malaise and loneliness that would flourish in films like In a Lonely Place. And soon we’re in familiar realm – the wronged man getting framed for the crime and a plucky amateur detective figuring out the subterranean intrigue swirling all around them. Phantom Lady has this in spades, and the structure does begin to feel largely episodic and thin after a while.

But the film bursts into vivid, disturbing life in a handful of sequences. Raines’ secretary follows the lead provided by Elisha Cook Jr.’s drummer and we’re treated to the best scene in the film. Cook Jr.’s drummer begins a frenzied, erotically charged solo that also functions as a seduction. But who is seducing who throughout this scene as Raines alternates between the real and fictional persona on a dime? The combination of extreme angles, rapid editing, and outsized acting combines into something dangerous and sexy, something that rapidly runs away from the rest of the film and the rest of the film never quite recovers.

The other great scenes involve Franchot Tone and the eventual reveal of the actual murderer. It isn’t just the revelation and the mounting tension as Raines plots her escape, but the monologue the character is given about hands and their propensity for doing good or harm. Tone taps into that oily entitlement that remained just below the surface in his glossy romances with Jean Harlow in the early ‘30s.

It is here that line from Phantom Lady and the, if not compassionate than at least not heavily judgmental, eventual ascension of films from the likes of Alfred Hitchcock, Brian De Palma, and numerous others. Here is a film from 1944 that openly admitted its killer’s motivation as a sense of emasculation from the female sex, and that is fascinating as a bit of historical perspective. From the “dizzy spelled” killer here to Norman Bates and beyond, Phantom Lady winds up taking a central place in the depictions of the fragility of the male ego destroying the feminine body over perceived threats.