Blind Alley

This was potentially a game changer in 1939, a proto-noir where the action is squared away on psychoanalysis and not on fisticuffs and brute strength. Sure, the Freudian psychobabble hasn’t aged well, but there was a rough charm to the likes of Chester Morris, Ann Dvorak, and Ralph Bellamy that papers over the awkward dialogue. Long before Law & Order transformed interrogation-as-therapeutic-device, Blind Alley laid the foundation and provided a reasonable enough good time.

While this would eventually get remade as The Dark Past with William Holden and Lee J. Cobb subbing in for the two main roles, Morris and Bellamy do them better. Morris’ career was on a prolonged downturn at this point where the former leading man was now regulated to B-pictures and that desperation to reclaim former glories manifests in his work as the prison escapee-cum-psychology patient. It helps that Morris believably projects mental anguish and darkness beneath his handsome exterior.

While Morris gets the showy role, Bellamy has the trickier part to play as the steadfastly calm and who greets all of the twists and turns with a practiced exterior of remote observation. The film’s origins as a stage show are strongly reflected in the numerous scenes between the two men as they play psychological games with one another. It takes consummate skill as a perform to make pop psychology like this scan as gripping drama when so much it is unsophisticated fortune cookie-esque babble.

Director Charles Vidor also manages some smart choices, such as embellishing in a dream sequence that takes place in a child’s POV and keeping the rest rather mundane, and some visual language that would replicate and spread in the likes of films such as John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon. It is a hidden minor work, but still worth a watch for its simple charms.