A virgin Mary leaves Highcliffe and descends into the shadow world Greenwich Village, searching for her missing sister Jaqueline who has seemingly disappeared into the dark ether. Director Mark Robson and DP Nicholas Musuraca combine to create a cloying horror film of paranoia and claustrophobic darkness clinging like a funeral shroud to our ingenue. Skewed compositions and key-lighting fuse with the wonderful pacing and acting to make this one of the best in Producer Val Lewton’s filmography.
The basic plot seems simple enough: Mary is kicked out of Highcliffe because her sister Jaqueline, who owns a successful cosmetic business in NYC, has failed to pay the tuition for months. Instead of staying on as staff for room and board, our naïve yet resourceful protagonist goes out on her own to find her big sister. But the search becomes convoluted as Jaqueline has sold her business to a colleague and remains at the periphery, as coworkers and witnesses refuse to cooperate in revealing her whereabouts. Turns out, she has joined a pacifistic Satanic Cult who have named themselves the Palladists and has betrayed them by exposing their existence to a renowned psychiatrist. Though the cult doesn’t believe in outright murder (at least as the first option), they try to convince Jaqueline to kill herself, even renting her a room with only a chair and a hangman’s noose. Mary discovers Jaqueline’s husband, a poet, an Italian Restaurant, and the beguiling Truth of nihilistic dread that Jaqueline breathes in like oxygen and exhales only as the stench of the sepulcher. Neither romantic adoration nor familial love can save Jaqueline from torment.
There are some great set pieces. The Satanic Cult having a Victorian tea party that could be from Welles’ THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS…yet discussing their code about killing those who betray them. This is where the meaning behind the film’s title is revealed: six others have been assassinated before Jaqueline thus making her the next in line. There is also one lady who is missing an arm, yet it’s never discussed or explained in context which makes it extra creepy. And we also witness a homosexual subtext in one of the younger women who defends Jaqueline and votes against her death sentence. She becomes more boisterous in the later scene where her desire for the raven-haired beauty Jaqueline is thinly veiled. There is also a great shower sequence that must have inspired Hitchcock, as we are shown a POV from Mary as she is in her apartment showering, and the bathroom door clicks, and an ominous shadow materializes through the shower curtain. The camera remains just behind Mary inside of the cramped shower, and the silhouette looks like a demon with horns, yet it speaks softly in a woman’s voice warning Mary to go back to Highcliffe. Fucking great!! Another scene depicts Mary’s cohorts confronting the Satanic Cult and berating them, calling them a joke, and softly, one man stands up and approaches, Musuraca’ s low-key lighting making him seem sinister. He speaks, “What proof can you give me to prove that good is greater than evil?” and the answer given is anemic and uninspired. This statement remains unrefuted in the film. We also get another menacing chase through haloed streetlamps reminiscent of THE CAT PEOPLE, where Jaqueline runs not from a supernatural entity but a switchblade wielding hitman!
The film and story are contemporaneous so imagine this film during the height of World War II, where victory for the Allies is uncertain. Tens of thousands of innocent deaths haunt the newsreels on a weekly basis, and it must have seemed as if evil were the greater power. But both are a matter of perspective, right? The Axis didn’t consider themselves evil and felt justified in their actions. In this context, one can consider Jaqueline’s decision to subjugate herself to her death impulse, to end her suffering, while another woman dying slowly of Tuberculosis chooses to have a last fling before succumbing to the shadow of death. And it’s here in the nexus between philosophies that the cosmetic becomes cosmic.
Final Grade: (B+)
