23 PACES TO BAKER STREET: Blu-ray (2oth Century-Fox 1956) Kino Lorber
Blind man and prominent
playwright, Phillip Hannon (Van Johnson) attempts to piece together the clues
of a homicide/kidnapping in Henry Hathaway’s competently conceived, though
hardly exemplary melodrama, 23 Paces
from Baker Street (1956). In some ways, the picture seems almost a response
to Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954);
albeit, with less suspense, each hero similarly afflicted by a crippling malady
that otherwise elevates his mental acuity to Perry Mason-esque powers of
deduction. The picture also stars ‘would-be/never
to be’ Hitchcock starlet, Vera Miles in the flashy role of Jean Lennox,
Phil’s one-time paramour cum social secretary. Miles might have become Hitchcock’s
ultimate cool blonde, if not for an ill-timed pregnancy that cost her the lead in Vertigo (1958); the director
having to recast her on the fly – a cardinal sin for which Ms. Miles was never
entirely forgiven. Nor would Hitch ever give her a second bite at the same
apple, except in supporting roles. Filmdom’s loss indeed; for in 23
Paces to Baker Street we get flashes of the little starlet who could – and
should have become a great big beacon
of fresh-faced sex appeal. Miles did appear for Hitch’ in The Wrong Man (1956), one of his lesser and even less engaging
suspense movies and would resurface again in his magnum opus, Psycho (1960). But in 23 Paces to
Baker Street Miles shines. Given to spar off a rather stilted central
performance by Van Johnson and the miserly squandering of the sublime Cecil Parker
(in the toss-away part as Hannon’s social secretary, Bob Matthews); the film
belongs to Miles’ enterprising optimism and decidedly Americanized stiff upper
lip approach to becoming a very keen amateur sleuth.
In years to
come, director Hathaway would keep nothing back about the fact he had not
wanted Van Johnson as his star; an actor he generally admired but adamantly
believed was completely wrong for this role.
Alas, in an era of studio-bound dictum, and for better or worse, movie
casting remained the domain of studio moguls and producers, with Hathaway’s
workmanlike precision merely left to pick up and make something of its
disparate pieces. Hannon’s accident, only hinted at herein, has altered the
course of both his own life and the one he might have given over to in
resplendent matrimony with Jean. She holds no grudges. In fact, she is rather
intent on fanning the embers of a decidedly cool home fire; amiably playing the
part of ‘his girl Friday’ to Johnson’s wet stick of kindling, and, increasingly
becoming the go-between Hannon and Inspector Groverning (Maurice Denham) and
Det. Srgt. Luce (Terence de Marney), who sincerely believe their time could be
spent best elsewhere than to track down Hannon’s unlikely lead. Psst! He
overheard, through a heavy glass partition at The Eagle, his local pub (not
to mention the exaggerated noises of a pinball machine), two shadowy figures
discussing ‘something’ about ‘someone’. The fact Hannon’s hunch proves
to be true is, as yet unknown, leaving Hannon to employ Jean and Bob as his
foot soldiers in his small time cat-n’-mouse espionage.
Hannon darts
home after confronting the barmaid (Estelle Winwood) – who is vague to downright
noncommittal about virtually any and all details. Instead, he records the
entire conversation he overheard verbatim into his Dictaphone. But his
inflected reflections hardly impress the jaded Groverning and Luce who believe
Hannon’s cabin fever and profession have conspired on some grotesquely
over-imaginative amateur theatrics. Kidnappers discussing the particulars of
their criminal activity in a public place? Please! However, very soon the red
herrings and coincidences begin piling up; a chance meeting with dotty dowager,
Lady Syrett (Isobel Elsom, who specialized in waxen portraits of the air-headed
hoi poloi), leads Hannon to coax Jean into telephoning for a nanny from the
same Employment Agency suspected of harboring one Janet Murch (Natalie Norwick)
whose life may be in danger as she is the more reluctant participant in this
pending crime du jour – the kidnapping of a wealthy aristocrat’s handicapped
child. But Hannon’s search for Murch is derailed when the agency sends Miss
Alice MacDonald (Patricia Laffan) in her stead. Aside: Laffan ought to have had
a bigger career in Hollywood playing viperous females like Poppeia in MGM’s
gargantuan Quo Vadis (1950).
Alice knows
something. More diabolically, she wastes no time informing her handler, the
agency’s front man, Pillings (Martin Benson) of Hannon’s quest for the truth.
It will not be curtailed by misdirection or even by the laziness of the local
constabulary. And so the plot thickens to do away with this blind man who sees
all. Hannon is led astray, presumably by the father of the late Janet Murch,
who takes Hannon on a wild goose chase several flights up an abandoned building
set for demolition in the hopes Hannon will tumble to his death from a gaping
precipice missing its barrier wall. There are a lot of resourcefully staged and
eerily dark touches peppered throughout this movie; mood-evoking if never
entirely coming together, yet without getting too gruesome; even more
ingeniously stitched together and utterly impressive when one stops to consider
that, apart from extensive second unit location work in London England, neither
Van Johnson nor Vera Miles ever left the relative comfort and safety of 2oth
Century-Fox’s back lot in Century City to make this picture; director, Henry
Hathaway employing some impeccable matte process work to seamlessly join the
real with the re-imagined on a sound stage. In years yet to follow, Hathaway
would consider this ‘whodunit’ among his weakest endeavors, done more out of
commitment than love for the craft. Instinctively, and despite his lack of enthusiasm
for Philip MacDonald’s novel on which Nigel Balchin’s rather tepid screenplay
is based, Hathaway is virtually incapable of making a bad movie out of the
fairly pedestrian plot.
23 Paces to Baker Street is an
unlikely candidate for the Cinemascope treatment. Alas, Darryl F. Zanuck’s
fervent belief in his newly inaugurated widescreen process ensured a good many
movies that might have best suited a more modest aperture became elongated
explorations into filling a lot of dead space with inconsequential action,
merely to keep the audience entertained. Hathaway seems undaunted by the unique
requirements of Cinemascope. Nevertheless, a lot of 23 Paces to Baker Street is staged in a flat foreground plain,
cinematographer, Milton R. Krasner occasionally shooting on the bias and with
shadowy effects cast across Van Johnson’s visage to disguise (along with heavy
makeup) the horrendous after effects of his 1943 automobile accident. While
shooting A Guy Named Joe, Johnson
literally cheated death in this hellish wreck (and lived to the ripe old age of
92 to tell about it); the top half of his forehead sheered off, necessitating
the installation of a metal plate and months of reconstructive cosmetic surgery;
also, a delay in shooting. To both costars Spencer Tracy and Irene Dunne’s
credit, plans to recast the picture were thwarted when Tracy and Dunne refused
to partake of any of the necessary re-shoots until Johnson’s recuperation was
made complete. Alas, the scars inflicted would never entirely heal.
Miraculously, they are made all but invisible in 23 Paces to Baker Street, a much deserved nod going to makeup
artist, Ben Nye.
23 Paces to Baker Street is a fairly
straight forward, and occasionally meandering affair; the pacing, glacial at
times – decidedly slow by today’s standards – but even then, less about
building suspense and more about showing off the expansive Cinemascope frame to
its best advantage. Predictably, with most of the scenes taking place inside
cloistered drawing rooms and dialogue between no more than two or three
characters at most, there is a lot of dead space within the frame, not
altogether resolved by the bric-a-brac in Maurice Ransford and Lyle R. Wheeler’s
Production Design; the early Cinemascope lens exaggerating the vertical curvature
of objects and people to the extreme left and right of dead center where
virtually all of the key action takes place. Hathaway’s seamless blend of
location and sets offers an uncanny depth of field in a lot of shots from
Hannon’s balcony; the POV never drawing obvious attention to the various rear
projection elements gone into its creation. Regrettably, Van Johnson, for all
his frozen gazes and generally competent acting, feigning blindness with occasional
contact lenses to augment his glassy stares, cannot help but give away the ruse
he is able to ‘see’ what is going on around him; certain subtle gestures in
exactly the direction where sound is coming from rather than in the vague vicinity
where a truly blind man would imagine it. It really fools no one in the
audience. Don’t get me wrong. I like Van Johnson. But this is decidedly not his
finest hour and, oddly enough, I suspect even as a consummate pro, he knows it
too.
Cecil Parker
is an ebullient comic foil, running up and down escalators inside Barker’s
Department Store; emerging from an impromptu downpour, bedraggled and even more
bewildered after bungling his ‘tail job’ of the curiously aloof Ms. MacDonald.
When does it all add up? Well, predictably, not until very near the end – at least,
for the characters in our story; the audience likely ten paces ahead of the
game. Yes, there is a murder, taking
place in a moodily lit red phone booth one dark and foggy eve – though antiseptically
handled (due to censorship constraints and Hollywood’s then self-governing
edicts of ‘good taste’); with a scream, a flash of cold steel glinting in the
pale moonlight; the body of Ms. Murch later discovered floating face-down in
the murky Thames. Later, the kidnapping plot ensues, the invalided child and
nanny vanishing into thin air while on a stroll through the park; the wheelchair
discovered, abandoned in the bushes; the police, finally convinced Hannon has
been on the right track from the very beginning. In the end, the picture folds
on a cliché; ‘Evans’ – the presumed mastermind, actually MacDonald in disguise;
breaking into Hannon’s fashionable flat with intent to do harm, but thwarted by
his quick-thinking to disable every available light source in the apartment (a
ploy later mined to better effect in Alexander Knott’s 1967 play, Wait Until Dark, similarly featuring a
blind protagonist). There is a struggle and MacDonald plummets to her death on
the fire escape, leaving Hannon – his masculine vigor renewed, and Jean – just
as sweetly pure as ever, to pick up their romantic pas deux where they left off
several years earlier. 23 Paces to Baker Street is just one of
those in-house productions from the period, Zanuck capitalizing on Britain’s
Edie tax concessions. It didn’t pay off. Budgeted at $1,375,000, the picture barely
grossed a million. It did nothing for anyone’s career. On the flip side – it did
not exactly prove to be a career-breaker either!
23 Paces to Baker Street gets a
Blu-ray release from Kino Lorber, advertised as a new 4K scan and restoration. For
the most part, Fox Home Video’s teal color bias is kept at bay. However, there is still untoward tinkering here - the original DeLuxe color palette
possessing a somewhat dull patina, more muted than murky and with a blue bias. Fine detail is
impressive throughout, the dreaded Cinemascope ‘mumps’ kept at bay. But grain
structure has been digitally scrubbed – not to the egregious levels we have
occasionally seen elsewhere. Flesh tones are ruddy. The most disconcerting part:
an inexplicable softness and loss of color density afflicting only the right
side of the screen in a good many scenes. Although Cinemascope is generally
known for its’ subtle warping of the image at the extreme left and right of
frame, this transfer exhibits fairly obvious ‘fading’ inconsistent with actual
color failure in the original camera negative. And, it must be said that while
the blue push in the color is negligible, it remains nevertheless present, more prominently
featured during scenes taking place in the dark or at night. Blacks are never black, but deep, deep navy
and greys tint to a slight bluish cast.
The original
six-track stereo has been given a 5.1 DTS clean-up; Leigh Harline’s score the
real benefactor here. As 23 Paces to
Baker Street is primarily a dialogue-driven tale with most of its action
taking place dead center, there is little room for directionalized dialogue and
effects, although both are employed subtly and effectively throughout. Extras
include a woefully undernourished audio commentary by Kent Jones who seems less
prepared than anyone ought to be, taking long pregnant pauses, on occasion, we can
hear him accessing info off a computer.
Honestly, if I can find this same info on Wikipedia why do I need to
listen to him? Badly done. Worse, with zero finesse. We also get trailers for this movie and
several others Kino is banking you will want to buy soon. Bottom line: 23 Paces to Baker Street is a passable
melodrama. Notice I didn’t say ‘thriller’ because it’s not. Even so, there are
better suspense stories out there for your consumption. 23 Paces may be rife
for rediscovery, chiefly for the great Vera Miles and Hathaway’s expertise
behind the camera. But it’s only a middling entertainment at best. Regrets.
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
3
VIDEO/AUDIO
3
EXTRAS
1
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