THE ACCUSED: Blu-ray (Paramount, 1949) Kino Lorber

At the movies, star Loretta Young was usually cast as the epitome of moral virtue. Indeed, Young, a personal favorite of my late aunt, exuded a rare screen quality, far beyond reproach and usually, to suggest a near saintly demeanor, ironically, never to veer into cloying sanctimoniousness – even when she played a bishop’s wife or nun. In life, of course, the clarity of this perfect image was somewhat muddied by the fallibility of just being human. On the set of 1935’s Call of the Wild, she became pregnant with screen hunk, Clark Gable’s child even though Gable was married at the time. The legitimacy of their daughter, ‘Forever’, was kept a lifelong secret – from both Gable and the child - until, arguably, Young’s own Catholic guilt could no longer bear the burden and the truth was revealed posthumously in her memoirs. Depending on the source consulted, Young and Gable either had a notorious flagrante delicto, to mutually cut their collars and cuffs, or Gable, one of the biggest stars of all time, had raped Young on a westbound train back to Hollywood. Personally, I find the latter scenario harder to believe. In today’s tabloid fervor for chipping away at those Teflon-coated screen personas concocted by clever studio PR in the day, we tend to look for, and usually unearth the worst in people when, in fact, the reality is much more demure and unworthy of our ravenous need to revel in scandal.

Whatever the case, there are shades of this sordid chapter from Young’s life, to surface in Hal B. Wallis’ 1949 noir thriller, The Accused, costarring Young with Robert Cummings and, as the potential rapist, the unlikely cast, but thoroughly effective Douglas Dick, briefly seen the previous year as the proverbial good guy/romantic interest in Hitchcock’s Rope (1948). Here, Dick is menacing as the thoroughly obsessed, Bill Perry, a student who desires his psychology professor, Dr. Wilma Tuttle (Young), body and soul. Given Perry’s predilection for Wilma, why she should ever entertain to get into a car with him is simply one of those wrinkles best explained by the old adage, “…different time/different place”, although even during this seemingly more harmless epoch in America’s cultural evolution, the realty of ‘kids killing parents and grandparents’ gets expressed by Homicide Lt. Ted Dorgan (Wendell Corey) in his investigation into the discovery of Perry’s battered remains, found sometime later. What occurred between these final moments of Perry’s life and the resultant trial, to test the complicity and resolve of our psychologically tortured heroine, gets revealed, and later defended by Wilma’s impassioned defense attorney, Warren Ford (Cummings), towards whom Wilma has begun to feel more than a professional kinship.

But back to Perry – first, beaten to death by Wilma with a tire iron in his fiery attempt to have her on his own terms. Wilma flees on foot and is later picked up by truck driver, Jack Hunter (Mickey Knox) whom she successfully conceals her true identity.  This proves fortuitous when, some time later, Hunter is called in as an ‘eye witness’ by Dorgan. The argument for ‘self-defense’ alas, gets muddied as a disheveled and panicked Wilma, suddenly aware she has committed murder, compounds this wickedness by dragging Perry’s remains to an undisclosed location and make it all look like a terrible accident. And Wilma will later learn from Ford, who also happens to be Perry’s guardian, that the boy was up to no good, rumored to have forcibly sired an illegitimate child by exchange student, Susan Duval (Suzanne Dalbert). When Ford initially questions Wilma about the relationship between Sue and Bill, she balks at any suggestion of impropriety and keeps close to her vest about having suspicions Perry might have been a ‘bad boy’. Returning home after their conversation, Wilma suffers a complete collapse, discovered by her housekeeper, Mrs. Connor (Sara Allgood), and carted off to hospital under the kindly care of Dr. Vinson (Francis Pierlot). Meanwhile, the cut and dry inquest into Perry’s death leads Dorgan to suspect more is at play than meets the eye. Indeed, Dorgan and Ford conspire to get to the bottom of things in a hurry. Perry did not die of accidental drowning, despite the coroner’s discover of several cups of sea water in his body.

Inadvertently, Ford’s respect for Wilma embroils her deeply in the investigation as she is called in by him to offer a psychological profile of the deceased; also, to comfort Duval in her grief at discovering Perry has been murdered. And Dorgan, more than ever, knows foul play had its hand in Perry’s fate. Unbeknownst to Wilma, Dorgan already has her pegged for the murderess, a suspicion confirmed when Dorgan, presumably on a social slant, invites Dr. Romley (Sam Jaffe) to observe Wilma’s demeanor in his presence while everyone is supposedly working on the same side to solve the crime. After the initial ‘cute meet’ between Wilma and Romley, the latter shares his findings with Dorgan. Wilma is definitely the killer Dorgan has been searching for. And so, a trial. Problem: by now, Ford and Wilma are very much in love.  Alas, after taking Wilma to the fights, the brutal pummeling she observes in the ring triggers a regressive episode in which Wilma relives her killing Perry. This is later proved in Dorgan’s office by Romley, who gets Wilma to show how she beat Perry to death. Even so, Dorgan too is now sympathetic to Wilma’s plight, more so as he realizes Ford and Wilma are deeply in love. At trial, Ford’s ardent plea for the jury to see the crime through Wilma’s eyes gets neatly skirted around the Hollywood censors, whose edict on high endured, that criminals must pay for their acts of violence with their own lives. Instead, as Dorgan quietly listens to Ford’s summation, depicting Wilma as the victim rather than the instigator, he wisely deduces the jury will return a verdict of ‘not guilty’ as the screen fades to black, leaving the actual results of their deliberation open-ended for the audience’s interpretation.

The chief problem with all crime/thrillers, particularly of this vintage, is they usually end in the predictability of a drawn-out trial sequence where all the details we already know, from having witnessed the actual plot prior to this moment, are brought out and paraded like a mountain of dirty laundry for the blind-sided participants in this fictional ‘dumb show’ to digest. Ending the scene in ambiguity helps director, William Dieterle assuages our expectations for the usual ‘crime doesn’t pay’ finale we have all seen more than once too often. Ketti Frings’s screenplay, based on June Truesdell’s Be Still, My Love, skillfully moves the action along, while Loretta Young’s central performance considerably massages our empathy for a ‘mostly’ innocent woman, desperate to tell the truth in order to liberate her conscience, and yet, in tandem to obfuscate the details of her crime and circumvent punishment by the law. Producer, Hal Wallis, having paid $75,000 for the rights to the novel, planned to cast Barbara Stanwyck in the lead and Don de Fore in support, with Paramount footing the bill to the tune of $8,500,000. But from this announcement, several wrinkles occurred. Ginger Rogers was hired instead of Stanwyck, ironically, to be replaced by Stanwyck and Wendell Corey before Stanwyck removed herself from the running, claiming “the script was too stupid to shoot.”

Wallis then had the clever idea to cast Stanwyck in Sorry, Wrong Number (1948) – a sizable hit, while Wallis plotted to have Kirk Douglas co-star with Loretta Young. Again, kismet intervened, and Douglas bowed out, leaving room for Bob Cummings. Even so, Wallis was not particularly interested in Cummings to play the romantic lead, despite the fact Cummings had received a big build-up and had played romantic leads for some time in the early 1940’s. Wallis, alas, was more interested in promoting the career of Wendell Corey, whom Young fought – and won - against being cast as the romantic interest in this picture. Young, however, thought Frings’ screenplay excellent and endeavored to make the most of it in her performance. When The Accused had its premiere, many cited it as one of the most intelligently written thrillers in years, with excellent use of its psycho-babble underpinnings, and, moreover, a genuine sincerity from the entire cast to sell their wares as cleverly concocted suspense. Viewed today, The Accused is more quaintly permissible than trail-blazing or trend-setting. That said, its underlay of emotional fragility, to snap when pressed by extreme acts of violence, holds together with a unique thread of empathy connecting the audience to Young’s put-upon egghead, who fights like hell to keep her sanity and respectability, despite having succumbed to more primal instincts during a fitful passion.

The Accused arrives on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber, and, in a transfer vastly improved from anything this movie has looked like before on home video. For decades, Paramount peddled a careworn and badly contrasted master, to arrive via Universal’s MOD/DVD program in a thoroughly botched and inferiorly interlaced transfer, sporting all sorts of age-related specks, flecks and anemic contrast to render the darkest scenes unrecognizable. Most of the aforementioned anomalies have been corrected on Kino’s Blu-ray – particularly contrast, which now appears far more acceptingly balanced. Dark scenes reveal more detail in half-shadow and sequences shot in the stark light of day appear more natural. Film grain has much improved, as has fine detail. While the image retains a residual softness, presumably, as nothing here has been derived from an original camera negative, whatever the actual source, it is fairly clean, well-nuanced and subtly balanced to reveal a good amount of Milton R. Krasner’s expertly lensed B&W cinematography. The audio is 2.0 DTS mono and adequate for this presentation, with Victor Young’s score sounding grand, and dialogue that is crisp and clear. We get a new audio commentary by historian Eddy Von Mueller and a theatrical trailer. Mueller’s track is well worth the price of admission. Bottom line: The Accused is neither ground-breaking nor shocking by today’s standards. It is, however, a neat way to spend an hour and 40-minutes in the dark, harking back to that ‘different time and place’ when Hollywood sought to hand-craft its story-telling around good solid actors who could make much of the contrivances on tap. Kino’s new to Blu is better than acceptable and that’s a blessing too, considering how utterly awful this movie has looked on home video in the past.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

3

VIDEO/AUDIO

3.5

EXTRA

1