Alicia I love this movie so much

ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

Robert Joyner The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

morrison-dylan-fan Recently finishing the wonderful Canadian Neo-Noir TV mini-series Cardinal, I was pleased to learn from a fellow poster on ICM about a Canadian challenge,where ICMers have to watch as many Canadian titles as possible in a month. Knowing recent productions from Canada,I struggled to come up with any made during the "Classic" era of cinema. Finding out about director Fyodor Otsep after seeing the fascinating Amok during my 100 French films in 100 days,I was thrilled to stumble on his name when I began search for Canadian Film Noir,which led to me listening in on what the city was saying.The plot:Working on a story about an actress who died in a car crash,newspaper reporter Mary Roberts presses lawyer Albert Frédéric on claims from the actress that the suicide of her husband was actually murder. Focusing on his new creation,composer Michel Lacoste allows his marriage to Blanche Lacoste to break down. Seeing nothing left,Blanche kills herself. Finding her body ,Michel fears that Blanche's suicide looks like murder. Hearing Michel's tune,his lawyer Frédéric promises to stop the city whispering and to rid any doubt of the suicide,but only if Michel pays a "debt":To stop Mary Robert's whispers.View on the film:For his final movie, (shot as the alternate French language version La forteresse was being shot on the same sets with a different cast) director Fyodor Otsep (who in 1918 was a Russian film cooperative,but had to flee Europe when France got Occupied) listens in with a sharp use of Morris C. Davis,which Otsep composers to build anxiety over the debt Michel Lacoste is ordered to pay,and the composition playing out over the breakdown of his marriage. Driving over the frosty atmosphere from the outdoor locations of 40's Canada,Otsep conducts a fantastic A Christmas Carol mood into Lacoste and Frédéric's outside encounters via stylish weaving camera moves casting a ghostly whisper around the two.Gradually hitting the notes of doubt,the screenplay by Rian James /Leonard Lee/George Zuckerman/Michael Lennox/Gina Kaus/ Hugh Kemp & Sydney Banks (!) strongly strike a Melodrama edge in the crumbling, fractured marriage of the Lacoste's. Sending the lawyer in,the writers snowball a sinister Film Noir bite,where the suicide of Blanche pulls Michel into the deadly double dealing of Frédéric. Suspecting she is not getting the full story, Mary Anderson gives a wonderful,quick-witted performance as Roberts,who pulls Michel veil of darkness with a real snap. Ploughing Michel into following his orders, Paul Lukas gives a wicked,brittle performance as Frédéric,whilst Helmut Dantine pulls the raw Noir strings of Michel's fear,as Michel hears the city whisper.

Robert J. Maxwell Mary Anderson is a reporter investigating an old murder case in Quebec. Paul Lukas is a high-end lawyer who was the murderer and, for some reason, he resents Anderson's poking into the crime and "opening old wounds." Boy, would he like her to disappear.Lukas has a friend, Helmut Dantine, who is a brilliant musician married to a shrew. One night, after a particularly bitter argument with her, Dantine shows up plastered at Lukas's house and Lukas puts him to bed. Then he sneaks out into the night with the intention of murdering the shrew, blaming it on Dantine, and blackmailing Dantine into murdering Anderson so that she won't uncover Lukas's earlier crime. Got that? It turns out to be unnecessary for Lukas to murder Dantine's wife because she has already committed suicide and left a note behind, explaining that she couldn't go on living any longer because her nails never dried quickly enough.Lukas, his mind ever dirty, pinches the suicide note and arranges a few other details to make Dantine look like the murderer. The blackmail plan goes ahead. Dantine can't remember a thing from the night before. Lukas tells him that he showed up drunk and bragged about having killed his wife. Lukas is in a position to get him out from under the threat of the hangman's noose, but only if he takes Mary Anderson to Montmorency Falls and throws her in.A slight problem develops when Dantine and Anderson fall in love. Lukas's scheme unravels.It's a B feature and the usual clichés are not avoided. Mary creeps through a darkened house with a candle while an eyeball peers at her through a crack in the door -- that sort of thing. But it transcends the usual cheap mystery if only because it's set and photographed in Quebec, the most nearly European city in North America. The director doesn't go out of his way to give us a tourist's eye view, as Hitchcock did in "I Confess." There is no shoot out in the Château Frontenac. But we see enough of the location to appreciate its verticality and its stony elegance and sometimes severe beauty.Paul Lukas plays the kind of villain he did in "The Lady Vanishes." He's perfectly reasonable, he appreciates the splendor of Dantine's piano concerto -- of which we hear quite a lot -- but he's ruthless too and a little mad.Dantine has chiseled features, like a Bernini sculpture, but their default position is a stern and unyielding frown. He was locked into roles like this because he just couldn't do anything else. On those rare occasions when he tries to smile, the viewer can almost hear the agonized creak of unused mechanisms.Mary Anderson isn't a bravura performer either. She's not stunningly beautiful, not sexy, and her acting achieves a certain plateau and then quits. The thing is that she is eminently likable. She's petite, skinny, and vulnerable. One can imagine being nurtured by her -- she was the nurse in Hitchcock's "Lifeboat" -- but she could never play the scolding wife, for instance.It's a diverting and pleasant feature with no pretensions.

AlanSquier This is a very good Canadian film. On the face of it, one would expect a strictly routine lady reporter investigating some unusual doings, but it's much more than that. I won't spoil the intricate plot, but it does take concentration to follow. Paul Lukas is, of course, his usual magnificent self The camera work is especially good and the backdrop of a city that most Americans didn't see very much of on the screen is quite good. The classical tone set by Helmut Dantine's character's composition, The Quebec Concerto, is very impressive.One realizes who the villain is from his first appearance and yet the movie achieves not quite Hitchcockian suspense by the end. This is indeed an unjustly overlooked film.

bmacv Whispering City's locale is Quebec City, that odd European fortress set high over the St. Lawrence River; it comes to Gallic life more fully here than in Alfred Hitchcock's I Confess, made a few years later.The death in an auto accident of a long-retired actress spurs crime reporter Mary Anderson to work up a feature story; the woman was sent to a sanitarium years before for insisting that her fiance's death was actually murder. Pursuing a lead, Anderson interviews a prosperous benefactor of the arts (Paul Lukas), who seems curiously bothered by the visit. Currently, Lukas serves as the patron of an impoverished young pianist/composer (Helmut Dantine; the two actors both appeared in Watch on the Rhine). Dantine is working on something called The Quebec Concerto; an oddly scored work, its orchestra features a Sousaphone rearing its brassy bell.An overcomplicated but still compelling plot involves Dantine's disturbed shrew of a wife, who's dependent on injections to make her sleep; the discovery of her suicide, which is made to look like murder (well, it seemed to work once); a blackmail scheme to engineer another murder; and a faked death made to look like yet another murder. (Eagle-Lion was not known for the elegant simplicity of its plots.)Oddly, it all works, if a bit creakily. Mary Anderson suggests two-thirds Teresa Wright and a third Bonita Granville; the latter impression no doubt derives from her sleuthing around in a jaunty tam, like Nancy Drew. She has the distinction (as does the director, the short-lived Fedor Ozep, as he's credited here) of helping to make the best Nancy Drew mystery ever released. That's faint praise, but praise nonetheless.