#don castle

Strike It Rich (1948) Lesley Selander

The Guilty (1947) John Reinhardt

Elyse Knox-Don Castle

The leading lady married the producer, who only got into filmmaking to give a job to an old college chum, and the supporting character lusting after the female lead had earlier been her father in a series of films. Somehow, that convoluted, off-screen story is a perfect fit to the nihilistic, claustrophobic world of Cornell Woolrich. John Reinhardt’s THE GUILTY (1947, TCM, YouTube) may not be the best adaptation of Woolrich’s work, in this case the story “Two Men in a Furnished Room,” but it’s one of the best at capturing the author’s vision, if only by dint of its low budget and some imaginative direction.

While waiting in a neighborhood bar for a shady woman (Bonita Granville) he hasn’t seen in six months, a man (Don Castle) tells the bartender of their relationship and the murder of Granville’s good twin sister. Was the killer Castle’s shell-shocked roommate (Wally Cassell, whose performance consists of chain smoking and whining), the lodger (John Litel, who had played Granville’s father in the Nancy Drew films) in love with the evil twin, or the evil twin herself, who delights in stealing men from her sister?

Even in the restored print on TCM, the film looks grimy, set in cheap apartments and boarding houses and the half-deserted bar. There are scenes that seem to be just ordinary two shots, but then Reinhardt and cinematographer Henry Sharp throw in a canted angle or an overhead shot to create tension, and the whole thing starts feeling twisted. Under the credits, Sharp’s camera follows Castle, clad in the official film noir uniform of trench coat and fedora, as he walks through the wet city streets at night. You can’t get more noir than that. The film was made cheaply, for $120,000, but that adds to sense of doom and frustration.