I just saw
The Scar, aka
Hollow Triumph, aka
The Man Who Murdered Himself.
All I can say, is, I
loved this movie!
Paul Henreid is always more interesting as a villain. His villains are usually men suffering from delusions of grandeur, attacks of overweening pride and also of sudden doubt. I kind of like him better this way... he's somehow more human and likable when he expresses that paranoia.
Henreid must have had a thing about twins or doppelgangers... first he made this movie, in which he plays a con man/robber who finds his lookalike, and then later he directed
Dead Ringer with Bette Davis.
The movie really picks up when Joanie Bennett shows up. She's just flat out entertaining, gorgeous, with her standard wry line readings that mask a more fragile personality than we suspected. We don't want her to give up hope. She proves to be the underpinning of the film.
The Scar has a very good storyline, and the way it's directed is quietly absorbing....the same way that
Day of the Jackal is absorbing. I found myself rooting for Henreid as I watched him pour himself into another man's persona - to escape a death sentence for foolishly stealing a mobster's money.
I very much liked the sense of humor in the writing.
The movie becomes better and better, the longer we follow Henreid, holding back the fancier camera angles (like the one seen above)for later in the movie. I really liked this subtler approach to what looks like a low budget film at the beginning. Best of all is the scene where Henreid, hiding out as a gas station attendant, suddenly realizes that the men he's been waiting on are the thugs sent to kill him. Sweating bullets, he uses the car itself to hide from them, as we see them through the rear view mirror, through the small gap between the open hood and the windshield, all the time talking about how they would recognize him anywhere! I wish I had a photo to show you how exciting the scene is, how the camera sees everything. You can't hide, you can only peek out from under. Luckily, people aren't very observant of those who serve them.
Gosh, there are so many good things about this film, it's hard to single out a few to praise here.
I loved this shot of the cigarette burning a hole in the countertop as Henreid scars his own face with acid injected into the skin.
The casting is great. Joan Bennett is really superb here and I can't tell you more about her, except she is very affecting. Veteran favorite John Qualen has a lovely cameo role as a dentist. The scenes with Qualen are funny scary, and another darkly humorous scene with a photographic negative makes your stomach sink while you smile, since a good deal of the plot's suspense turns on that scene.
John Alton's lighting is a standout of course, but I liked the way it built up, thanks to the subtle way that Steven Szekely directed the film.
Lots of mirror shots, lots of interesting lighting choices and placement, but the most interesting shots and lighting are further into the film. Ditto for the camera angles, where deep focus skews things more and more. This is not to say that we are in for a crazy world of distortion, Sekely is more subtle than that. We start out pretty normal, even plain. Then as we move into Henreid's world, the camera becomes more subjective, we are at Henreid's view, he's always looming big in the shot, close to us. We feel what he feels and see what he sees. He is big and the people around him are small, which is his character's world view.
What I most liked was the buildup of suspense. Certain scenes were extremely suspenseful, but the movie was one long taut line from beginning to end. It was all of a piece, which means basically that I liked the film overall better than I can piece it together for you here. Really,
really good.
The only film I have seen of those is the excellent "The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry".
