Experiment Perilous is a 1945melodrama/film noir set at the turn of the century. The film is based on a novel by Margaret Carpenter and directed by Jacques Tourneur. The film is reminiscent of many movie melodramas, in particular Gaslight, made in England in 1939 and remade in the U.S. in 1944. The film was nominated for one Academy Award for Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White. Hedy Lamarr's singing voice was dubbed by Paula Raymond. 1945 was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... Poster for The Perils of Pauline (1914). ... Film noir is a stylistic approach to genre films forged in depression-era detective and gangster movies and hard-boiled detective stories which were a staple of pulp fiction. ... Jacques Tourneur, born November 12, 1904 – died December 19, 1977, was a French film director. ... Gaslight is the title of at least two films based on the Patrick Hamilton play Angel Street, in which a man marries a woman and tries to convince her she is crazy so that he can steal the jewels stored in her attic. ... Hedy Lamarr Hedy Lamarr (November 9, 1913–January 19, 2000) was an actress and communications innovator. ...
Plot
In 1903, Doctor Huntington Bailey (Brent) meets a friendly older lady in train. She tells him that she is going to visit her brother Nick and his lovely young wife Allida. In New York Bailey hears that his train companion suddenly died. Shortly afterward, he meets the strange couple and gets suspicious of Nick's treatment of his wife. Nick keeps Allida, who he's trying to pass off as crazy, a virtual prisoner in their London town house, cutting off all contact with the outside world. The kindly psychiatrist Baily takes it upon himself to attempt to free his new love Allida from the control of the insanely jealous Nick.
A frenzied gun battle in an aquarium, replete with shattered glass, gushing water and floundering fish may be the most memorable (and often imitated) scene in the film.
Hedy Lamarr Hedy Lamarr (November 9, 1913–January 19, 2000) was an actress and communications innovator. ... George Brent (March 15, 1899 - May 26, 1979) was an actor in American cinema. ... Paul Lukas (May 26, 1887 - August 15, 1971) was a Hungarian actor. ...
External Links
Senses of Cinema Review (http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/18/perilous.html)
ExperimentPerilous does not altogether escape the philistine clichés, making the sculptor Clag something of an Expressionist when he seems particularly frustrated with his art and is unhappily in love, and making him a heroic realist in the style of Arno Breker when he shows off his master-piece: the massive sculpture entitled simply 'Woman'.
ExperimentPerilous responds in almost all particulars to this scenario, and might be said to exacerbate it, in the way it dovetails the woman-as-image with the woman-as-medical symptom (and in this respect, it is comparable to Max Ophüls' Caught [1949]).
In ExperimentPerilous the insipid is inescapably associated with the portrait, insofar as it stands for beauty, perfection, the ineffable: precisely, Allida and the pose in which the painting freezes her, and which she is fated to repeat.
In 1941, as America entered World War II, there were 1,000 televisions in use in the USA, Hollywood was only beginning to experiment with color film, and most Americans received their news through the radio.
During the war, film was used by the military, not for distribution to the public, but to document the war effort for military purposes.
Some military cameramen focused their cameras on their experiences abroad and captured peaceful moments unrelated to the war effort, such as a bicycle trip through the countryside of England.
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