Robert Siodmak
Phantom Lady

In the landscape of film noir from the golden years, Phantom Lady is a rarity. Shot in 1944, a year that saw the release of masterpieces of the genre like the famous Double Indemnity, this film doesn’t feature a private detective or the classic loser as its protagonist, but rather a woman and, even more exceptionally, not a femme fatale, but a simple secretary who plunges headlong into an investigation to save her boss, Scott, from the death penalty.

The engineer Scott Henderson, after an argument with his wife, goes to a bar where he meets a mysterious woman with whom he spends the evening at the theater. Upon returning home, he finds his wife strangled and, of course, all the suspicions fall on him.

With a touch of ruthless realism, neither the bartender nor the taxi driver he met that evening remember him, and Scott ends up on death row. The only one who believes him is his secretary, Carol - played by the beautiful Ella Raines, one of the underrated female icons of noir, on par with Lizabeth Scott. Carol initiates a personal investigation knowing the key to the defense lies in finding the mysterious woman who spent the evening with Scott, but no one knows her name. Carol goes to the theater to talk to the musicians, hoping that one of them might have seen her or could recognize her. This leads to unpredictable developments and a surprise ending.

Despite lacking a key element of noir - the femme fatale - the film contains two iconic scenes of the genre. The first is where Carol tails, at night and in the rain, a possible witness. The darkest darkness, slashed by blades of light, the sinister sound of heels on the asphalt, the barely lit streets: everything preludes to an imminent departure.

The second scene is a classic for cinephiles: the drum solo by Cliff, played by Elisha Cook Jr., another iconic face of noir. While playing, Cliff stares at Carol, provocatively dressed; he pauses for a moment to kiss her lewdly, then resumes hitting the drums more and more frantically, as if about to explode with lust. The rhythm accelerates, and his expression leaves no doubt about what's happening, reaching the climax of the scene.

A must-see to believe: it seems almost impossible that a scene so erotic as to be defined as “a sexual encounter between two clothed people” was not censored.

The audacity and mastery of the direction, helmed by Robert Siodmak, is no surprise, a German filmmaker whose first feature film was the remarkable Menschen am Sonntag (1930), written, among others, with Billy Wilder. Having sought refuge in the United States because he was Jewish, Siodmak directed other noir classics, including the most famous The Killers, with Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner. A master of the genre, capable of transforming darkness into pure cinema.

Available for free - unfortunately in the “colorized” version - on Internet Archive (a non-profit library of millions of free texts, movies, software, music, websites, and more)