Critics reviews

The screenplay written by sought-after script doctor and first-rate screenwriter Philip Yordan crackles with wit, especially when it’s performed by Peter Lorre in a wildly entertaining role as Roman’s gunsel, Gino. THE CHASE is eccentric, comical, and thrilling—and most definitely noir.

It's happened again." This almost throwaway admission by the protagonist comes just after the film's jolting third act twist. It sets the viewer up for the unexpected, but is delivered with such exasperation that, at least for the beleaguered hero of the picture, the situation may perhaps be all too familiar... Prior to this point, The Chase had been a solid, atmospheric thriller... But with this derailing revelation, there is really no preparing for how The Chase plays out.

My book features The Chase because it poses with extreme prejudice the question of how far narrative innovation could go in the 1940s. Sometimes, as I've argued with The Great Moment and All about Eve, filmmakers go too far and get pulled back. But then readjustments necessary in postproduction may create twitches of novelty too.The Chase is another example of innovation by accident.

The embellishments of scriptwriter Philip Yordan and company sap the movie of some of the traditional satisfactions of a white-knuckler – the final showdown turns entirely on hubristic folly, not on a face-to-face standoff – but the resulting work is a whatsit unto itself, with the additional inducement of Peter Lore as Cochran's blasé henchman.

Thanks to the Kino Lorber Blu-ray, I've now seen the UCLA restoration of Arthur Ripley's 1946 cult noir item The Chase twice, having missed it in all its speckled and dupey public-domain versions. To be perfectly honest, I can't say I was won over by it, although its status as a murky, quasi-camp curiosity encouraged me to watch it a second time with Guy Maddin's charming if somewhat discombobulated audio-commentary, which enhanced my appreciation of it without quite turning me into an acolyte.

With its dark palate and the ceaseless creep of unstable subjectivity, the movie exudes the feeling that anything at all could happen, and — especially for its era — it's outright unnerving.

The director, Arthur Ripley, orchestrates a number of wordless stretches and makes strategic use of rear-screen projection to position Ms. Morgan before an oceanic void. With its sometimes glacial pacing and abrupt changes in location, the movie looks forward to the European art cinema of the 1960s.