Avis des critiques

Gaslighting was the subject of numerous American films in 1944. . . .  But Robert Siodmak’s Phantom Lady, with its ingeniously structured screenplay and whiz-bang direction, is the more devilish concoction, designed to keep the viewer in a perpetual state of unrest.

I first saw the film in the late 1970s, when I was beginning to dive deep into jazz; I was immediately struck by its authentic atmosphere, its brazen conflation of near-ecstatic musical and sexual excitement, its perfectly paced editing and its sharp, shadowy, angled visuals. And I was also struck by the way form expertly complemented content.

Siodmak's lesser-seen masterpiece pushes noir into the realm of abstract nightmare, with Woody Bredell's inky cinematography slowly erasing the defined outlines of a city. It's a mystery that only gets hazier as it moves along, and its characters slowly regress from people to signifying types that find their clearest expression in scarcely concealed lust.

[Siodmak] tells a story about New York that shows nothing of New York and yet captures its essence by way of artifices that reveal profound and disturbing psychological truths about life in the city.

Siodmak and Bredell would go on to more challenging material, including, later that year, "Christmas Holiday," a major noir hiding behind a misleading title and cast (Deanna Durbin and Gene Kelly). But "Phantom Lady" functions as a virtual catalog of noir effects, still drawn upon by filmmakers today.

Channeling the spirit of the Russians (Eisenstein, Dovshenko, Vertov), the director uses grotesque angles, close-ups and rhythms to suggest a powerful sense of seduction and torture.