That's (above) part of the opening title of the original 1944 version. Behind the letters the shadow of a mysterious crippled man walks slowly, inexorably toward the camera. We never see his face. Who is he? Why is he crippled? The music whips us into a frenzy of excitement. Just who is this man?
After the titles we fade to the city at night and a car careens recklessly through the streets. Other cars screech to a halt to avoid hitting it.
The car pulls up to the entrance of an office building. A mysterious figure with his back to camera...a new figure, not the man with crutches...gets out and lumbers up to the locked door. It's noir...everything is in shadow.
The stranger's knocking summons the night watchman, who recognizes him and takes him up to his floor in an elevator. The watchman tries to make idle small talk but the stranger, still with his back to camera, deflects it.
Okay, let's see how the 1973 remake (above) handles the same opening. This time there's no careening car, no shots of the city at night. An unidentified man makes his way to the door of an office building at night. I hesitate to call him a mystery man because we see his face the whole time.
So, where are the shadows? Granted, it's a TV movie and they probably had to shoot the cheapest way, but noir IS cheap to shoot. Some scenes in the original noirs were shot with a single light source. I guess the producer just didn't care enough.
Generic titles appear over the man as he walks into the lobby. Without shadows the lobby's architecture is revealed. It's that bright, optimistic style that was so popular in that period...something totally at odds with the dramatic nature of the story.
The watchman (above) doesn't walk over to the door. He just sits there and watches the stranger sign in. People in this film do a lot of sitting.
Back to the old black and white film: the stranger gets off the elevator and looks down into a sort of courtyard that contains empty desks where clerks work during the day. Your first impression is that he's looking down into hell.
Now we see the stranger's face for the first time. It's on a long upshot. He hobbles along the upper floor like a rat skulking in the rafters.
We watch as he painstakingly lets himself into his barely-lit office, and with great effort sits down. From the way he moves it's evident that he's been shot. The downshot tells us that this is a man who has the attention of the gods. They're watching him, waiting to see what happens.
He turns on his dictaphone and begins to dictate his confession. We learn that he's an insurance salesman who helped a woman kill her husband for the insurance money. Now he's been shot and has only a short time to live.
Notice the dim light. With only minutes to live, he himself is an insubtantial shadow at the threshold of the nether world. We're watching a soul painfully pass out of this life into the great unknown.
Back to the seventies version: we fade out from the stranger standing in front of an elevator in the lobby, to him walking around his desk and painfully sitting down. The lighting is typical TV lighting. No nether world, just brown light, if there is such a thing.
Aaaaargh! That's all I have time for. Which version do you prefer?
