Dangerous Crossing (1953)

A recent release from Fox under their Film Noir Collection, Dangerous Crossing is more of a mystery thriller along the lines of Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes than a totally downbeat film noir emphasizing guilt and fate stalking the protagonist to trip him up just at the worst possible moment.  Nevertheless, although Fox has mislabeled quite a few movies film noir, Dangerous Crossing does do fairly well in its short 75-minute running time making it watchable for fans of mysteries or the stars.

Jeanne Crain stars as the new bride who marries a man (Carl Betz) after a whirlwind 24-hour courtship and then the two disembark on an ocean voyage whereupon the guy disappears without a trace about five minutes in.  The ship they are aboard looks suspiciously like the Titanic. It was. The film was shot entirely on the Fox lot on sets left over from the Fox film of the same name that starred Barbara Stanwyck and Clifton Webb. Of course the ship was supposed to be some other ship but just look at the footage and see for yourself. The dress Jeanne Crain wore in a ballroom scene was recycled from All About Eve.

There were a few other film sets that did double duty for Fox that year including Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and perhaps a few other movie sets. That was in the days when television was starting to make inroads on the audience for movies and Fox resolved to make everything in Cinemascope from now on so Dangerous Crossing was one of the last Fox films that was shot and presented in 1.33:1 or standard format.

The story, by John Dickson Carr, is fairly common for mysteries called "the locked room routine" or similar by the commentator. It tries to determine how a person disappears or gets murdered etc., right in the middle of a houseful of people, in this case a boatful.  The story plays out about the way you'd expect if you've watched many of these stories. 

Jeanne Crain does OK with her almost continuous screen presence but doesn't have enough shtick to really fill in the time like a solid lead like Stanwyck or Colbert would have.  Carl Betz is only in a few key scenes and I don't want to give away the "surprise" so I won't cover much more of the story.  Betz soon moved on to television with The Donna Reed Show and later Judd for the Defense. The other big part went to Michael Rennie (Klaatu) who did an excellent job as the ship's doctor who is not quite sure if Crain is off her rocker or not. Rennie does have a good amount of talent resources and is able to make good use of his screen time.

The DVD has a full length commentary by Aubrey Solomon. I felt the full length commentary was a mite windy but others may enjoy hearing all the details of the movie bidness brought out by Solomon. The extras include a 15 minute featurette called Charting a Dangerous Crossing with noir scholars Solomon, Robert Osborne, Eddie Muller and a few others that give a good overview of the time and place without overburdening the viewer. The trailer subtitles, and photographs complete the extra features.

While I won't say this is among the best mysteries I've seen, it is well done and shot by Joseph LaShelle, who also shot Laura. His chiaroscuro cinematography and innovative camera set ups and angles along with the repetitive fog horn blasts through the night made Dangerous Crossing worth recommending.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV