Boat Noir Watch: Dangerous Crossing (1953)

Watched:  08/17/2024

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Joseph M. Newman

Criterion is being a bit silly for summer and added a collection of "Vacation Noir" films.  I've seen most of them, but will likely rewatch Niagara, because technicolor Monroe is in it, and it's pretty great, from what I recall.  

This one I'd never heard of.  Maybe that's because it doesn't star anyone with whom I'm particularly enamored and Joseph M. Newman has directed things I've seen, but he didn't quite set my world on fire.  I chose it in part because it was late and the movie ran under 80 minutes.  

It's...  fine.  Essentially the lovechild of The Lady Vanishes and Gaslight, Dangerous Crossing (1953) is a paranoid thriller aboard a steamer bound from New York to England.  Jeanne Crain plays a newlywed who boards a ship with whom she's rushed into marriage.  Once onboard, they split up so he can drop money with the ship's purser, and she heads to the deck to wave good-bye to NYC before hitting the bar.

The husband does not show up as planned.  And when she goes to find him, her room is locked and she can't get in.  No one can recall seeing him - but they do remember her.  She's shown she's checked into a different room under her maiden name and with none of her husband's luggage.  

Michael Rennie of space-movie fame plays the ship's doctor, who may also want to be on the lady who is either married and traumatized, or insane and traumatized.

Mostly the movie is Jeanne Crain running around looking for her husband and everyone else insisting she should rest.  

SPOILERS

No, you won't get out ahead of the mystery unless you throw common sense to the wind.  The villains' plot requires Crain to have chanced upon our baddie, fallen for him, immediately married him without telling anyone, and then getting on the exact ship in order for the scheme to work.  And for this guy to cook up this plan after seeing a rich girl's father died, just assuming he was that much of a player, is a bold, bold call.

I mean, it's a lot.  

Crain is... fine in the movie.  But watching her just run around a ship set looking frantic isn't much of a way to spend a movie.  

The movie did one thing that worked shockingly well that seems like it should have been annoying.  The ship is stuck in fog for a good chunk of the film's time, and so the fog horn just keeps blowing.  And it becomes a weird, ominous tone - and it really does get you into Crain's headspace.

Anyway, it's okay.  On the letter grade scale, an uninflated C+ or B-.  It's not original enough to suggest as a novelty, and it's too convoluted to feel they knocked the concept out of the park.  The performances are solid, but this is clearly not a huge blockbuster.  But it's entertaining!  And as a thriller, it kinda/sorta works.