There is something about the Three Stooges which makes them
infinitely watchable. They didn’t have
the finesse and athletic skills of performers like Charles Chaplin or Buster
Keaton. They didn’t have anything
original going for them in terms of the stories in their productions. What they did have was a capacity for sheer
jocular brutality that was unsurpassed by other comedy teams. Perhaps this is why a lot of women (but not
all, certainly) don’t particularly care for them. I believe it was Jay Leno (and I may be
incorrect here, but I’m going off memory) who said that men love the Stooges (this is paraphrasing) because
they love to watch ugly men beat the shit out of each other. I believe there is a lot of truth in that thought,
and I believe that it extends beyond the realm of comedy. I think that this also explains, at least in
part, why people love things like boxing, hockey, and just about every contact
sport known to man. Sure, there are men
who could be considered handsome in these arenas, but by and large, they tend
to look like the Gashouse Gorillas in various uniforms.
But the Three Stooges were clowns first and foremost, and this is reflected
in their hair styles (not hair again, Todd!).
Curly was shaved bald at a
time when this wasn’t the norm, unless maybe you were in the military. Larry had
that fright-wig-esque set of curls that looked like a canyon with a shiny, bald
pate serving as the bottom (and which provided many a guffaw from having chunks
of it torn out at the root from time to time).
Which brings us to Moe and
his number-three-salad-bowl coif, which bespoke as much of buffoonery as it did
of his leadership in the group (Shemp’s
mop was too wild and greasy for him to claim supremacy; plus, he was even more unsightly
than Moe). Moe’s
hair was reflective of the Cleopatra bob hair style which can be as alluring as
it is icy, and this is exemplified in the character of Jacqueline Gibson (Jean Brooks) in Mark Robson’s The Seventh
Victim. I’m not sure if she was
adept in the art of the two-finger eye poke, though.
Young Mary Gibson (Kim Hunter) is informed that her
(older) sister Jacqueline has gone missing in New York City. Leaving the confines of her all-girl Catholic
school, Mary sets out for the big city to find her sister. However, she discovers that the world her
sibling has inhabited is not only “underground” but also quite deadly.
The thing most people talk about
when discussing this movie is the element of Satanism in it. However, like most of producer Val Lewton’s films, he used the
sensational aspects he was handed by the studio to discuss other things of
interest to him. Like Hitchcock, Lewton was a master of the MacGuffin. In some respects, then, The Seventh Victim (I don’t recall hearing too much about the other
six) deals with Mary’s journey into womanhood.
She moves away from her private school, where she has been surrounded by
nothing but other girls into the big city, where she has to contend with the
amorous advances of adult men. We can
also assume that she is a virgin based on the background shown in the film (she
is named Mary for a reason), and this is something coveted by the men who try
to win her heart. While tracking her
wayward sister down, she begins at Jacqueline’s cosmetics company, La Sagesse
(Wisdom), and it is here that Mary starts her trek toward some variety of
sagacity (though the title of the corporation can have another meaning in the
context of the film’s story). Mary has
to take a job as a kindergarten teacher, a sort of surrogate motherhood, if you
will. Yet she (kinda, sorta) resists the
propositions set forth by Greg Ward (Hugh
Beaumont, who, ironically or not, would go on to play Ward Cleaver on the Leave It To Beaver television show), who
is significantly older than she is, instead turning to the younger poet Jason (Erford Gage). Where Greg offers stability and a
traditional home life (he’s a lawyer), Jason offers her beauty and art with a
less secure financial future. Jacqueline
had chosen Greg (making him a bit of a jerk, really), but she has also vanished
from his life, and this points to another aspect of the film.
A key (perhaps THE key) metaphor
of the film is about the choice between death and life (or to put it in Shawshank Redemption terms, getting busy
living or getting busy dying), and this plays out among three characters, all
of them women. In choosing Jason over
Greg, Mary is choosing all of the things young people find enchanting about
life. His is the world of grandeur and
imagination, of the ability to do anything your mind may proffer you, but with
feet still planted (slightly) on the ground.
Jacqueline, by contrast, is essentially a thrill seeker. The room she rents over an Italian restaurant
is bare aside from a plain wooden chair and noose hanging from the
ceiling. Jacqueline takes comfort in
this room, because it means that she has the power to choose life or death. She is not beholden to anything or
anyone. Thus, the Satanists’ pursuit of
her is taking away that choice, and this is why she resists them at all turns. But Jacqueline is also aloof, as shown by her
pale skin set against her jet black hair.
She betrays little to no emotion in her speech. She is never seen without being robed in a
heavy fur coat, as if she were trying to keep her dead body from cooling. She is, in effect, dead already. Perhaps this is because she has tried to
wrest control from fate. Perhaps this is
because she has finally made the wrong decision in her life. No matter what she may have been, she has
become the antithesis of Mary now, and there is the slightest hint that this
bleak mindset will eventually seep into the younger sister’s mind. But not today. The third woman is Mimi (Elizabeth Russell), a fellow boarder of Jacqueline’s. Mimi has been dying of tuberculosis (her
omnipresent coughing being the big giveaway), and she has holed herself up in her
room, waiting acquiescently for death to claim her. She is what happens when people give up and
abrogate their power of choice and simply live in the fear engendered by this
concession. Whether or not she reclaims
what time she has left, it is perhaps she who gains the most insight by the
film’s end, short-lived though it will be.
The film looks phenomenal, thanks
to Nicholas Musuraca’s
cinematography, which positively drips pools of impenetrable darkness
throughout the frame. The narrative is
staid, all things considered, and this isn’t a film filled with thrills, though
there are absolutely scenes of such magnificent suspenseful execution, you
would be hard-pressed to find much that surpasses them to this day. This is more pensive, more introspective than
something along the lines of, say, Race
With The Devil. While frustrated
with a studio executive (and I’ve seen several variations on this story, so
I’ll just skip to what was said, rather than where and when) who told Lewton to keep messages out of his
Horror films, the producer came back with, “…we do have a message. And our message is that death is good!” While this was certainly said more out of
irritation than anything else, I can’t say that I agree with it, especially as
it would pertain to this film. I think,
rather, that he’s saying that death is inevitable. It is choosing to live your life in the face
of this that is good.
MVT: Lewton and his skill at turning exploitative material into
thought-provoking, prescient stories are the winners here. There is a reason why he is so acclaimed in
the halls of Hollywood producer-dom.
This film is a sterling example of it.
Make Or Break: The subway
scene is cited as a highpoint of this film, and I would agree with that. The scene leading up to it is almost as
masterfully orchestrated, but it is the reveal in the subway car here that
turns the screw fully on an already excellent film.
Score: 7.75/10
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