Excuses, Excuses...
Today's review: The Third Alibi.
I had The Third Alibi on my “to watch” list due to a combination of a catchy title and a review of it I saw on Livejournal. As is so often the case, by the time I finally managed to find a copy of it, I’d forgotten most of the details, so I was able to go in blind and be surprised. And while I overall appreciated that, it did mean I was left a little uncertain about one key detail.
As the title might suggest, this movie is a noir, although in this case it comes to us from Britain. Our focal character is Norman Martell (Laurence Payne), a composer for musicals who is married to a woman named Helen (Patricia Dainton). However, he’s also carrying on an affair with Helen’s half-sister Peggy (Jane Griffiths), and is too scared to ask for a divorce. That is, until Peggy tells him she’s pregnant, which forces the issue. The problem is, Helen won’t give him a divorce, even after he tells her the whole story. While using a tape recorder to create songs for his latest project, Norman hits on the idea of using it to create an alibi for himself while he and Peggy work together to murder Helen. Of course, things can’t go exactly as planned, but in order to elaborate on that, I’m going to have to warn for SPOILERS.
One important plot point is that Helen discovers she has a heart condition that will kill her in a few months, earlier if she ends up under too much stress. After getting this news, she goes to Peggy’s house to talk to her (it’s implied it has something to do with her relationship with Norman), only to come in just as Norman and Peggy are laying out their murder plan. We see her horrified reaction to this, and watch her carefully make her way out of the house without being overheard. After that, we watch as Norman and Peggy both go through their parts of the plan, but when the time comes to do the deed, Helen is nowhere to be found. Then, when Norman goes to Peggy’s house to tell her the plan failed, he finds her dead instead. I think we can all tell what’s happened here, but the part that I’m caught up on is whether or not the movie wants to treat this as a Columbo style story where the audience knows what’s going on and the fun comes from watching Norman get caught, or as a more traditional mystery. It feels a lot like the latter at times, but the setup was so obvious I can’t believe the filmmakers were inclined to treat the audience like idiots. That confusion put a bit of a damper on my viewing experience, though not enough to completely spoil it.
Because once you get past that uncertainty, I think the concept and execution is very clever. Watching Norman get ensnared by the very alibi he tried to set up is a nice variation on the noir formula, and Payne’s increasingly stressed performance helps sell it. The moment when Helen subtly reveals the truth by quoting the murder plan back to her husband is also wonderfully executed, and pretty much every detail of the murder plot comes into play in some form. It’s very solid writing…I just trip a bit on the execution.
SPOILERS OVER. Overall, this movie is incredibly well put together. It’s only an hour and five minutes long, and the movie uses that time extremely well. With the exception of one musical number, everything you see on screen ends up being relevant, including one moment that initially feels like a character beat but then turns out to be important later (though I must admit I saw it coming; I’m not sure if that’s due to it being fairly obvious or if I’ve just seen enough movies to tell where things were going). It moves quickly, but does it in such a way that you feel like the movie is longer than it is. That sounds like an insult, but it’s actually a compliment-it gets so much packed in to 65 minutes that you forget it’s 65 minutes and assume it’s the more traditional hour and a half or two hours. The actual content is very engaging, and while a few beats are clichéd, I’d say the story is fairly original, which is always something I can get behind.
There are two other things I feel are worth mentioning. One is that the movie is surprisingly blunt on certain matters, which is surprising since this was made in the era of production codes (though it was 1961, when those were starting to fade away). Not only are there open and frank discussions of adultery and out-of-wedlock pregnancy, there’s an open conversation about promiscuity and Norman calls Helen a bitch, a word I’ve generally assumed was on the no-no list. I wasn’t expecting any of that, which probably contributed to the movie’s freshness. The other thing is the way the two women are portrayed. On the one hand, it hits a lot of the classic noir tropes; Helen’s a blonde and Peggy’s a brunette, and you’ve got the housewife/woman tempting the husband to stray dichotomy. On the other, both women are sympathetic and unsympathetic by turns. Helen sometimes comes across as clingy or petty, while Peggy wants to come clean about the affair and do the right thing even before the pregnancy, not to mention expressing skepticism about the murder plan (though she is ultimately willing to go along with it). In fact, during one angry conversation between Helen and Peggy, Helen accuses Peggy of always getting her way, which just doesn’t seem right based on what we’ve seen. I’m not saying we’re rooting for the wrong woman, but there’s a little more nuance than I expected, which is always nice.
I’d definitely recommend giving this movie a look. It’s interesting in a variety of ways, and the short runtime means you won’t lose much if you end up not liking it. And if you do end up disliking it, I’ll be curious as to why, but I promise that I won’t press for an explanation.
I had The Third Alibi on my “to watch” list due to a combination of a catchy title and a review of it I saw on Livejournal. As is so often the case, by the time I finally managed to find a copy of it, I’d forgotten most of the details, so I was able to go in blind and be surprised. And while I overall appreciated that, it did mean I was left a little uncertain about one key detail.
As the title might suggest, this movie is a noir, although in this case it comes to us from Britain. Our focal character is Norman Martell (Laurence Payne), a composer for musicals who is married to a woman named Helen (Patricia Dainton). However, he’s also carrying on an affair with Helen’s half-sister Peggy (Jane Griffiths), and is too scared to ask for a divorce. That is, until Peggy tells him she’s pregnant, which forces the issue. The problem is, Helen won’t give him a divorce, even after he tells her the whole story. While using a tape recorder to create songs for his latest project, Norman hits on the idea of using it to create an alibi for himself while he and Peggy work together to murder Helen. Of course, things can’t go exactly as planned, but in order to elaborate on that, I’m going to have to warn for SPOILERS.
One important plot point is that Helen discovers she has a heart condition that will kill her in a few months, earlier if she ends up under too much stress. After getting this news, she goes to Peggy’s house to talk to her (it’s implied it has something to do with her relationship with Norman), only to come in just as Norman and Peggy are laying out their murder plan. We see her horrified reaction to this, and watch her carefully make her way out of the house without being overheard. After that, we watch as Norman and Peggy both go through their parts of the plan, but when the time comes to do the deed, Helen is nowhere to be found. Then, when Norman goes to Peggy’s house to tell her the plan failed, he finds her dead instead. I think we can all tell what’s happened here, but the part that I’m caught up on is whether or not the movie wants to treat this as a Columbo style story where the audience knows what’s going on and the fun comes from watching Norman get caught, or as a more traditional mystery. It feels a lot like the latter at times, but the setup was so obvious I can’t believe the filmmakers were inclined to treat the audience like idiots. That confusion put a bit of a damper on my viewing experience, though not enough to completely spoil it.
Because once you get past that uncertainty, I think the concept and execution is very clever. Watching Norman get ensnared by the very alibi he tried to set up is a nice variation on the noir formula, and Payne’s increasingly stressed performance helps sell it. The moment when Helen subtly reveals the truth by quoting the murder plan back to her husband is also wonderfully executed, and pretty much every detail of the murder plot comes into play in some form. It’s very solid writing…I just trip a bit on the execution.
SPOILERS OVER. Overall, this movie is incredibly well put together. It’s only an hour and five minutes long, and the movie uses that time extremely well. With the exception of one musical number, everything you see on screen ends up being relevant, including one moment that initially feels like a character beat but then turns out to be important later (though I must admit I saw it coming; I’m not sure if that’s due to it being fairly obvious or if I’ve just seen enough movies to tell where things were going). It moves quickly, but does it in such a way that you feel like the movie is longer than it is. That sounds like an insult, but it’s actually a compliment-it gets so much packed in to 65 minutes that you forget it’s 65 minutes and assume it’s the more traditional hour and a half or two hours. The actual content is very engaging, and while a few beats are clichéd, I’d say the story is fairly original, which is always something I can get behind.
There are two other things I feel are worth mentioning. One is that the movie is surprisingly blunt on certain matters, which is surprising since this was made in the era of production codes (though it was 1961, when those were starting to fade away). Not only are there open and frank discussions of adultery and out-of-wedlock pregnancy, there’s an open conversation about promiscuity and Norman calls Helen a bitch, a word I’ve generally assumed was on the no-no list. I wasn’t expecting any of that, which probably contributed to the movie’s freshness. The other thing is the way the two women are portrayed. On the one hand, it hits a lot of the classic noir tropes; Helen’s a blonde and Peggy’s a brunette, and you’ve got the housewife/woman tempting the husband to stray dichotomy. On the other, both women are sympathetic and unsympathetic by turns. Helen sometimes comes across as clingy or petty, while Peggy wants to come clean about the affair and do the right thing even before the pregnancy, not to mention expressing skepticism about the murder plan (though she is ultimately willing to go along with it). In fact, during one angry conversation between Helen and Peggy, Helen accuses Peggy of always getting her way, which just doesn’t seem right based on what we’ve seen. I’m not saying we’re rooting for the wrong woman, but there’s a little more nuance than I expected, which is always nice.
I’d definitely recommend giving this movie a look. It’s interesting in a variety of ways, and the short runtime means you won’t lose much if you end up not liking it. And if you do end up disliking it, I’ll be curious as to why, but I promise that I won’t press for an explanation.