Reeling Backward: The Web (1947)

Vincent Price, Ella Raines and Edmund O'Brien star in this unheralded film noir about a twisted love triangle that's now out in a handsome Blu-ray edition from Kino Lorber.

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"The Web" is both an archetypal and atypical film noir. 

It's got the usual murder plots, double-crosses, steam-filled streets, hard-nosed cops and other crucial criteria of mid-century American crime stories. Director Michael Gordon and cinematographer Irving Glassberg shoot with a lot of canted angles and an abundance of shadows to make the audience feel uncertain of their bearing.

But the main character, Bob Regan (Edmund O'Brien), is not your usual hard-boiled detective type or innocent patsy. He's a moon-faced attorney who is one step up from ambulance-chaser, employing a lot of self-deprecating jokes to cover up a lack of self-esteem. Vincent Price plays the heavy, a wealthy industrialist named Andrew Colby, who is so smooth and effeminate that when he walks, he practically glides across the screen.

The set-up is that Colby, impressed with Regan for bursting into his boardroom in pursuit of some $68 in damages to his client's fruit cart, hires him to be his personal bodyguard. When an old associate who has just been released from jail for embezzling seemingly breaks in to murder Colby, Regan shoots him dead. Momentarily a hero, he begins to suspect a setup and starts to snoop deeper into the matter with the help of Noel Farady (Ella Raines), Colby's secretary and sort-of girlfriend.

It's now out in a very handsome Blu-ray edition courtesy of Kino Lorber Studio Classics that's well with checking out.

One of the most interesting things about "The Web" is the delicate way it dances around the love triangle of Noel, Regan and Colby. She has been Colby's secretary for six years, and aside from his assistant/heavy Charles Murdock (John Abbott), is the only one he trusts as he's built a fortune of $40 million. (That's a half-billion in today's dollars or, as they say, real money.) 

They're planning to move their operation to Paris in a couple of weeks, and it seems that a marriage is implied as well.

Noel actually lives at Colby's snazzy walk-up mansion, as does Charles, though there doesn't seem to be an overt indication of amorous activity between them. When Regan comes along and starts pitching woo at Noel, she only goes out with him at Colby's urging to dig up info about the shooting and if Regan is going to be trouble. But of course they start falling for each other, and Noel's loyalties are in question the rest of the way.

Fritz Leiber portrays Leopold Kroner, the elderly former associate of Colby's who apparently took the rap for some falsified bonds amounting to $1 million -- seed money for Colby's current ventures. It seems Kroner wants a payout or payback, and Colby would rather their secret die with him. Kroner's daughter, Martha (Maria Palmer), comes after Regan seeking revenge, claiming her father was actually invited by Colby to his place, who made it look like he was being attacked.

William Bendix plays Damico, the crusty police lieutenant on the case. He has a personal investment because he pulled strings to get Regan a quickie license for the gun that was used in the shooting. He and Regan's father were partners back in the day, so he was doing a favor for an old friend's kid. Though he doesn't seem to particularly like Regan, probably owing to his low-end lawyer work, and vows to keep looking into the facts.

So we've got an asexual, manipulative tycoon who has a woman under his thumb, albeit gently; a street-wise operator who is continually out-maneuvered and out-guessed by the villain; a cop with a beef chasing the wrong guy; and a smart gal who's been content to live the easy life with a rich guy who doesn't ask for much in return, wanting her cloyingly but not in *that* way.

Screenwriters William Bowers and Bertram Millhauser, working from a story by Harry Kurnitz, keep things fairly simple without any Maltese Falcon-like perambulations. We know from the jump that Colby is a heel, that Regan is good-hearted if not always level-headed, and that Noel represents the moral center of the story, having to make the hard choice to give up an easy coast to do the right thing.

(If you're wondering why I'm using Noel's first name the men's last names, it's because that's how they address each other in the movie... so not sure if that means I'm displaying sexism or mimicking theirs.)

For a lesser-known film noir, "The Web" is a great-looking picture with Price as a memorable heavy. He doesn't wear a mustache in this movie, though he does plenty of symbolic twirling of one. We, or at least me, are so used to his association with horror/schlock that it's easy to forget he had a pretty mainstream film career during his younger years. He towers over O'Brien, and somehow his signature widow's peak makes him seem even more imposing.

I have to say I didn't cotton to O'Brien as Regan. He's stubborn and resourceful but also has this strange woe-is-me fatalism to him -- a born loser who works hard to retain that label. He bounds back and forth between joking boastfulness and self-cutting humor, and we suspect Regan's true feelings lie closer to the latter than the former.

I wasn't familiar with Raines, but she left a solid impression on me as an actress who could portray  intelligence and glamor in equal measure. She was also quite a looker with her dark hair and striking blue eyes, which of course black-and-white films couldn't do much to capture. Raines had a fairly short career, though she jumped into television and was one of the first actresses to star in her own show, "Janet Dean, Registered Nurse."

I'm not too sure about the accuracy of the film's title -- Regan isn't so much caught in a convoluted web of lies and deceit as he is outfoxed by a superior foe. Of course Colby takes the rap in the end, the Hays Code dictating that dastardly doers must have their comeuppance. But here's a guy who deserves to get away with it.