Spoiler Alert! It is possible I will give away almost every plot point for the following movie. But I promise not to tell who the murderer is (there now, you see, I just gave away that there’s a murder!).
Saturday before last when I perused the listings for TCM, I was delighted to note a Whistler movie. After I reviewed two Whistler movies in this space, a reader told me there were eight Whistler movies. Naturally I would like to see them all. I even hoped this would be a weekly thing on TCM — a Whistler movie every Saturday for eight weeks. Alas, this past Saturday offered no Whistler movie. No matter; I still had The Voice of the Whistler on DVR. We watched it Sunday afternoon.
I noted that the movie was directed as well as co-written by William Castle. That boded well. The movie opens a little differently from the other two Whistler movies I’ve seen, with a shot of a lonely lighthouse on a rocky cliff with crashing waves. Still, a lonely lighthouse is good for a scary movie — remembering a movie I’ve reviewed recently whose name escapes me but which featured a character named Vi who gets pitched out of the lighthouse onto the rocks below.
We hear the familiar whistling and see the shadow, this time on a wild, craggy shore instead of a back alley in a city with a thousand secrets (I guess “city with a thousand secrets” sounds more Raymond Chandler than William Castle).
The entire movie is a flashback. Steven has pointed out that this is a common technique in old movies. The flashback is of course a time-honored fictional technique in many mediums. In general, telling the whole story as flashback is going a little far, but in this case it is appropriate.
We are introduced to a woman who despises and fears loneliness yet lives alone in this abandoned lighthouse (complete with cat). Why? It is a result of greed and murder. At least, looking back I can’t quite remember if the Whistler actually mentioned murder in his intro. But why would the Whistler be telling a story that did not involve murder?
As it turns out, we have to wait a long time for the murder. First we meet an industrialist. This movie is unusual in that we actually get to see what his business is — he makes cars. At least, he bought the manufactory and made a huge success of it. Perhaps he has other businesses to make a kind of an empire. At any rate, he’s filthy rich and has no friends.
Just about the time he decides to get a personal life, he has a heart attack. En route to a boat cruise, to relax and regain his health, he collapses again and ends up in the care of a cockney cab driver living in one of those movie working class neighborhoods I would love to live in.
Sparrow, the cab driver and easily the most likable character in the picture, begins to teach Rich Guy how to gain friends. It seems Sparrow was once a boxing champ, plenty of money but no idea who his real friends were or how to enjoy life. Now he walks down the street, greeting folks by name, asking about their families, and basically giving Rich Guy a lesson in a better way to live.
At a clinic to which Sparrow brings Rich Guy, we meet a beautiful nurse, who will eventually become Lonely Lighthouse Lady (complete with cat). She is engaged to a young doctor but is putting off marriage because she does not want her kids to grow up in the poverty she sees at the clinic.
Excuse me, what? The neighborhood is peopled with friendly working class salt of the earth. The clinic is a compassionate haven that strives to treat the whole person. Yet it is a hole of squalid poverty from which the nurse is determined to escape?
Everybody loves her. In fact, Rich Guy falls in love with her, after a series of events that I won’t spoil for you. Eventually the stage is set for murder.
I have to say, the Nurse/Lonely Lighthouse Lady (complete with cat) is not a consistent character. She veers from being a generic beautiful movie girl, to a dame with a hardscrabble past determined to make something of herself (by marrying; this is the ’50s, after all), to being a shrew witch, to being, you know, Lonely Lighthouse etc.
Her young doctor lover — “the young man who doesn’t have to be rich but doesn’t dare to be poor,” according to a later conversation — is hard to get a grip on too, but that may be because he is busy reacting to his girlfriend’s changes.
Rich Guy, in the meantime, seems to have forgotten the life lessons taught him by Sparrow. Did I say Sparrow is the most likable character in the picture? On second thought, he is the only likable character in the picture. Except for a few really minor players who we see only once or twice briefly.
The whole movie is really more of a character study than a thriller, horror or murder movie. Which would have been fine had the characters been better developed. As it is, by the time we finally get to the murder, it is too little too late.
And then it’s like they ran out of time, because the Whistler comes back on as a voice-over and wraps everything up. We are left with the image of the Lonely Lady in the Lighthouse, petting the cat. And the hope that TCM will show a more exciting Whistler movie soon.
