Impact (1949)
Directed by Arthur Lubin

Film Review

Impact belongs to that strange mongrel breed of films noirs that attempts to crowbar in as many disparate elements as possible in an attempt, presumably, to attract the largest possible viewing audience.  Noir purists will hate it because of its cheeky conflation of genres but it is certainly not the worst example of this much-maligned off-shoot of noir cinema.  The film's director, Arthur Lubin, had a knack of turning out commercially successful crowdpleasers, his successes including the first few Abbott and Costello films and his enormously popular Phantom of the Opera (1943).  Impact has all the ingredients it needed to rake in the dollars at the box office, not least of which is a supremely attractive cast headed by your archetypal noir tough guy, Brian Donlevy, and a mouth-wateringly svelte Ella Raines.

The film's one inescapable weak point is a plot which, whilst put together with meticulous care, cannot help looking hopelessly contrived.  The pieces all fit into place a little too easily and, once you've latched onto where the film is heading, the last few reels offer absolutely no surprises.  The abrupt changes in mood that are grafted on to mirror the overly mechanical plot gyrations are also uncomfortably jarring and if you were medically qualified to do so you'd have no difficulty diagnosing that the film suffers from a pretty extreme form of bipolar disorder.  After a slow start which leaves us guessing as to just how the film is going to pan out (it could just as equally be a romantic comedy as a crime movie), Lubin does a fine job of ratchetting up the tension to the film's main set-piece, a murder attempt followed by a spectacular road accident.  After this near-Hitchcockian highpoint, it is pretty well downhill all the way.

Which is not to say that the film is not entertaining, far from it.  Next, the film strays into sentimental romance territory, in one of those idyllic little American towns you dream about but which probably only exist in films like this.  Gone, for the time being, are the familiar film noir trappings, and Lubin goes for something more in the way of a social realist style of storytelling.  This is the most authentic and endearing part of the film, a heart-warming slice of life in a cosy little community where every able-bodied man ends up in the fire service.  You dread the moment when Brian Donlevy and Ella Raines' understated little romance will be curtailed to make way for more film noir shenanigans.

Before you know it, it's goodbye Larkspur, Idaho, and hello murky film noir intrigue yet again as Lupin punches the 'genre hopping' button a second time.  Helen Walker comes into her own now, and proves to be more cunning and more diabolically evil than we had dared imagine.  With Walker playing the hard-done-by wife for all it is worth it's not long before poor Mr Donlevy is in the dock, charged with a murder he did not commit.  The only thing that stands between him and the electric chair is Anna May Wong, who has chosen a very awkward moment to go A.W.O.L.  A major film star and fashion icon of the 1920s, but now reduced to playing supporting roles in B-movie fare like this, you can understand Miss Wong's lack of interest in saving Donlevy's skin.  So the film ends with a classic race-against-time, with Ella Raines teaming up with a loveable Charles Coburn (playing a cop afflicted with what is probably the most unconvincing Irish accent in history) to fill out the last reel with a lot of pretty aimless running about.

In the hands of a less capable director than Arthur Lubin, and with a less likeable cast, Impact could easily have been an unmitigated disaster.  Lubin appears to have recognised the shortcomings in the script and overcame these not by trying to sweep them under the carpet but by accentuating them - it's a bit like making a lie plausible by shouting at the top of your voice.  The only character who is remotely credible is Anna May Wong's Su Lin, which is surprising given that Chinese characters in Hollywood films of this era tended most of the time to be grotesquely stereotypical.  Do we believe that Brian Donlevy is a hard-nosed executive type who can be duped by a two-timing wife and fix a car engine with the merest flick of his wrist, or that Ella Raines earns her living by selling petrol in a Idaho backwater?  Not for a second.  Impact requires the spectator to suspend disbelief to an astonishing degree if it is to avoid collapsing under the weight of its stack of contrivances; it even dares to foist on us a suspect definition of the word 'impact' that will cause any self-respecting lexicographer to spit blood.  And yet, despite all these flaws, the film somehow manages to get away with it.  Just don't ask me how.

Film Synopsis

One of America's top industrialists, Walter Williams is blissfully unaware that his wife Irene has been carrying on an affair with a younger man, Jim Torrence.  Unable to accompany her husband on a car journey to the airport, Irene persuades him to offer a lift to Torrence, passing him off as a distant cousin.  Choosing his moment carefully, Torrence strikes Walter with a lug wrench and leaves him for dead.  In his escape in his victim's car, Torrence collides with an oil tanker and plunges to his death down a ravine, his body burned beyond recognition.  With the world thinking he is dead, the dazed industrialist ends up in a small town in Idaho, where he finds work as a service station mechanic and ends up falling in love with his employer, Marsha Peters.  It is Marsha who persuades Walter that he must present himself to the authorities so that his wife will not be convicted for his murder.  Irene turns the situation to her advantage and before he knows it Walter is being indicted for the murder of Jim Torrence.  Convinced of Walter's innocence Marsha joins forces with police detective Quincy to find the evidence that will clear his name and prove that Irene and Torrence had conspired to kill him.  Their only hope is Walter's Chinese housemaid, Su Lin, but finding her proves to be much harder than they had imagined...