Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Hayden Kane There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

jake_fantom Let's not forget, folks, these noir pictures were churned out by the dozens by fast- buck studios eager to cash in on the latest trend with bargain basement actors and hackneyed scripts. In the case of The Chase, that adds up to an hour and a half of incomprehensible twaddle and ridiculous plot twists, all served up in an atmospheric stew of dark shadows and preposterous sets. If you can make it through the first ninety or so minutes, you'll be rewarded with some of the goofiest faces ever made by an actor, courtesy of Peter Lorre in his pre-Roger Corman days. But that's not all folks. You also get a veritable monument to coarse acting by Bob Cummings and Steve Cochran. Anyone who claims to be able to follow the plot is lying, because there isn't one. Three stars only because the over-the-top sets add a few minutes of sporadic interest. If you watch through to the end in hopes of figuring out what actually happened, trust me, you'll be as baffled at the end as you were at the start.

dougdoepke A troubled ex-serviceman gets a job with a crime boss and his disturbed wife.A 'find' for me and perhaps for other fans of noir. The 80-minutes are a perfect blend of dark visuals and surreal story. Frankly, when I think noir, I don't think Bob Cummings, an excellent light comedy actor, but hardly a figure of depth. But here, he essays the role of the troubled vet in subtle and persuasive ways. The nightclub scenes in Havana are particularly revealing, as the chaotic gaiety swirls around Scott (Cummings) and his spacey lover Lorna (Morgan)—a perfect metaphor for their circumstance.A number of touches make this a memorable film. Casting Lorre as Gino was a coup, since his quietly devilish imp casts a background shadow over the proceedings. That's significant because Cochran, the alleged crime boss, comes across as a rather charming fellow even if he's behind dark deeds. Then there's that scene in the wine cellar, unlike any I've seen, and shrewdly abbreviated to catch the imagination. Also, catch Lorna's cameo framing through the porthole with shadows rising and falling over her face, as her nature itself migrates between light and dark. Add to the mix a speeding locomotive as the hand of fate, and a weirdly backseat driver that really is a backseat driver, and you've got an appropriately noirish race against time. And, of course, mustn't leave out the final scene so perfectly calibrated to end the film on a provocatively surreal note. The movie's full of such imaginative twists and turns as penned by two of the best in the business, Woolrich and Yordan. I'm not sure why the movie's generally overlooked in the noir canon, perhaps because of Bob Cummings and his lightweight reputation, plus the lack of a true spider woman. Nonetheless, it's a provocative little gem, and one that prompts rare second thoughts long after the screen has gone dark.

wes-connors Despite being down-on-his-luck, shell-shocked ex-G.I. Robert Cummings (as Chuck Scott) finds a wallet filled with money and decides to do the right thing. After buying himself a quick breakfast, Mr. Cummings returns the wallet to crooked Florida businessman Steve Cochran (as Eddie Roman). Impressed by Cummings' honesty, Mr. Cochran thinks he would make a loyal employee, and hires him as chauffeur. There is, you should discern by now, something very wrong with Cummings and his judge of character...Fortunately, for bored movie fans, Cochran turns out to be a sadistic gangster, with an alluring wife and classic henchman. The former Michele Morgan (as Lorna) arouses Cummings with her inviting hourglass figure. The latter Peter Lorre (as Gino) laps after Cochran. Cummings downs his medication with beer, which seeps into a confused storyline. The film's nightmarish quality, Cochran's sinister impression, and the basic story fabric are most appreciated; but not everything goes according to plan. Worth a second look.****** The Chase (11/16/46) Arthur Ripley ~ Robert Cummings, Steve Cochran, Michele Morgan, Peter Lorre

jacegaffney For those in the need to know - FILM NOIR is not plot specific. It is not a reality, it is an atmosphere, a mood contingent on two key attitudes. None of this can be adequately understood without comparative examples. Ulmer's DETOUR (1946) is classic noir; at one time this was the ultimate "maudit" masterpiece, however, it is now a title protected by the Library of Congress. Thus, it has lost a portion of disreputable lustre essential to a genre that wears its lousiness with pride. Arthur D. Ripley's THE CHASE has this quality to such an extravagant degree that, believe or not, chances of it ever being included in the National Registry are slim and none.Adapted from Cornell Woolrich by the reliably untrustworthy Philip Yordan (a man who, on occasion, "ghosted" his own work), he, along with Ripley and cameraman, Franz Planer, create a midnight milieu of such troubling uncertainty that the combined talents of Bunuel, Borges and David Lynch, with all their superior intelligence and skill, could not hope to approximate it. The other key attitude determining film noir is toward women. The movie, CAUGHT (1949), by the great Max Ophuls and photographed in gorgeously gloomy b/w by Lee Garmes has a character played in it by Robert Ryan (at his most horrific). He is clearly impersonating a demonic version of Howard Hughes, a man attempting to keep his young beautiful wife played by Barbara Bel Geddes under lock and key. CAUGHT has film noir elements but is not noir because the story is told largely from the woman's vantage point. In authentic noir, women are totally objectified as either femme fatales or caged angels in gilded cages, strict personifications of male dread or fervent desire. Michele Morgan falls into the second category in THE CHASE. Steve Cochran, who plays her well-heeled gangster husband, Eddie Roman, is probably based on Howard Hughes too but because THE CHASE IS film noir at its rattiest, he dominates the proceedings far more thoroughly than the better actor of the two, Ryan does in CAUGHT. THE CHASE contains a notorious knife-throwing dream sequence in Havana, shot in almost pitch darkness by Planer, that is pure blotto. But is it possible that the dreamer of the dream himself, "Love That Bob"'s, Robert Cummings is blotto too? Who knows in a movie as seriously deranged as this one? Perhaps Cochran's megalomaniacal Roman (who controls the speed of the film from the backseat of his car) WILLS Cummings' Chuck Scott into being in order to vicariously act out the personal "fear is a wish" fantasy of rescuing his bride from the clutches of his own overtly cruel nature? Scott is a MALE fantasy, as much as Robert Mitchum, in real (not reel) life was, for Hughes, a he-man projection of making happy all the beautiful women Hughes unsuccessfully bedded and sought to control. You see nothing really exists in THE CHASE. Only Peter Lorre's attitude as the henchman, Gino, MIGHT exist. He doesn't really die in the film's climactic crash because he never actually lived in the first place.Only his spirit lives, for Lorre embodied the spirit of noir at the very beginning in M (produced by the same man, Nebenzal, who spawned THE CHASE) and, in the context of wet dreams as sinister and romantically sleazy as this one, bears witness to FILM NOIR's one abiding truth - that Satan never sleeps.Grades. Execution: 6Dream Quotient: 10Bonus Points: Michel Michelet's abominably marvelous film score:.5Grand composite rating: 8.5Was this review useful to you?