Caught on TCM: The Dark Past

Laundry is run­ning in the base­ment and I’m killing time by work­ing on the Valkyrie review and watch­ing TCM. I know, a trav­esty to dou­ble task with a film, but any­way, Rudolph Maté‘s 1948 noir pic The Dark Past was just on. I’ve never seen it before, but from my mud­dled van­tage point, it was pretty won­der­ful. The short of it is a ther­a­pist tries to cure a killer while he is being held hostage. Black and white, guns, cop­pers, and psy­cho­analy­sis. What could be better?! 

The film hinges on a real slick con­cept, essen­tially the pen being might­ier than the sword. Our main pro­tag, Dr. Collins, spends the bulk of the film try­ing to fig­ure out a neb­u­lous recur­ring dream of the das­tardly Al Walker, played by William Holden. Of course, the film is a cau­tion­ary tale, warn­ing that emo­tions left unchecked could rot, fes­ter, and grow into, well, into a mur­der­ous thief. Pretty basic stuff these days; the film plays like the last quar­ter of every episode of “Law and Order: Criminal Intent”. Lee J. Cobb imbues Dr. Collins with an Atticus Finch level of impos­ing pater­nity. Hmmmmm, an ana­lytic cau­tion­ary noir film, do you think the bad guy might have some daddy issues?

So any­way, check this one out if you’ve got a chance. I enjoyed it. Now back to writing…