Whispering City (1947) User Reviews

Unjustly forgotten (if overplotted) Eagle-Lion noir set in Quebec City

[bmacv · 7/10 · 8 June 2002]

Whispering City's locale is Quebec City, that odd European fortress set high over the St. Lawrence River; it comes to Gallic life more fully here than in Alfred Hitchcock's I Confess, made a few years later.

The death in an auto accident of a long-retired actress spurs crime reporter Mary Anderson to work up a feature story; the woman was sent to a sanitarium years before for insisting that her fiance's death was actually murder. Pursuing a lead, Anderson interviews a prosperous benefactor of the arts (Paul Lukas), who seems curiously bothered by the visit. Currently, Lukas serves as the patron of an impoverished young pianist/composer (Helmut Dantine; the two actors both appeared in Watch on the Rhine). Dantine is working on something called The Quebec Concerto; an oddly scored work, its orchestra features a Sousaphone rearing its brassy bell.

An overcomplicated but still compelling plot involves Dantine's disturbed shrew of a wife, who's dependent on injections to make her sleep; the discovery of her suicide, which is made to look like murder (well, it seemed to work once); a blackmail scheme to engineer another murder; and a faked death made to look like yet another murder. (Eagle-Lion was not known for the elegant simplicity of its plots.)

Oddly, it all works, if a bit creakily. Mary Anderson suggests two-thirds Teresa Wright and a third Bonita Granville; the latter impression no doubt derives from her sleuthing around in a jaunty tam, like Nancy Drew. She has the distinction (as does the director, the short-lived Fedor Ozep, as he's credited here) of helping to make the best Nancy Drew mystery ever released. That's faint praise, but praise nonetheless.

Great noir atmosphere and city setting

[AlanSquier · 7/10 · 25 March 2007]

This is a very good Canadian film. On the face of it, one would expect a strictly routine lady reporter investigating some unusual doings, but it's much more than that. I won't spoil the intricate plot, but it does take concentration to follow. Paul Lukas is, of course, his usual magnificent self The camera work is especially good and the backdrop of a city that most Americans didn't see very much of on the screen is quite good. The classical tone set by Helmut Dantine's character's composition, The Quebec Concerto, is very impressive.

One realizes who the villain is from his first appearance and yet the movie achieves not quite Hitchcockian suspense by the end. This is indeed an unjustly overlooked film.

Dandy entertainment--though the plot is a bit overly complicated.

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 22 September 2013]

"Whispering City" is an Eagle-Lion production that was made in Quebec. It's the story of an evil lawyer (dare I be redundant?) who is also quite mentally imbalanced. One of his supposed friends and clients is in trouble--his wife is also very imbalanced and has been making accusations that the husband has been trying to kill her. But the husband is innocent--and his life has been hell due to this crazy lady's erratic behaviors and hateful disposition. He goes to this lawyer to talk about this--not knowing that the lawyer (Paul Lukas) has an incredibly evil plan. And, when the unstable wife kills herself, the lawyer hides all the evidence that would exonerate the husband and makes the man think perhaps he DID kill his wife! Then, the lawyer springs his trap--he announces that he will get his 'friend' acquitted--provided the friend first murder someone for him! Can this innocent man be driven to kill? And, does he even realize he's not guilty, as the lawyer got him very drunk and has been trying to convince him that he really has already killed? And, if the innocent man goes to the authorities, what will happen? After all, the evidence does point to him being guilty.

Despite having an overly complicated plot (and I've omitted a lot of it in the above paragraph), this is a dandy thriller. Despite its humble origins, the film is very well acted, tense and exciting. However, it's very likely you won't find it unless you download it for free at archive.org, as the film is quite obscure and in the public domain.

Engaging B Murder Mystery.

[rmax304823 · 6/10 · 19 March 2011]

Mary Anderson is a reporter investigating an old murder case in Quebec. Paul Lukas is a high-end lawyer who was the murderer and, for some reason, he resents Anderson's poking into the crime and "opening old wounds." Boy, would he like her to disappear.

Lukas has a friend, Helmut Dantine, who is a brilliant musician married to a shrew. One night, after a particularly bitter argument with her, Dantine shows up plastered at Lukas's house and Lukas puts him to bed. Then he sneaks out into the night with the intention of murdering the shrew, blaming it on Dantine, and blackmailing Dantine into murdering Anderson so that she won't uncover Lukas's earlier crime. Got that? It turns out to be unnecessary for Lukas to murder Dantine's wife because she has already committed suicide and left a note behind, explaining that she couldn't go on living any longer because her nails never dried quickly enough.

Lukas, his mind ever dirty, pinches the suicide note and arranges a few other details to make Dantine look like the murderer. The blackmail plan goes ahead. Dantine can't remember a thing from the night before. Lukas tells him that he showed up drunk and bragged about having killed his wife. Lukas is in a position to get him out from under the threat of the hangman's noose, but only if he takes Mary Anderson to Montmorency Falls and throws her in.

A slight problem develops when Dantine and Anderson fall in love. Lukas's scheme unravels.

It's a B feature and the usual clichés are not avoided. Mary creeps through a darkened house with a candle while an eyeball peers at her through a crack in the door -- that sort of thing. But it transcends the usual cheap mystery if only because it's set and photographed in Quebec, the most nearly European city in North America. The director doesn't go out of his way to give us a tourist's eye view, as Hitchcock did in "I Confess." There is no shoot out in the Château Frontenac. But we see enough of the location to appreciate its verticality and its stony elegance and sometimes severe beauty.

Paul Lukas plays the kind of villain he did in "The Lady Vanishes." He's perfectly reasonable, he appreciates the splendor of Dantine's piano concerto -- of which we hear quite a lot -- but he's ruthless too and a little mad.

Dantine has chiseled features, like a Bernini sculpture, but their default position is a stern and unyielding frown. He was locked into roles like this because he just couldn't do anything else. On those rare occasions when he tries to smile, the viewer can almost hear the agonized creak of unused mechanisms.

Mary Anderson isn't a bravura performer either. She's not stunningly beautiful, not sexy, and her acting achieves a certain plateau and then quits. The thing is that she is eminently likable. She's petite, skinny, and vulnerable. One can imagine being nurtured by her -- she was the nurse in Hitchcock's "Lifeboat" -- but she could never play the scolding wife, for instance.

It's a diverting and pleasant feature with no pretensions.

"Maybe the noose is better than a straitjacket."

[morrison-dylan-fan · 7/10 · 14 July 2017]

Recently finishing the wonderful Canadian Neo-Noir TV mini-series Cardinal, I was pleased to learn from a fellow poster on ICM about a Canadian challenge,where ICMers have to watch as many Canadian titles as possible in a month. Knowing recent productions from Canada,I struggled to come up with any made during the "Classic" era of cinema. Finding out about director Fyodor Otsep after seeing the fascinating Amok during my 100 French films in 100 days,I was thrilled to stumble on his name when I began search for Canadian Film Noir,which led to me listening in on what the city was saying.

The plot:

Working on a story about an actress who died in a car crash,newspaper reporter Mary Roberts presses lawyer Albert Frédéric on claims from the actress that the suicide of her husband was actually murder. Focusing on his new creation,composer Michel Lacoste allows his marriage to Blanche Lacoste to break down. Seeing nothing left,Blanche kills herself. Finding her body ,Michel fears that Blanche's suicide looks like murder. Hearing Michel's tune,his lawyer Frédéric promises to stop the city whispering and to rid any doubt of the suicide,but only if Michel pays a "debt":To stop Mary Robert's whispers.

View on the film:

For his final movie, (shot as the alternate French language version La forteresse was being shot on the same sets with a different cast) director Fyodor Otsep (who in 1918 was a Russian film cooperative,but had to flee Europe when France got Occupied) listens in with a sharp use of Morris C. Davis,which Otsep composers to build anxiety over the debt Michel Lacoste is ordered to pay,and the composition playing out over the breakdown of his marriage. Driving over the frosty atmosphere from the outdoor locations of 40's Canada,Otsep conducts a fantastic A Christmas Carol mood into Lacoste and Frédéric's outside encounters via stylish weaving camera moves casting a ghostly whisper around the two.

Gradually hitting the notes of doubt,the screenplay by Rian James /Leonard Lee/George Zuckerman/Michael Lennox/Gina Kaus/ Hugh Kemp & Sydney Banks (!) strongly strike a Melodrama edge in the crumbling, fractured marriage of the Lacoste's. Sending the lawyer in,the writers snowball a sinister Film Noir bite,where the suicide of Blanche pulls Michel into the deadly double dealing of Frédéric. Suspecting she is not getting the full story, Mary Anderson gives a wonderful,quick-witted performance as Roberts,who pulls Michel veil of darkness with a real snap. Ploughing Michel into following his orders, Paul Lukas gives a wicked,brittle performance as Frédéric,whilst Helmut Dantine pulls the raw Noir strings of Michel's fear,as Michel hears the city whisper.

I was pleasantly surprised

[FrankStall · 6/10 · 8 September 2019]

An early film noir piece set in the beUtiful surroundings of Montreal, the film quality was

somewhat poor the music beautiful . Worth seeing!

Would have been good

[Delrvich · 6/10 · 22 April 2020]

If not for the confusing beginning which made it seem like either a badly done flashback or two different plots combined into one. Just bad editing, maybe.

An extremely uneven movie with excellent music

[Handlinghandel · 5/10 · 12 November 2007]

The early parts of this movie were terribly confusing to me. True, the print I saw was terrible. It looked like 8 millimeter. However, I hung in because of its interesting cast and indeed, it picks up: Mary Anderson was a very appealing actress. Too bad she never became a star. Helmut Dantine was very handsome and his acting is very good, too. And of course, top-billed, we have Paul Lukas. Only four years after his Osacr-winning performance in "Watch on the Rhine," here he is at Eagle-Lion. Talk about the curse of the statue! From its introduction, the music is exceptionally good. The Dantine character is a composer. He has written a piano concerto, which we hear in pieces and then in performance. (Not all of it is performed but it looks like a real orchestra really playing it.) I can't think of a better piece written for a movie except the Korngold cello concerto for the deliriously wonderful "Deception." I love that movie and I love his music. That piece, stripped of the name of Claude Rains's composer, Alexander Hollenius, is now performed and often recorded by major orchestras, as the Korngold Cello Concerto.

Once this movie finds its footing, it's very intriguing. But till then, it's really pretty bad.

Great music, wonderful Paul Lukas, mediocre script

[adrianovasconcelos · 7/10 · 22 October 2019]

WHISPERING CITY is that rarity: a Canadian film noir, and from the 1940s to boot. Director Ozep does a reasonable job, helped by the great background music (André Mathieu's Quebec Concerto), the lovely city of Quebec, and the Montmorency Falls landscape, but the real quality comes from the superior acting of the sinister Paul Lukas, who had already made a classy villain in Hitchcock's THE LADY VANISHES (UK 1938).

In fact, WHISPERING CITY appears to have had some impact on Hitchcock: he proceeded to pick up on the idea of traded murders by turning Patricia Highsmith's book, Strangers on a Train, into a film in 1950, and subsequently directed I CONFESS in Canada.

Unfortunately, Helmut Dantine and cigarette chain smoker Mary Anderson are rather weak actors, and I was only truly interested in the action whenever Lukas reappeared.

WHISPERING CITY is a watchable film noir, despite the script's over-elaborate twists and turns.

They whisper in French

[bkoganbing · 5/10 · 21 November 2019]

Just as it was in Alfred Hitchcock's I Confess the old world look and charm of Quebec City in French Canada is a major reason to see Whispering City. One only wishes that it were done in color for preservation. especially for the key scenes in Montmorency Falls.

This was a joint project of the cross the pond shortlived Eagle-Lion studios to boost the Canadian film industry. Helmut Dantine, Paul Lukas, and Mary Anderson came from the USA to star.

Dantine is a classical composer with a shrewish wife who gets herself killed and reporter Mary Anderson looks a bit too hard at rich patron Paul Lukas. He wants Anderson to be killed and like Robert Walker blackmailing Farley Granger in Stranger On A Train, Lukas blackmails Dantine.

That's a rough idea, it's a bit more complicated than that. The great Hitchcock never overplotted his films as this tends to be.

Still it's good, just not Hitchcockian great.

An Interesting Canadian Film Noir with a Great Original Music Score

[JohnHowardReid · 8/10 · 16 August 2008]

This unusual film noir, photographed in Quebec by Guy Roe (and his astute second unit cameraman, Charles Quick), pre-dates Hitchcock's I Confess by several years. Hitchcock undoubtedly saw the movie because he used its main musical idea in his remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much. In this original, however, the beautiful "Quebec Concerto" by Andre Mathieu is heard throughout, not just at the climax, because the lead male, Dantine, cleverly plays the composer. Other roles are distinguished by the lovely Mary Anderson (later to steal Last of the Buccaneers) as heroine, Paul Lukas (credibly cast as a shifty patron of the arts), dialogue director John Pratt as the news editor who is not nearly as gullible as he pretends, and the very convincing Joy LaFleur as the hero's shrewish wife. The script co-written by Rian James (of La Otra fame) has plenty of noirish plot gimmicks that keep the suspense mounting right up to the climax which, despite location filming at Montmorency Falls, is, alas, a bit tepid. In fact, I'm not over-fond of the whole idea of encasing the plot in a flashback from a talkative and rather boring sleigh-driver; but even as is, most definitely worth a look. (On a decent player, the Alpha DVD has watchable visuals and good sound).

No competition for I Confess

[bob998 · 5/10 · 31 October 2020]

I'd give every point of comparison with Whispering City to Hitchcock's film. Use of locales, actors, script--everything. Helmut Dantine doesn't seem fully engaged with his part, and he's the hero. Mary Anderson played small roles in some good films, she can't carry a lead role. Paul Lukas was an engaging villain in many films but here seems a little stiff, as though he'd done it too many times before. I Confess is the one to see.

its okay

[dbborroughs · 5/10 · 6 January 2009]

Female reporter investigates odd goings on in Montreal. Convoluted plot line about deaths that are really murder, suicide that is made to look like murder and numerous other twists and turns require a great deal of attention to help unknot it. I tried to watch this the night before last must too late at night and began to nod off. I tried again while I made it to the end I don't know how I really felt because where some things need to be followed its clear who the villain is from the start. That is not in and of itself a bad thing, when done right, its just that the film seems to treat it as a big secret when its not. As I said I really don't know what I felt about the film. If you want to see Montreal in the winter I'd give the film a shot, beyond that its your own choice. (Leave a comment)

He blackmails to kill... But the tables are turned on him!

[mark.waltz · 5/10 · 3 May 2022]

Overly melodramatic to the point of its downfall, this Canadian film noir starts off great and ends up extremely silly thanks to not the ridiculous twists that occur but the method in which they are carried out. Academy Award winning actor Paul Lukas chews the scenery with some really ridiculous dialogue throughout the film, playing the mentor to concert pianist Helmut Dantine whose neurotic wife (Joy Lafleur) has given him a motive for murder, something that Lukas utilizes in an effort to get Dantine to kill for him. Reporter Mary Anderson gets involved in the case, and Lukas wants her removed so he arranges it for Dantine who wouldn't have a motive to take care of that little matter for him. The twists and turns are over-the-top, and that leads to a conclusion that I felt turn this into a silly and thaus not quite memorable film.

Wild does independent little film noir is filmed beautifully on locations in Quebec, and also features one of the best musical scores of the 1940's, it is ultimately done in by a screenplay that becomes entirely unbelievable and a direction that has the plot going in circles. Lukas's character is basically a Hungarian version of all those pretentious characters that Clifton Webb played, and indeed, he's very similar to Webb's characters in the film noirs "Laura" and "The Dark Past". The only difference is where Webb got laughs naturally for his line delivery of witty dialogue, Lukas gets unintentional laughs for some of the lamest limes I've ever heard a movie villain spout. Dantine and Anderson are spared ridiculous dialogue, but the situations they end up in had my eyes rolling. Definitely worth seeing though for the technical aspects of the film while the story becomes a let-down with a plot that had potential but unfortunately took the wrong turn.

Magnificent Mary Anderson in fine film noir

[mwmerkelbach · 8/10 · 26 January 2008]

I did not expect too much, when I picked this one up on ebay for about a $ 1,50 plus a little extra for postage. The artwork on the case did appear "noirish" and looked a little better than on most of these features from the forties and fifties that belong to public domain. I already found a couple of well written positive comments here on IMDb that convinced me to give it a try. The technical quality of the only available print on DVD (from Alpha Video) is far below average, which is a pity indeed. It's that bad that it looked like copied from an ancient super 8 print – as somebody else stated out. Though that was a reasonable disadvantage the movie took me in from the very start, and I went through it without having a break.

Let me ask a question. Why did Alfred Hitchcock choose Mary Anderson for "Lifeboat"? Because she really could act. She is that good in "Whispering City" that I got hooked by surprise. Paul Lukas and Helmut Dantine also deliver strong performances in a story based on a solid script with some interesting twists and turns all along the way to the very end. The final climax was a bit abrupt and all too easily done, so the movie didn't quite got an ending that did suit the whole story fairly, which I think is disappointing. And though I hardly found anything far beyond belief while watching it, a few things come along much too quick in the end.

Besides that, this movie is a nearly forgotten and obviously ignored gem that definitely needed to be rediscovered and completely restored like "Woman On The Run" or "Kansas City Confidential" with whom it can compete. It is not those dark and grim type of film noir like "The Killing" or "Force Of Evil" - both are in fact superior movies. But in my opinion "Whispering City" belongs without a doubt to the better half of that period and I'd recommend it to everybody, who is interested in that. "Whispering City" also proves that way back then the Canadians were hard drinkers too. Well, that might also be a fact, because its director was a Russian immigrant. Watch that movie, and remember Fyodor Otsep, because he did a fine job.

Excellent Canadian Film Noir

[robert-temple-1 · 8/10 · 9 June 2009]

This was the last film directed by the Russian director Fedor Ozep (i.e., Fyodor Otsep), who had been the husband of Anna Sten. (He had directed THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV in 1931, Stefan Zweig's AMOK in 1934, etc.) As a Quebec production set in Quebec City and at the spectacular Montmorency Falls, this film has a strange history, because it was first shot in French in the same year under the title of LA FORTERESSE, and then re-shot in English with a different cast. The English version is 98 minutes long and the French version 99 minutes long (perhaps because the French speak less fast?) Two French Canadian actresses carried over to the new cast, though in minor roles. In this second version, Paul Lukas does an excellent job of portraying a suave art-lover, music-lover, and cultural philanthropist who is secretly a psychopathic killer. Pert young girl reporter Mary Roberts (Marie Roberts in the French version), played by the charming Mary Anderson, who had been discovered previously by Hitchcock and appeared in LIFEBOAT, does an excellent job of beguiling us and everyone else with her girlish smile as she tries to expose Lukas as a murderer. Lukas's musical protégé of the moment is a handsome young pianist and composer played by Helmut Dantine, who is a creative but tortured soul married to a hysterical wife, who is played by Joy Lafleur. (In LA FORTERESSE, this part had been played by Mimi D'Estee, who in the English language film is given a small part of a dying woman, which, however, she brings off with style.) All of these people do a very good job, and the direction and atmosphere are excellent. The film is notable for the use of a modern piano concerto by the Canadian composer Morris C. David, and with the piano played by Neil Chotem. So classical music and orchestras figure largely in the story. Canada was not known for its feature films at this time, and Canada in American minds was then thought of as a thin strip of land separating the northern border of the United States from the Arctic Circle, populated largely by polar bears and Esquimaux. So this was an early attempt by an infant Canadian film industry to assert itself, to prove that Canadians actually existed and even had their own cities, even though it was all done with a borrowed Russian exile as a director, a Hungarian exile as the bad guy, a Viennese exile as the good guy, etc. But it works. The Canadians can and should be proud of it. I wonder what the original French language version was like, with largely home talent speaking Quebec dialect. The film has a great deal of intensity and is a genuine film noir, which proves, I suppose that whatever that mysterious substance known as 'noir' really is, it does not freeze at the higher latitudes and can survive the northern climes with its vitality intact.

Love and death accompanied by a romantic piano concerto in Quebec

[clanciai · 9/10 · 26 April 2017]

Intriguing thriller in Quebec involving all kinds of suspense tricks including old murders and new, fake murders and phantoms, haunting memories and romance, suicide and a poor brilliant pianist working on his debut under the terror of his intolerably intolerant wife. The intrigue is difficult to follow as it develops all the time with surprising turns into upside down turbulence, but it nevertheless sticks together and adds up in the end. If you regard the piano concerto ('the Quebec concerto') as the hub around which everything evolves, you'll find it a rather masterful composition of intrigue, cinematography and music - in brief, nothing is actually missing in this intricately spiced stew of a very complicated but exotic repast. It's even worth watching again for enjoying the details.

Conscience Does Make Cowards Of Us

[boblipton · 9/10 · 6 January 2019]

Fyodor Ozep's last movie feels like a Russian novel, with its themes of retribution and conscience. And music. There's a great Romantic concert that plays with the denouement, and if it were more Russian, it would have made my point too clearly for any subtlety. Ozep was a Russian film maker who had left the Soviet Union in the early 1930s, but while in his homeland, he had done startlingly original work, in Germany and France and the United States, he drew his works from the Russian novelists: Tolstoy and Dostoevski and Pushkin.

It all begins when news reporter Mary Anderson is assigned a brief story. Mimi D'Estee had once been a well-regarded actress. However, when her husband was killed in what appeared to be an accident, she retired and has spent the rest of her life saying it had been a murder. Now she has been struck by a car and is in bad condition. Miss Anderson next approaches local philanthropist Paul Lukas, who is busy arranging for Helmut Dantine's premiere of his concerto. Dantine's wife is driving him batty; he can't work. Eventually he leaves and Miss Anderson comes in. Lukas is sympathetic. After she leaves, he calls the hospital and discovers Miss D'Estee has died. He calls his friend, John Pratt, Miss Anderson's editor, and suggests there's no point in raking up ancient scandal. Pratt agrees, but Miss Anderson is going to continue her investigation.

So far, there's nothing to indicate.... well, anything. Nineteen minutes of the movie have passed before Miss Anderson goes to Miss D'Estee's apartment and barely misses Mr. Lukas, who has broken in. Since she will not give up the story, Mr. Lukas will just have to convince Mr. Dantine to kill her.

Ozep has directed the script to his actors' benefit. People -- aside from the increasingly deranged Lukas -- behave the way people behave. Their conversation sound real. The reactions sound real. The nuns gliding by on the street look real -- the movie was shot in Quebec. There are lovely moments, like the paternal manner of John Pratt towards Miss Anderson, the way a florist's delivery boy waits for his tip, Mr. Dantine's embarrassment at the flop house he is staying at, even the way Miss Anderson stares in horror at Mr. Lukas, come to murder her. People always remain people in this movie, even at the most bizarre moments, and Ozep's handling emphasizes that. Moments like those are far more cinematic to me than the most involved Busby Berkeley visual extravaganza and this movie has plenty of them. They do things and we, the audience, infer. That draws us into the story and the characters far more surely than a three minute exposition.