Crime Street presents Impact (1949)

Director – Arthur Lubin
 

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Plot
Film Notes
Cast and Production Credits

The Plot

It begins with a dictionary definition of the word "impact" before it moves into a San Francisco corporate boardroom and the boom-boom post-war economy in action. Industrialist Walter Williams (Brian Donlevy) is a man on move, a regular guy who made it on his smarts. But he's not enough for his gorgeous wife (Helen Walker), who has developed other interests. She and her lover arrange for Walter's death. However, the best laid plans of women and rats don't always go as intended. Williams survives, the boyfriend doesn't. The blood boils and the plot thickens.

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Film Notes

There's Impact and Impact

Impact has a plot-line similar to that of another Alameda TV Crime Street favorite, They Made Me a Criminal, as a plot to kill one man winds up with the accidental death of his would-be killer who is mistaken for the would-be victim. Both big city men head for rural America and create new lives and loves for themselves. The two films also have veteran detectives who feel the deaths are not so open and shut.

But the movies diverge with the particulars. The Great Depression is the important background for They Made Me a Criminal. Impact peeks behind the meanness hidden in an expanding post-war America, but it only occasionally brings the resulting cynicism to the surface. Straight-backed Brian Donlevy shows more psychological/emotional complexity in his role than is the usual for him. But the script is determined to have the light of justice win out over the darkness of crime.

That Lubin Touch

Though he would never be mistaken for the great Ernst Lubitsch, Arthur Lubin did have a comic touch, specializing in talking mules and horses. He was the director behind the Francis the Talking Mule film series and created and directed all the episodes of Mr Ed for TV. His comedy skills also came in handy for a number of Abbott and Costello features. His long career stretched from the early 30s until 1971, and he was dependable enough to also direct for more than laughs, steering his way through crime thrillers, fantasies, westerns and horror films.

What's the Matter With Helen?

Plenty of bad luck was the matter with Helen Walker, who plays Brian Donlevy's scheming, murderous wife. Pretty and intelligent, she moved quickly from Broadway to Hollywood, her career on the fast track. But in 1946 her luck changed when she was in a serious car accident. She came back from her injuries and managed an excellent performance in the dark and quirky Nightmare Alley, and then appeared in Call Northside 777. Impact (also an interesting performance) followed before a final film appearance the Joseph H. Lewis/John Alton classic of film noir style - The Big Combo. Just a few years later her house burned down to the ground followed by her death from cancer at only 47 years old.

Watch for her scene where she discovers her husband is alive and she thinks on her feet, turning the tables on her husband and the plot.

Look and Feel Good

Like many crime films of the late forties and fifties, Impact suffers from visual inconsistency. Certain scenes have that film noir low key light look that throws guilty shadows on characters, scenery and morality. Other scenes are bathed in a bright and mundane light that could well belong to screwball comedy. What seemed to be smart commercially back then (making the films less dark) backfires with today's audience. Still, there is enough of a dark side to make Impact worthwhile viewing for the film noir fan.

Bordering on Trivial

• Location, location, location. There's local Bay Area interest to Impact; the film begins in San Francisco, moves over to Sausalito, with San Rafael and Oakland playing some background roles, before a fiery crash sends the plot inland to Idaho and then back again.
• In 1966, Director Arthur Lubin directed Hold On!, starring cutie pie British Invasion band Herman's Hermits.
• Silent film star Anna May Wong has a small role as a maid, one of her very few roles after World War II.
• Hollywood never quite figured out how to utilize Ella Raines, an underrated actress. Besides a good performance in Impact, Ella Raines, in one scene, also offers a Princess Leia double cinnamon bun hairstyle.
• Cinematographer Ernst Lazlo won an Academy Award for the 1965 Ship of Fools.

-- Ed Schneider - Alameda TV

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Cast

Production Credits

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