#jed is so good at ambient music

[project1939]

Day 44- Film: Don’t Bother to Knock 

Release date: July 18th , 1952.

Studio: 20th Century Fox 

Genre: Noir 

Director: Roy Ward Baker 

Producer: Julian Blaustein 

Actors: Richard Widmark, Marilyn Monroe 

Plot Summary: Pilot Jed checks into a hotel where his estranged girlfriend Lyn works as a lounge singer, hoping to win her back. She spurns his advances, but when he goes back up to his room, he sees a beautiful woman named Nell across the courtyard. He calls her, eventually going to her room, where they drink and flirt. But some strange things are happening, and Jed slowly discovers something isn’t right with Nell. 

My Rating (out of five stars): ***½  

Overall, I enjoyed this film. It was short and pacey with its mysteries and suspense. It was not a glamorized or sentimental film at all, it was a typical edgy and cynical noir. Widmark and Monroe were both highly effective and helped elevate the material. 

The Good: 

The unsentimental realism. Like many noirs, no one was really a hero. Everyone was flawed, and the world they inhabited was flawed. It didn't try to shove sentimentality into a story it didn’t belong in. 

The lack of any non-diegetic sound. Like The Narrow Margin, this film had no scored soundtrack. The only sounds we heard came from the environment in the film. In The Narrow Margin it was the sounds of the train, in this movie, it was the sounds of the hotel, particularly the bar-room music. To me, all the ambient sound makes things much more dramatic.

The short space of time the plot took place in. It was basically just a few hours of one evening. I love the detail that movies like this are able to show when they aren’t moving from day to day and scene to scene at lightning speed. 

Monroe getting to really act and not just play a ditzy character. It’s nice to see her play these non-glamourous non-ditzy roles. She certainly wasn’t just sexy eye-candy in this. I wish she had gotten to do more roles like it. 

 Richard Widmark’s unlikability. He was so good at playing a pretty unlikeable guy, and I appreciated it. 

The way the mystery slowly unfolded. The film didn’t spoon-feed us information about Nell or Jed. I enjoyed piecing things together slowly as the film went on. 

Nice little noir details. I enjoyed the colorful details like the lady selling photographs in the bar, the speakers on the wall in the rooms that you could tune to the radio or the hotel bar, the patient bartender, the lady with the uncooperative Dalmatian, the nosy old couple who lived at the hotel...  

Anne Bancroft as Lyn. I didn't recognize it was Bancroft at first, but she was really interesting in this. I liked the character Lyn, although I didn’t always like her style of singing. 

Thurston Howell again! This is the third movie that he has showed up in now for 1952! (And Alan Hale, Jr. who played Skipper was in the Westinghouse movie tonight!) 

The Bad: 

The ending with Monroe was a little melodramatic. I wished it had reeled itself in just a bit. 

The reunion with Jed and Lyn. It kinda made me mad. She deserved better! It seems like there’s a trend in a lot of media from this time where the message to women is, “He’s not that bad! Maybe he was an asshole or treated you crappy... but he says he loves you now! Don’t be so choosy! He’s at least somewhat decent, so come on, take him!”