Boring

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

I was less pleased with this one than with his earlier "Fly by Night" of 1942, the script here is not very convincing, and the tempo is too slow, sometimes even dead slow. Ella Raines makes a good performance, and so does Thomas Gomez as the police inspector, while Franchot Tone is terrible. The film makes an effort at trying to make his character psychologically credible but fails utterly. There are many other flaws in the script. The trial is a farce, and the other policemen are as far from being credible as policemen as they can get - such policemen would never have been accepted in the force. But there are some excellent nightclub scenes, and the maze of an impossible intrigue brings us into some eccentric expressionism, but it is ultimately Ella Raines who saves the picture.

'Phantom Lady' (retitled in my country as 'Witness wanted') is a little gem for anyone who appreciates 1940s film noir. It need not feature any of the big stars (Bogart, Cagney, Laughton, Ladd etc.), because its strengths are its excellent b/w photography and an interesting story that doesn't rely on predictable clichés of the genre. Scott Henderson (Alan Curtis) is arrested for the murder of his wife. He is completely innocent, since he spent the evening at a theater with an unknown woman he invited after he met her at a bar (yes, his marriage has seen better days). But when asked for an alibi, not only that 'phantom lady' has disappeared, also several witnesses deny to have seen him with her. Thus, he's thrown into jail, and only his secretary (Ella Raines) and inspector Burgess (Thomas Gomez) don't give up the investigation. When Marlow (Franchot Tone), an old friend of Henderson, offers his assistance, the investigation is taking up speed, but meanwhile another witness was murdered. How can they defend Henderson without witnesses?What I liked especially about 'Phantom Lady' is that there is no actual hero. Henderson is giving up, sits in his prison cell all day and doesn't show any hope. It's almost like he wants to be imprisoned for something he didn't do. So it's really the secretary who becomes the central character, driving the search for the real murderer. Quite unusual for the times and well worth watching.

This movie has one of the most contrived and illogical plots in cinematic history. Scott Henderson and his wife have an argument, and he leaves their apartment and goes to a bar. Shortly after, his wife is strangled by Jack Marlow, with whom she was having an affair. Because there is no evidence connecting him with her murder, the police never suspect him, and so all he has to do is take the trip to Brazil as planned.But no! He decides that he must make sure that Henderson is suspected of the crime. So, he only pretends to get on the ship and then slips off and follows Henderson around (he catches up with the ship later by taking a plane to Havana). He sees that Henderson meets a woman in a bar, whom he persuades to go to a show with him, inasmuch as he already has tickets. She agrees, and they take a cab. They sit right up front, and it turns out that she is wearing the same unusual hat worn by the star of the show, Miss Montiero. The drummer takes a fancy to the woman with Henderson and flirts with her.So, Marlow figures he must bribe the bartender, the cabdriver, and the drummer to say they never saw the woman, thereby depriving Henderson of his alibi. Marlow does not have to bribe Miss Montiero, because her vanity won't let her admit that someone in the audience wore the same hat that she did, which she apparently disposed of. Of course, other women in the show might have remembered Miss Montiero's hat, and other members of the band might have noticed the woman in the front row with the hat, but Marlow does not bother to bribe any of them.As a result, the bartender says he saw Henderson at the bar, but not the woman; and the cabdriver says he picked up Henderson and drove him to the show, but there was no woman with him. And so, without an alibi, Henderson is convicted of murder on the flimsiest of circumstantial cases and sentenced to be executed. However, no one in the movie seems to realize that the bartender and cabdriver have provided Henderson with an alibi anyway. Whether he had a woman with him is irrelevant. For that matter, if Marlow was going to bribe these characters, he should have told them to deny seeing Henderson rather than deny seeing the woman with him. Had he done that, then the woman would be the only one who could provide Henderson with an alibi, and the frantic search for her would have made sense.It gets worse. Although there are only a few weeks until Henderson will be executed, Marlow returns from Brazil and decides to murder the drummer when he sees Carol, Henderson's assistant, trying to get information out of him. Even so, there still would be no evidence connecting him with that murder either, except that he picks up Carol's purse, which she left behind when the drummer became angry, and puts it in a drawer in his apartment.These do not exhaust the absurdities in this movie, which pile up on top of the ones already discussed, but there is no point in beating a dead horse. And because we immediately become aware of these absurdities as they unfold, watching the movie can be an exasperating experience.

I was really looking forward to seeing this movie after reading all the positive reviews- have seen most film noirs and they are a favourite genre of mine- however fairly disappointed after watching this one- we are expected to believe that Franchot Tone's character, Jack Marlowe, murdered his best friends wife at 8 o'clock in the evening- hopped on the ship that was taking him down to South America within half an hour, got off without anyone seeing him- managed to locate Alan Curtis' character, Scott in a New York bar- follow him all evening with the lady he just happens to meet- then bribe all the people who saw this woman with $500 each to say they had never seen her! There are too many coincidences and belief is suspended just too many times for me to give this more than 5 out of 10. pluses for the movie are the lovely Ella Raines as Scott's faithful assistant and the dark New York jazz bar nightlife which creates a great film noir feel- shame the story is a little bit of a letdown.