The Brighton Strangler + extended intro by curator Ehsan Khoshbakht

 

Max Nosseck: The Brighton Strangler (US 1945) with John Loder (Reginald Parker / Edward Grey) and June Duprez (April Manby Carson).

Brightonin kuristaja (Yle Teema: Kino Kyöpeli 17 Aug 2007).

    US 1945. PC: RKO Radio Pictures. EX: Sid Rogell. P: Herman Schlom.

    D: Max Nosseck. Ass D: Lloyd Richards. SC: Arnold Phillips, Max Nosseck. Add dialogue: Hugh Gray. DP: J. Roy Hunt. AD: Albert S. D'Agostino, Ralph Berger. Set dec: Darrell Silvera, Harley Miller. Gowns: Renié. SFX: Vernon L. Walker. M: Leigh Harline. Music D: C. Bakaleinikoff. Recorder: Roy Meadows. Re-recorder: James G. Stewart. ED: Les Millbrook. Montage: Harold Palmer.

    C: John Loder (Reginald Parker/"Edward Gray"), June Duprez (April Manby), Michael St Angel (Bob Carson), Miles Mander (Chief Inspector W. R. Allison), Rose Hobart (Dorothy Kent), Gilbert Emery (Dr. Manby), Rex Evans (Shelton), Matthew Boulton (Inspector Graham), Olaf Hytten (Banks), Lydia Bilbrook (Mrs Manby), Ian Wolfe (Brandon R. Clive, the mayor). Uncredited: Gavin Muir (officer).

    68 min

    Certificate 12A

    A  35 mm print from BFI National Archive.

    BFI Southbank: Projecting the Archive.

    Extended intro by curator Ehsan Khoshbakht.

    Viewed at NFT2, London, 16 Dec 2024

BFI Southbank capsule intro: "A Christmas thriller with a murderous twist in which a theatre star with amnesia believes himself to be a serial killer."

"When a theatre is bombed in wartime London, a famous actor loses his memory and assumes the personality of the character he’s been playing on stage: The Brighton Strangler."

"British expat stars John Loder and June Duprez bring authenticity to their roles – much needed to counterbalance the Hollywood depiction of Britain’s south coast. Director Max Nosseck was a colourful character, best-known for making low-budget crime dramas across different countries, of which this is a deliciously melodramatic example. Taking place over the theatre’s Christmas closure, this RKO B-movie makes a perfect alternative seasonal offering." BFI Southbank

...

AA: This screening of Max Nosseck's The Brighton Strangler (US 1945) was special thanks to an inspired introduction by Ehsan Khoshbakht, which amounted to no less than a rehabilitation and claim of auteur status for Max Nosseck. 

In a witty resume and an illuminating clipreel Khosbakht tracked continuities and disparities on the Nosseck oeuvre from Weimar Germany through 1930s Portugal, France, Spain and the Netherlands, 1940s USA on the East Coast (Astoria studios) and the West Coast (Hollywood), and back to post-war Germany and Austria.

Nosseck filmed in many languages and pursued a wide array of genres, from comedy to crime and "from Judaism to nudism" (E.K.). The Yiddish-language Overture to Glory (US 1940) was a distinguished achievement in the lineage of Das alte Gesetz and The Jazz Singer. The Garden of Eden (US 1954), produced with the approval of the American Sunbathing Association, was not a piece of sensationalist exploitation. 

Nosseck directed masters of comedy such as Curt Bois (Der Schlemihl, DE 1931) and Buster Keaton (Le Roi des Champs-Élysées, FR 1935). He was happy to film horses (Black Beauty, US 1946) and dogs (The Return of Rin Tin Tin, US 1947). 

The year 1945 was a high point. Nosseck directed two strong films noir, besides The Brighton Strangler also Dillinger, in which Lawrence Tierney received his breakthrough as an actor and Philip Yordan got an Academy Award nomination for best original screenplay. 

All through his hectic career Nosseck usually worked in B-movie circumstances, but he always pursued creative control and often co-wrote his films. He was interested in the interplay of performance and life itself. He was fascinated by shattered minds and psychic disorders. A continuing feature regardless of genre are psychedelic inserts, nightmares and dream scenes with ominous superimpositions. (End of my freely edited notes from Ehsan Khoshbakht's introduction).

...

Like the director Max Nosseck, his movie The Brighton Strangler, co-written by him, is eminently worthy of rehabilitation. Nosseck takes full advantage of his brilliant team of RKO professionals, familiar from other RKO films noir, and also Citizen Kane, Hitchcock and Lewton. J. Roy Hunt, Albert S. D'Agostino, Vernon L. Walker and Leigh Harline know what they are doing.

What Nosseck brings to the mix most of all is an urgent sense of psychic turmoil. The storyline with its affinities with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Weimar classics including Der Andere, Der Student von Prag and Orlacs Hände, is familiar, but in the year 1945 it gained fresh and acute power.

Film noir is hard to define, but The Brighton Strangler in my opinion belongs to the hard core. It could even represent the entire phenomenon.

Rudolf Kurtz said to Lotte H. Eisner: "For me, Expressionism is not an artistic genre, but the expression of a world crisis". My reception of film noir is similar. Anton Kaes interpreted Weimar cinema as shell shock cinema. The same can be said about film noir - to a second degree. Adorno wrote that "writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric". For me, film noir is poetry after Auschwitz.

The premise of The Brighton Strangler is shell shock: the actor Reginald Parker becomes a victim of a Luftwaffe Blitz in London. He loses his memory and identity. Imagination becomes reality, and Parker turns into the character of his play - Edward Gray, the Brighton Strangler. He starts to commit murders following the script. Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari is also evoked in Parker's somnambulistic agenda. The allegory is the same: ordinary people turn into spellbound serial killers.

From a familiar starting-point Nosseck keeps creating something unusual until the very end which offers us the final big surprise.

It was particularly moving to watch this film in the heart of London. The cinema was packed, and I could feel that many in the audience could relate to this strange tale from the days of the Battle of Britain.

Great visual quality in BFI's 35 mm print.

BFI SOUTHBANK PROGRAM NOTE 16 DEC 2024

PROJECTING THE ARCHIVE

THE BRIGHTON STRANGLER

+ extended intro by curator Ehsan Khoshbakht

SPOILER WARNING: the following notes give away the film's ending.

Richard Harland Smith quoted by BFI Southbank: "While producer Val Lewton labored at RKO Radio Pictures on a series of horror thrillers to compete with the output of the Universal monster factory, other producers at the studio were pressed into service crafting B-features to accompany Lewton's films in cameras. The Lewton-produced The Body Snatcher (1945), directed by Robert Wise and starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi in their last team-up, was intended to occupy the top slot in a proposed double bill with Max Nosseck's The Brighton Strangler (1945) commissioned as a like-minded 'co-hit'."

"The tale of an actor (John Loder) who suffers a war-related head injury while playing a serial killer and who comes to in the rubble of the theatre in character, The Brighton Strangler took its cues less from the Lewton school of suggestion than from Warner Brothers's The Lodger (1944) and Hangover Square (1945); Nosseck's screenwriter ,Arnole Phillips, had also scripted Bluebeaerd (1944) starring John Carradine as a serial wife killer."

"Shot with an abundance of expressionistic shadows by J. Roy Hunt (who had lensed Lewton's I Walked with a Zombie), The Brighton Strangler was a rare opportunity for the London-born John Loder to play the leading man, having contributed solid support to such films as Sabotage (1936), How Green Was My Valley (1941) and Now, Voyager (1942). His inability to land quality roles in Hollywood eventually drove Loder back to England, where he turned up in The Story of Esther Costello (1957) with Joan Crawford and John Ford's Gideon of Scotland Yard (1958)." Richard Harland Smith, tom.com, 18 June 2014

CONTEMPORARY REVIEWS

Variety, 2 May 1945 quoted by BFI Southbank: "This is a neatly grooved psychological melodrama for teaming on so-called horror programmes. It's well enacted, directed and produced, and considerably above level of usual offerings aimed at the chiller exploitation market. Will show profitable returns."

"Plot concerns actor who, after long run as lead in a horror play, assumes character's identity and homicidal traits when suffering head injury during London air raid. He carries on the play's plot in screen life, strangling victims who correspond to characters in the play. Plot is familiar to followers of radio and book thriller material and a standard in the shock-'em field."

"Mood is well-sustained in building to climax and Max Nosseck's direction restrains the playing for realistic effects. John Loder's lead spot is excellently treated, character maintaining sympathy despite wanton killings. Also excellent in the casting are June Duprez, WAAF who almost falls victim to the strangler, Miles Mander, Rose Hobart, Gilbert Emery, Rex Evans, Michael St Angel, Lydia Bilbrook and others."

"Photography and music play important parts in furthering atmospheric tension set up under Herman Schlom's production guidance. Sets and special effects also add to mood." Variety, 2 May 1945

Daily Worker, 19 May 1945 quoted by BFI Southbank: "The maniac at large in Brighton, England during the blitz is a shell-shocked actor who involuntarily acts out in real life the part he played in a detective thriller written by the girl he expects to marry in a few days."

"After two brutal killings based on the first and second acts of the play, the strangler is cornered on the roof of London's Plaza Hotel as he is about to choke his third victim. 'Don't shoot,' cries the deranged man's sweetheart to the trigger-nervous Scotland Yard detective, 'just applaud.'

Hard to believe, but the sound of hand-clapping lifts the fog from the actor's brow. He stops short with his weapon, bows low to his audience, stumbles and plunges to his death. He dies because there are no extenuating circumstances in the iron-bound Hays Code of an eye for an eye. John Loder is the strangler in this somewhat better than average 'B' shocker." Daily Worker, 19 May 1945

...

SYNOPSIS FROM AFI CATALOG ONLINE:

"After performing the last act of the play The Brighton Strangler, London actor Reginald Parker puts his fiancée, playwright Dorothy Kent, on a train bound for Canterbury, promising to join her one week later when the play closes."

"On closing night, Reggie is in his dressing room when the Germans bomb the theater district, and he is hit on the head by falling debris. The dazed Reggie finds a luggage claim in his coat pocket and staggers to Victoria station, where he hears April Manby, a WAAF who is returning home for the holidays, purchase a ticket to Brighton."

"April's words are identical to a cue from the Brighton Strangler , causing the confused Reggie to believe that he is Edward Grey, the murderer he portrays in the play. Following his cues, Reggie buys a ticket to Brighton and introduces himself to April as Edward Grey. April is met at the station by her parents, who invite Reggie for Christmas Eve dinner the following evening."

"Meanwhile, in Canterbury, Dorothy reads the news about the theater bombing and, believing that Reggie has died in the attack, returns to London to identify his body. The next day, while staring at the sea from his hotel room window, Reggie, still believing that he is Grey, falls into a daze and becomes convinced he must kill the mayor, a crime that Grey committed in Act One of the play."

"That night, Reggie goes to the mayor's house and strangles him as he walks from the street to his door. After setting the dead man's watch ahead to eight o'clock, Reggie proceeds to dinner at the Manby house. There he is greeted by April, who confides that she is secretly married to American pilot Bob Carson. April asks Reggie to keep her secret from her parents, who have just lost their son, an RAF pilot. As the group sings Christmas carols, word comes of the mayor's murder."

"The next day, W. R. Allison, the chief inspector, sends his men to question everyone who has recently arrived in Brighton, but Reggie, who appeared at the Manby house at 7:45 the previous evening, has an airtight alibi. Later, when April learns that Bob is coming to Brighton on leave, Reggie offers to meet him at the station for her."

"After escorting Bob back to the hotel, Reggie retires to his room, where the sound of a vacuum cleaner triggers his cues from the play's second act in which he kills the Inspector General. Reggie begins to speak Grey's lines in his sleep, and Bob, overhearing his menacing tone, awakens him. Six days later Reggie, in an attempt to complete the second act, follows Allison to the cinema and takes a seat behind him. As he is about to strangle Allison, a newsreel of the bombing of London's theater district flashes across the screen, and Reggie, confused, stumbles out into the lobby."

"After the film ends, Allison sees Reggie seated in the lobby, and when Reggie, who is posing as a novelist, questions him about criminology, Allison agrees to meet him later that night to discuss the topic. Meanwhile, Bob has become suspicious of Reggie, but when he voices his misgivings to April, she accuses him of jealousy and reminds him that they need Reggie to help hide their marriage from her parents."

"In his role as escort, Reggie agrees to pretend to accompany April to a concert that night, but drops her off at the hotel to meet Bob instead. Leaving April with Bob, Reggie announces that he plans to attend the concert by himself. Soon after, Bob is called back to his base and April decides to join Reggie at the concert, but when she arrives at the auditorium, she finds his seat empty. As April listens to the music, Reggie visits Allison at his apartment. Aroused by Allison's collection of murder weapons, Reggie confesses to killing the mayor and then strangles Allison. His crime is interrupted by the entrance of Allison's neighbor, who speaks to Reggie, but whose blindness renders him incapable of witnessing the murder."

"After the concert ends, April returns to Reggie's hotel, and when she questions him, he becomes defensive. Reggie offers to walk April home, and as they stroll along the cliffs, he pulls a silk cord from his pocket and is about to strangle her when she mentions New Year's Eve. The words trigger a cue about the setting of the last act of the play, causing Reggie to feel faint. After April takes hold of his arm to steady him, Reggie tells her that he plans to return to London for New Year's Eve and suggests that she join him and see Bob."

"Meanwhile, in a London bar, Bob sees an advertisement featuring "Reginald Parker," and when he questions the waitress, she tells him that the actor played the Brighton Strangler on stage. Bob takes the poster to Inspector Graham, who states that Reggie was killed by a bomb. When Bob insists that Reggie is alive and masquerading as Edward Grey, they visit Dorothy. As they speak at her apartment, a news bulletin comes over the radio, announcing the strangulation of the Chief Inspector of Brighton. Dorothy, realizing that Reggie is acting out the role of Edward Grey, tells them that in the last act, Grey kills a woman at midnight on New Year's Eve in a deserted roof garden."

"Bob immediately calls Brighton and learns that Reggie and April have left for London. With twenty minutes remaining before the clock strikes midnight, Reggie accompanies April to a deserted roof garden of a hotel. Graham, Dorothy and Bob rush to one of the two hotels in London that have roof gardens, just as Reggie begins to speak Grey's lines and pulls the silk cord from his pocket."

"April is trying to flee her assailant when the others arrive on the rooftop. Seeing Reggie chasing April, Dorothy orders the others to applaud, and the sound of clapping causes Reggie to pause to take a bow. As he backs up, he falls from the roof to the ground. Before dying, Reggie opens his eyes, recognizes Dorothy and speaks the line, "the play has ended." " Synopsis from AFI Catalog Online