Crack-Up

Here’s a movie that really should have an exclamation point after the title. It is firmly in the noir genre, though it deals with a level of society quite a bit higher than normally shown in noir. Pat O’Brien, who I associate with brash, wise-guy characters, always quick with a quip, plays a mild-mannered art critic. On his way to see his sick mother, the train he is on collides head-on with another train. Only … it didn’t. He finds himself out cold back at his museum, with no memory of anything after the wreck. And there he is informed that there was no wreck. Nowhere in the country did two trains collide that night.

What the hell is going on? Well, soon we are involved with skullduggery involving missing masterpieces, forgery, and arson. It’s all pretty unlikely, but it more or less hangs together. And it’s fun to try to figure it out. I’ll recommend it.