Joseph Losey's Noir About Calumny Against a Film Director: "Finger of Guilt" (1956)

The Intimate Stranger (US title "Finger of Guilt," 1956, 3.8/5 stars) written by blacklisted writer Howard Koch (Sgt. York, Casablanca, Letter from an Unknown Woman) under a psuedonym , and directed in England by blacklisted director Joseph Losey (The Romantic Englishwoman, M. Klein, Don Giovanni). At the time, the movie's direction was credited to "Joseph Walton," the director's original name in England and to the producer, Alec Snoden, in its American release.. It starred Richard Basehart (Decision Before Dawn, He Walked by Night), who made a number of movies in Europe during the 1950s (most notably "La Strada" and "Il Bidone," both directed by Federico Fellini), but not, apparently, because he was blacklisted in Hollywood.

The movie begins unpromisingly with a medical consultation by an American movie director Reggie Wilson (Basehart) in English exile (for sexual rather than political reasons). The head of the studio is his father-in-law Ben Casey (played by Roger Livesey, considerably aged in the decade since he was the romantic lead in "She Knew What She Wanted").

The big-budget movie Wilson is directing, stars a former amour who still carries a torch for him (played by Constance Cummings). After about half an hour of dull movie business, things get more interesting when Reggie and his wife Leslie (Faith Brook) go to confront a seeming blackmailer, Evelyn Stewart (played with great sange froide by Mary Murphy), whom Reggie denies he has ever met. "The past won't leave me alone," he exclaims. "It's been coming at me from all sides"-which was apt for Losey fled from the US.

Leslie is a classic noir femme fatale, and the movie turns noirish with a somewhat pat resolution. Gerald Gibbs's black-and-white cinematography gets arty in the final reel.

The mistrust all around (and more than a little contrivances) prefigures later Losey movies scripted by Harold Pinter, such as "The Servant" and "The Go-Between," and it would not be very difficult to read the story os suspicions of marital infidelity as a parable about false accusations of communist sympathies or affiliation made by hacks to bring down their betters.

(The original British release ran 95 minutes, the American one 71, the one I saw on TCM 88 minutes.)