Blind Alley

The Criterion Channel is still running their Columbia Noir series, and has added more titles. One of them is Blind Alley, a film from 1939, directed by Charles Vidor. But it is not a noir film. It is an interesting look at how psychology was viewed back in those days.

The films stars Ralph Bellamy as a psychiatrist (the film mixes the terms psychiatry and psychology interchangeably, even in the same sentence). He is having some guests over to his lake house when an escaped gunmen (Chester Morris), and his gang bust in, waiting for a boat. Incredibly, Bellamy ends up psychoanalyzing Morris, and interpreting a dream.

The film takes a simplistic view of dream interpretation, as does Spellbound some years later. Morris is having the same nightmare, night after night, and Bellamy tells him that once he figures out what it means, he will never have it again. I don't believe mental issues are that easily solved.

The film is a lean sixty-nine minutes but has a few subplots that are completely unexplained, such as a beef between two of Bellamy's guests (played by Melville Cooper and John Eldredge). Also starring is Ann Dvorak as Morris' moll, and there is a slight attempt to explain why she would hang out with such a psychotic killer. Morris is given a lot of lines that we know today from parody, such as calling the doctor a screwball, or adding the word "see" to his lines, like "this is how it's going to happen, see."

Also in the cast, as Bellamy's young son, is Scotty Beckett, who was part of the Our Gang comedies.