''Whispering City'' (also known as ''Crime City'') is a 1947
black-and-white
Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white in a continuous spectrum, producing a range of shades of grey.
Media
The history of various visual media began with black and white, and as technology improved, altered to color. ...
film noir directed by
Fedor Ozep
Fedor Ozep or Fyodor Otsep (russian: Фёдор Алекса́ндрович О́цеп, ''Fyodor Aleksandrovich Otsep''; February 9, 1895 – June 20, 1949) was a Russian-American film director and screenwriter, born in Moscow. An important earl ...
and starring
Paul Lukas
Paul Lukas (born Pál Lukács; 26 May 1894 – 15 August 1971) was a Hungarian actor. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor, and the first Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama for his performance in the film '' Wat ...
,
Mary Anderson, and
Helmut Dantine
Helmut Dantine (7 October 1918 – 2 May 1982) was an Austrian-American actor who often played Nazis in thriller films of the 1940s. His best-known performances are perhaps the German pilot in '' Mrs. Miniver'' and the desperate refugee in '' ...
.
Gerald Pratley
Gerald Arthur Pratley (September 3, 1923 – March 14, 2011) was a Canadian film critic and historian.Piers Handling"Gerald Arthur Pratley" ''The Canadian Encyclopedia'', September 18, 2011. A longtime film critic for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp ...
, ''A Century of Canadian Cinema''. Lynx Images, 2003. . p. 239. It was filmed on location in
Quebec City
Quebec City ( or ; french: Ville de Québec), officially Québec (), is the capital city of the Canadian province of Quebec. As of July 2021, the city had a population of 549,459, and the metropolitan area had a population of 839,311. It is t ...
and
Montmorency Falls
The Montmorency Falls (french: Chute Montmorency) is a large waterfall on the Montmorency River in Quebec, Canada.
Location
The falls are located on the boundary between the borough of Beauport, and Boischatel, about from the heart of old Q ...
,
Quebec
Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...
,
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
in both English and French.
A
French language version entitled ''La Forteresse'', with different actors, was made simultaneously.
[
]
Plot
Taking place in Quebec City
Quebec City ( or ; french: Ville de Québec), officially Québec (), is the capital city of the Canadian province of Quebec. As of July 2021, the city had a population of 549,459, and the metropolitan area had a population of 839,311. It is t ...
, the film tells the story of a lawyer and a patron of the arts, Albert Frédéric, who, earlier in life, caused a murder and made it look like an accident for financial gain.
Later in life, a dying woman tells a reporter the tale of how she thinks the accident was actually murder. The young American reporter, Mary Roberts, begins investigating the case, unaware that the charming lawyer may be behind it all. Meanwhile, Michel Lacoste, a classical composer, who is supported by Frédéric, is having marriage troubles. Finally his wife kills herself and leaves the husband a note. Frédéric sneaks into the apartment, takes the note and convinces the man that he killed her in a drunken rage.
Michel, whose night was indeed blacked out by drink, can't remember anything. The lawyer then offers the composer a deal: kill reporter Mary Roberts in exchange for legal representation that will guarantee to get the younger man off the hook. The man, seeing no other choice, agrees reluctantly. The man and woman meet but he does not have the heart to kill her. The two begin to fall in love, gradually figure out that the lawyer is the real killer and set about a scheme to drive the lawyer into confessing to the crime.
Cast
''Whispering City''
* Helmut Dantine
Helmut Dantine (7 October 1918 – 2 May 1982) was an Austrian-American actor who often played Nazis in thriller films of the 1940s. His best-known performances are perhaps the German pilot in '' Mrs. Miniver'' and the desperate refugee in '' ...
as Michel Lacoste
* Mary Anderson as Mary Roberts
* Paul Lukas
Paul Lukas (born Pál Lukács; 26 May 1894 – 15 August 1971) was a Hungarian actor. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor, and the first Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama for his performance in the film '' Wat ...
as Albert Frédéric
* John Pratt as Edward Durant, editor
* Mimi D'Estee as Renee Broncourt
''La Forteresse''
*Paul Dupuis
Paul Dupuis (August 11, 1913 – January 23, 1976) was a French Canadian film actor who was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and who performed in British films during the late 1940s. The roles he played were mainly as the romantic leading man. ...
as Michel Lacoste
* Nicole Germain as Marie Roberts
* Jacques Auger as Albert Frédéric
*Henri Letondal
Henri Letondal (29 June 1901 – 15 February 1955) was a French-Canadian actor, critic, playwright and musician.
He was born in Montreal
Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous c ...
as Edward Durant
* Armande Lebrun as Renée Brancourt
* Lucie Poitras as Mother Superior
* Mimi D'Estée as Blanche Lacoste
Production
Faced with the dilemma that the French market in Quebec was too small to support a self-sustaining film industry all by itself, while the language barrier between Quebec and the anglophone market in the rest of North America made it virtually impossible for a Quebec-produced film to pursue wider distribution, producer Paul L'Anglais
Paul may refer to:
*Paul (given name), a given name (includes a list of people with that name)
* Paul (surname), a list of people
People
Christianity
*Paul the Apostle (AD c.5–c.64/65), also known as Saul of Tarsus or Saint Paul, early Chri ...
tried to resolve the difficulty by producing ''Whispering City'' and ''La Forteresse'' as English and French versions of the same film.[André Loiselle, "La Forteresse/Whispering City" in Jerry White, ed. ''The Cinema of Canada''. ]Wallflower Press
Columbia University Press is a university press based in New York City, and affiliated with Columbia University. It is currently directed by Jennifer Crewe (2014–present) and publishes titles in the humanities and sciences, including the fiel ...
, 2006. . pp. 33-40. He opted to make the experiment a Hollywood-style thriller, set in the urban Quebec City market instead of the rural communities more typical of Quebec cinema in its era.[
The film's $750,000 budget made it the most expensive film ever made in Canada as of that time, a title it retained until the early 1970s.][
]
Release
The film was watched by over 100,000 people in Quebec over sex weeks and was shown in Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
for three weeks.
Reception
Film critic Dennis Schwartz gave the film a mixed review, writing, "Watchable minor film noir, that is competently directed by Fyodor Otsep from a story by George Zuckerman
George Zuckerman (August 10, 1916 – September 30, 1996) was an American screenwriter and novelist.
Zuckerman began his career writing short stories for ''Cosmopolitan'', ''Collier's Weekly'', and '' Esquire'' in the 1940s. He wrote the st ...
and Michael Lennox. The acting by Paul Lukas and Helmut Dantine is far beyond what you would expect in such a cheapie film. But the narrative has too many coincidental plot points to be believable, though the crisply told story is for the most part entertaining. The film is told in flashback by a tourist guide sleigh driver to two riders in Quebec City."
''La Forteresse'' was more positively received in the Quebec market than ''Whispering City'' was among English audiences.[ Some critics who have viewed both films for comparison have asserted that ''La Forteresse'' is actually a better film, for various reasons including faster-paced editing and a greater expressiveness among the actors in the French cast;][ however, writer André Loiselle concluded that "what ultimately explains the success of ''La Forteresse'' and the failure of ''Whispering City'' are cultural rather than stylistic or aesthetic reasons. The former, as a French-Canadian thriller enjoyed the best of both worlds, as it capitalized on both the insular character of Quebec's culture and its status as merely another subdivision of Hollywood's domestic market. ''Whispering City'' on the other hand, suffered from the ''worst'' of both worlds as it proved to be neither a particularly good Hollywood film nor a distinctly Canadian work."][ Roly Young of '']The Globe and Mail
''The Globe and Mail'' is a Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of approximately 2 million in 2015, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on weekdays and Saturdays, although it ...
'' reviewed both films together, rating ''Whispering City'' four stars but ''La Forteresse'' four-and-a-half, identifying the strength of Nicole Germain's performance as Marie in ''La Forteresse'' as the biggest distinction between the two.
At the 2nd Canadian Film Awards
The 2nd Canadian Film Awards were presented on April 19, 1950 to honour achievements in Canadian film.Maria Topalovich, ''And the Genie Goes To...: Celebrating 50 Years of the Canadian Film Awards''. Stoddart Publishing, 2000. . pp. 9-11. The cerem ...
in 1950, Quebec Productions
Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirteen p ...
, the studio of producer L'Anglais and his business partner René Germain
René (''born again'' or ''reborn'' in French) is a common first name in French-speaking, Spanish-speaking, and German-speaking countries. It derives from the Latin name Renatus.
René is the masculine form of the name ( Renée being the feminin ...
, received a special citation "for sustained and creative effort in establishing a feature-length film industry in Canada", collectively based on the films ''Whispering City''/''La Forteresse'', ''A Man and His Sin
''A Man and His Sin'' (french: Un homme et son péché) is a Canadian drama film, directed by Paul Gury and released in 1949.Charles-Henri Ramond"Un homme et son péché – Film de Paul Gury" ''Films du Québec'', August 6, 2012. Adapted from Cla ...
'', '' Séraphin'' and '' The Village Priest (Le Curé du village)''.
''Whispering City'' was later screened at the 1984 Festival of Festivals as part of Front & Centre, a special retrospective program of artistically and culturally significant films from throughout the history of Canadian cinema.Carole Corbeil
Carole Corbeil (1952 – 2000) was a Canadian arts critic and novelist.John Levesque, "Voice-Over a smash success". ''Hamilton Spectator'', May 9, 1992. Born in Montreal to Québécois parents, her writing was often informed by the cultural disp ...
, "The stars are coming out for Toronto's film festival". ''The Globe and Mail
''The Globe and Mail'' is a Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of approximately 2 million in 2015, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on weekdays and Saturdays, although it ...
'', September 6, 1984.
See also
* List of films in the public domain in the United States
Most films are subject to copyright, but those listed here are believed to be in the public domain in the United States. This means that no government, organization, or individual owns any copyright over the work, and as such it is common property ...
References
Works cited
*
External links
*
*
*
*
*
* {{Internet Archive film, id=WhisperingCity, name=Whispering City
1947 films
1940s multilingual films
Eagle-Lion Films films
English-language Canadian films
1940s English-language films
Film noir
Films directed by Fedor Ozep
Films set in Quebec City
Films shot in Quebec
Canadian multilingual films
Canadian black-and-white films
Canadian drama films
1947 drama films
1940s Canadian films