What’s behind the door? A new car? Bob Barker? An empty box?
The Man Who Cheated Himself (1950) is easily characterizable as film noir and that … would be wrong.
Why so?
Young, pretty, and terribly rich Lois Frazer is more or less done with husband Howard, who in turn is more or less done with her. But when Lois discovers he’s bought a gun, she notifies current boyfriend, police Lieutenant and homicide detective Ed Cullen, who scurries right over to make sure she’s OK.
And, while he’s there, Howard breaks in, only to be shot to death by Lois with that gun, which she conveniently found.
For Lois, is there shame? Guilt? Oh, there’s some minor hysterics, but that’s about it. And in Cullen’s professional opinion, Lois is at significant risk of being found guilty of murder if the police are called to investigate, here in Lois’ extravagant apartment.
And we can’t have that. Cullen’s decision is fast & fool proof: Finding a plane ticket on Howard, the plan is to dump his body at Seattle airport and palm it off as some obscure murder.
It’s too bad that a rural couple, in town to pick up a relative, happen to spot the late night dump, but Cullen can brush it off. After all, he just tossed the gun from a bridge into the deepest part of the river. No connection.
But while Cullen and his kid brother, Andy, whom he’s mentoring on this, his first homicide case, are pursuing the murderer without having much luck finding him, somehow that same gun is used during a botched liquor store holdup.
And that rural couple is turning out to be far too helpful.
And Lois … Lois Lois Lois … has the temperament of a cucumber. Holes in the wall from the gun? She can cover them up. A bullet in plain view? Andy hasn’t a chance of finding it.
Late husband Howard really wasn’t much to her, was he?
Eventually, it’s Andy chasing brother Ed and Lois, and, after the necessary perambulations, is it, as film noir demands, Andy dead, Ed dying, and Lois in tearful regrets?
No.
Andy has a bruise on the head. Ed’s in deep regrets. And Lois? Why, she hardly even notices Ed as she saunters by in the courthouse, because she’s too busy promising her defense attorney big, big things – probably involving her body – if only he can have her found innocent.
Film noir requires acknowledgment by the characters of the poor choices they made, either by being dead, or at least recognizing and, optionally, weeping over one’s bad decisions. Think of The Maltese Falcon (1941) or, somewhat edgier, In Bruges (2008).
Lois won’t fill the bill, and, in fact, this is an example of the genre that I call the American class movie, a term I’ve made up on the spur of the moment. The greatest example of this story type is Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, documenting the violation of the great American tenet that all are equal before the law. Cullen has heart-wrenching regret, and we know he’s going down.
But Lois? She exudes confidence that she’ll get off, one way or another. Just as the incredibly rich Tom Buchanan in Gatsby saves his wife from paying the legal consequences for running over his mistress, Lois is striving to skip the consequences part of life.
And she’ll do it. We know it. After all, it’s going to be a his word / her word trial, and, while he’s a police lieutenant, he’s obviously not in good shape, while Lois? She’s a high flyer, caught in his slipstream but not responsible.
Obviously.
It’s a clever little story, and I enjoyed it, but the two biggest questions is why is a socialite like Lois spending her time with Cullen, and why does Cullen immediately decide to cover up the incident? After all, Howard was menacing his wife – she didn’t shoot him in the back, and there was evidence that he planned to kill her. Surely just laying out the scenario would have been enough to lower the crime to being a misdemeanor.
But despite those shortcomings, it’s a worthwhile story, and more effort has been put into it than many other examples from the era.
And its obscured references to the advantages of the rich are unsettling.
