Created by Michael Lennox and George Zuckerman
Newshawk MARY ROBERTS works the Québec City crime beat in the Duplessis-era Whispering City, an obscure but surprisingly strong noir from 1947.
The fatal car crash of a long-retired actress intrigues intrepid reporter Roberts, sporting a rather nifty tam, and she decides to investigate further. She soon discovers that the woman had been institutionalized years ago for insisting that her fiance’s death was actually murder, and Roberts soon realizes there just might be more to the case than meets the eye. The complicated (and at times gloriously seedy) plot soon has Roberts rubbing shoulders against an eccentric composer, a wife who’s dependent on drugs to make her sleep and a crooked lawyer, and soon finds herself up to her jaunty little cap in suicide, blackmail, corruption, deception, a couple of more murders, and more than a little mental illness. Yeah, it sounds like a real potboiler, but it’s a pretty good one, and makes full use of its local cast and colour.
Anderson in particular shines. As Roberts, she’s supposedly “two-thirds Teresa Wright and a third Bonita Granville; the latter impression no doubt derives from her sleuthing around in a jaunty tam, like Nancy Drew,” according to Film Noir: The Encyclopedia. “She has the distinction (as does the director, the short-lived Fedor Ozep, as he’s credited here) of helping to make the best Nancy Drew mystery ever released. That’s faint praise, but praise nonetheless… the locale is Quebec City, that odd European fortress set high over the St. Lawrence River; it comes to Gallic life more fully here than in Alfred Hitchcock’s I Confess, made a few years later.”
TABARNAK!
I’ve only recently discovered that a French language version of Whispering City, entitled La forteresse, was filmed simultaneously, with mostly different actors but with the same director and sets.
Apparently, executive producer Paul L’Anglais (ironically, “Paul the English), realizing the Quebec market was then too small to support a self-sustaining film industry all by itself, making it almost impossible for a Quebec-produced film to get wider distribution, so he made the bold decision to make both English and French versions of the same film. The budget for making two films at the same time resulted in a whopping $750,000 budget, making it the most expensive film ever made in Canada as of that time — a record that wouldn’t be broken until the early seventies.
La forteresse was also the first feature film made in Canada with an all-Canadian French speaking cast.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the French version fared better commercially and critically in Quebec in the Francophone market than Whispering City didamong Anglos, and the general consensus is that the French version is a marginally better film.
FILMS
WHISPERING CITY | Buy the DVD | Watch it now!
(aka “Crime City”)
(1947, Eagle-Lion/Québec Productions)
Premiere (US): November 20, 1947
98 minutes
Black and white
Story by Michael Lennox and George Zuckerman
Screenplay by Rian James and Leonard Lee
Additional dialogue by Sydney Banks, Gina Kaus, Hugh Kemp
Directed by Fedor Ozep (Fyodor Otsep)
Cinematography by Charles Quick, Guy Roe
Original Music by Morris C. Davis
Non-Original Music by Andre Marthieu, from “The Quebec Concerto”
Produced by George Marton
Associate producer: Roger Wood
Executive producer: Paul L’Anglais
Starring Paul Lukas as Albert Frédéric
and Mary Anderson as MARY ROBERTS
Also starring Helmut Dantine, John Pratt, George Alexander, Joy Lafleur, Mimi D’Estée, Arthur Lefebvre, Lucie Poitras, J. Léo Gagnon, Réjeanne Desrameaux, Germaine Lemyre, Blanche Gauthier, Palmieri, Henri Poitras, Louis-Philippe Hébert, Neil O’Keefe, R.J. Jarvis, Ovila Légaré, Jean Deslauriers, Neil Chotem, Teddy Burns Goulet
LA FORTERESSE
(1947, Eagle-Lion/Québec Productions)
98 minutes
Black and white
Story by Michael Lennox and George Zuckerman
Screenplay by Rian James and Leonard Lee
Directed by Fedor Ozep (Fyodor Otsep)
Cinematography by Charles Quick, Guy Roe
Original Music by Morris C. Davis
Non-Original Music by Andre Marthieu, from “The Quebec Concerto”
Produced by George Marton
Associate producer: Roger Wood
Executive producer: Paul L’Anglais
Starring Jacques Auger as Albert Frédéric
and Nicole Germain as MARY ROBERTS
Also starring Henri Letondal, Armande Lebrun, Lucie Poitras, Mimi D’Estée, George Alexander, Rolland Bédard, Albert Cloutier, Rolland D’Amour, Jean Deslauriers, Réjeanne Desrameaux, Guy Dugas, J. Léo Gagnon, Blanche Gauthier, Teddy Burns Goulet, Louis-Philippe Hébert, Gordon Jones, Jean Lajeunesse, René Lecavalier, Arthur Lefebvre, Ovila Légaré, Germaine Lemyre, Henri Poitras, Louis Rolland, Jean Vezina
NOVELIZATION
- Whispering City (1947, by Horace Brown)
TRIVIER & TRIVIER
- The 1947 novelization of the film was written by Horace Brown, a Canadian newspaper reporter and editor, who wrote a few private eye novels, including The Penthouse Killings and Murder in the Rough.
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
- Murder in a Distinct Society
Montréal (and Québec) Eyes - Stop the Presses!
Reporters, Journalists and Other Newshawks
Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
