Crossroads (1942)

I was already intrigued by Crossroads when I first heard about it. When I heard that Claire Trevor had a supporting role in the film, my interest increased dramatically. Trevor is a fixture in the film noir universe: She is fantastic, for just one example, in Born to Kill. I thought she outshone William Powell, Hedy Lamarr, and Basil Rathbone in Crossroads, not a mean feat because they’re great in the film, too. And the story didn’t disappoint either. It has the right mix of suspense, suspicion, and, yes, humor, too.

(This article about Crossroads contains spoilers.)

David Talbot (played by William Powell) is a French diplomat in Paris, where he lives with his new bride of three months, Lucienne (Hedy Lamarr). He gets a threatening letter at home that begins “Dear Jean.” The envelope is addressed to him, but he doesn’t know anyone by the name of Jean, and he doesn’t know how he received the letter. The letter demands that Jean pay 1 million francs and that he throw the package of money over the wall of a deserted farm. Very odd indeed.

Talbot delivers a package and follows the instructions in the letter, including throwing the package over the wall of the deserted farm named in the letter. Carlos Le Duc picks up the package, but it’s a trap and he is captured by gendarmes. At trial, Le Duc is accused of extortion, but his defense is that Talbot is Jean Pelletier, and Jean Pelletier owes him 1 million francs. David Talbot doesn’t know what Le Duc is talking about and says so at Le Duc’s trial. Talbot also maintains that Le Duc’s accusations force him to defend himself in a trial in which he is not the named defendant.

The court case becomes sensationalized because David Talbot is a foreign service officer, a diplomat for the French government. He is also responsible for dispensing anywhere from 500,000 to 5 million francs to pay for the expenses of his office. Thus, he is responsible for large sums of money that have no written transactions or records because of the secretive and confidential nature of diplomacy—a perfect lure for anyone interested in blackmail.

Dr. Andre Tessier, David Talbot’s doctor, testifies that David suffered a head injury in a 1922 train accident. He suffered and still suffers from amnesia: David Talbot remembers nothing prior to the accident in 1922. Dr. Alex Dubroc, also testifying at the trial, states that no one knows what memory is. Dr. Tessier than says that amnesia, which Dr. Dubroc defined as a loss of memory, also cannot really be defined because it is a loss of something that science cannot define. Dr. Dubroc states that amnesia thus cannot be diagnosed if no one knows what memory and amnesia are, thus poking a big hole in David Talbot’s story.

I found this discussion between the two doctors interesting because a lot has changed since 1942 when it comes to the study of memory. Amnesia is a common plot device in film noir. Many noir protagonists suffer some sort of head trauma and wake up to find themselves in a hospital bed with a fuzzy memory or no memory at all. It might sound like a cliché today, but amnesia, memory, hypnosis, and so on, were new topics for classic film and film noir audiences.

Michelle Allaine (Claire Trevor) is another witness who testifies at the trial. She is currently a singer at the Club La Sirene in Paris, but she was living in Marseilles in 1922 when she was in love with Jean Pelletier. She says at first that she doesn’t recognize David Talbot, but then says that she does and that he is Jean. Although it isn’t obvious at the trial, Allaine is working with Henri Sarrou on an elaborate blackmail scheme involving David Talbot. Sarrou testifies that Jean Pelletier died in Marseilles, and that the man (David Talbot) in the courtroom cannot possibly Jean Pelletier.

Most of the people around David Talbot believe that he is, indeed, David Talbot. His wife Lucienne; his doctor, Dr. Andre Tessier; and his boss, foreign service minister Deval have the utmost faith in him. But David begins to doubt himself. He doesn’t remember anything before March 27, 1922, the night of the train accident when he suffered a head injury. He has to rely on others for the details of his life before then, and he slowly starts to let mistrust poison his present life. David Talbot has to prove to himself that he is who he says, who others say, he is.

After the trial, Sarrou shows up, uninvited, right before a party hosted by the Talbots. He is friendly at first, but when he is alone with Talbot, he threatens him and demands 1 million francs. He maintains that he and David stole 2 million francs from a bank messenger in Marseilles, that David killed the man during the robbery, and that David owes him half the take. This time, David doesn’t call the police, but in the following day or two, he worries and other notice that he is not himself.

Michelle Allaine visits David Talbot at his embassy office. She has a locket with a picture of the two of them in it. She offers the picture as proof that she knew David Talbot as Jean Pelletier, but David Talbot makes no such admission, and Michelle Allaine leaves with her locket. David knew says at the end of the film that he knew the moment he saw the picture that Michelle Allaine and Henri Sarrou were lying.

Crossroads is one of those films that keeps viewers guessing until the very end because they think they know more than the main characters when they don’t. And I especially appreciated the explanation at the end, when one character delivers all the answers. This time, the explanation was easy to follow, not like some noir and detective films where the main character explains everything, but viewers never had a chance to solve the mystery themselves because most of the mystery isn’t shown on the screen.

The one complaint I have is really a very minor one. I very much enjoyed William Powell and Hedy Lamarr in their leading roles. They make a congenial couple, and their relationship is easy to believe. The film actually starts with Lucienne in the audience for a lecture delivered by her husband David to other foreign service officers. It isn’t clear that they even know each other, and the scene is played for some humor when she tries to bait him with questions after his talk. It all works very amiably.

But I couldn’t help noticing the age difference between the two of them, even in black and white. William Powell was about to turn fifty years old when the film was released; Hedy Lamarr was not yet twenty-eight. I noticed their age difference every time they were on-screen, in spite of the fact that the two actors portrayed some chemistry. It was a bit of a distraction for me that might not matter to other viewers. But there it is: I noticed their age difference several times, no matter how much on-screen chemistry the actors portrayed.

The real star is Claire Trevor. Her character, Michelle Allaine, goes from adoring girlfriend at the trial and then, in David Talbot’s embassy office, to shocked and hurt ex-girlfriend when David insists the he has never seen her before. Then she becomes Sarrou’s willing accomplice, and she is now in her element. She maintains her cool composure, even when Sarrou starts to have doubts that they will be able to pull off their scheme. At the end of the film, when she is being hauled off to jail, Sarrou blames her for being hysterical and giving away everything. Michelle Allaine hasn’t lost her sense of self-preservation, however; she tells Sarrou that he should wait and see how she screams at the trial.

Yes, I think Michelle Allaine/Claire Trevor will end up just fine!

July 23, 1942, release date  •  Directed by Jack Conway  •  Screenplay by Guy Trosper, John H. Kafka, Howard Emmett Rogers  •  Based on the screenplay of the 1938 French film Crossroads  •  Music by Bronislau Kaper  •  Edited by George Boemler  •  Cinematography by Joseph Ruttenberg

William Powell as David Talbot  •  Hedy Lamarr as Lucienne Talbot  •  Claire Trevor as Michelle Allaine  •  Basil Rathbone as Henri Sarrou  •  Vladimir Sokoloff as Carlos Le Duc  •  Margaret Wycherly as Madame Pelletier  •  Felix Bressart as Dr. Andre Tessier  •  Sig Ruman as Dr. Alex Dubroc  •  H. B. Warner as the prosecuting attorney  •  Philip Merivale as the commissaire  •  Bertram Marburgh as Pierre, the Talbot’s butler  •  Fritz Leiber as French foreign minister Deval  •  James Rennie as Charles Martin

Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer  •  Produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer