King Vidor’s earliest noir is a crime drama that finds an escaped convict with a disturbing history of violence and trauma caught in a house of a psychiatry professor and his guests. What happens next is generally predictable but we still get some kicks out of the personality dissection of a cold blooded killer. While Vidor fully embraces psychoanalysis as the mainspring of the film and criminal Hal Wilson’s issues are depicted with clearness through character behaviour, allegories and subtext, we never get to explore the true depth of his psyche and actions. But ultimately, Blind Alley manages to create great tension with a limited runtime and makes up for an interesting character study, even if it’s highly rushed and very on the surface.
King Vidor’s earliest noir is a crime drama that finds an escaped convict with a disturbing history of violence and trauma caught in a house of a psychiatry professor and his guests. What happens next is generally predictable but we still get some kicks out of the personality dissection of a cold blooded killer. While Vidor fully embraces psychoanalysis as the mainspring of the film and criminal Hal Wilson’s issues are depicted with clearness through character behaviour, allegories and subtext, we never get to explore the true depth of his psyche and actions. But ultimately, Blind Alley manages to create great tension with a limited runtime and makes up for an interesting character study, even if it’s highly rushed and very on the surface.
