Has Pat Cracked Up?

George Steele (Pat O'Brien) assaults a police officer trying to get into the Manhattan Museum, where George works.  George is confused, and says he was in a train accident.  But Lieutenant Cochrane (Wallace Ford) from the police detective unit assures him there have been no train accidents in over seven months.  Is George about to Crack-Up (1946)?

Pat O'Brien gives a good performance as a war veteran who genuinely believes he was involved in a train wreck, but can't prove it.  If there is one problem with his portrayal it is that Mr. O’Brien is obviously too old (he was 47 when the picture was released) for the part he is playing. That aside, you do believe him both as a man being driven to the edges of sanity, as well as an intellectual with a deep interest and knowledge of art history. Mr. O'Brien's did only one other film noir, but he makes the most of it in this outing (TCM article).

He's well matched with Claire Trevor (Terry Cordell), herself a veteran of films noir.  She'd already done one notable noir - Murder, My Sweet (1944), and would win an Oscar for her performance in Key Largo (1948) two years after our film. It's a shame she doesn't have more screen time, but when she does appear, either working with Mr. O'Brien as his love interest, or with Herbert Marshall (Traybin), she takes command of the screen.

Though Herbert Marshall's part is small, he is used to good effect. You are never quite sure of the reliability of the character. Ray Collins (Dr. Lowell) is also in the same position.  By keeping the characters ambiguous, the audience is kept engaged in the action.

One small oddity in the film comes at the beginning. During an art lecture given by George Steele to a group of museum donors, Steele compares an old Master to a modern painting (which bears a passing resemblance to Dali), and trashes the modern painting. He is interrupted by an angry man in the audience; the man speaks with a distinct foreign accent and is nearly hysterical in his passion for the modern piece. It's an odd insert into the movie. As Derek Sculthorpe points out in his book on Claire Trevor (Claire Trevor:The Life and Films of the Queen of Noir), the screenplay seems to be linking modern art to radicalism - an acknowledgement to the increasing Red scare?

Based on the story Madman's Holiday by Fredric Brown, the film was not well received; Bosley Crowther's New York Times review found him "overwhelmed by [the film's] inadequacies." Regardless, in December 1946 Lux Radio Theatre did a production with Pat O'Brien and Lynn Bari. (AFI catalog).

While this is by no means a perfect movie, it certainly is worth a viewing, if only to see this very good cast work together.  We'll leave you with a trailer: