CRACK-UP (1946)

A noirish thriller with potential, rendered somewhat bland due to the two male leads, Pat O'Brien and Herbert Marshall. O'Brien plays an expert on art and art forgeries who works for the Manhattan Museum. Early in the film, we see him come crashing into the lobby of the museum, apparently drunk, smashing some windows and a sculpture. After he is subdued, he claims that the last thing he remembers was escaping a dangerous train wreck, but there is no report of any train accident that night. He loses his job but is determined, with the help of Claire Trevor, to get to the bottom of his predicament. The scene in which he boards the train in an attempt to recreate what happened to him the night of the supposed accident is suspenseful and plays out very nicely. It turns out that some forgers at the museum who want O'Brien out of the way are behind his unusual experience (and the explanation of that experience is clever, if a bit far-fetched). Herbert Marshall plays an ill-defined character on the sidelines who, it turns out, works for Scotland Yard. Ray Collins is the chief bad guy and Wallace Ford is a cop. The plot partially turns on the dichotomy between high art and popular art, in a way similiar to how many 40's musicals played on the split between classical music and modern jazz.