Strange Impersonation (USA, 1946) 68 min B&W DIR: Anthony Mann. PROD: W. Lee Wilder. SCR: Mindret Lord. STY: Lewis Herman, Anne Wigton. MUSIC: Alexander Laszlo. DOP: Robert Pittack. CAST: Brenda Marshall, William Gargan, Hillary Brooke, George Chandler, Ruth Ford, H.B. Warner, Lyle Talbot. (Republic Pictures)
One night, research scientist Nora Goodrich (Brenda Marshall), who is working on an anesthetic, accidentally runs over a drunk woman, Jane (Ruth Ford), who then is convinced by a lawyer to gouge some money out of Nora, even though the drunk woman is really at fault for the accident. Her assistant Arline (Hillary Brooke), who wants Nora’s fiancé (William Gargan) for herself, causes a fire in the lab, resulting in an explosion, thus disfiguring Nora’s face. Then, while at home recuperating from the explosion, she is visited by Jane, the woman from the car accident. In a struggle, Jane falls from a balcony to her death on the pavement, her features unrecognizable from the impact. Bystanders assume it is Nora, as the body fell from her apartment. Nora thus assumes Jane’s identity, has plastic surgery done to even make herself look like Jane, and then in a new guise, puts herself into the life of her fiancé, who is now in the arms of Arline. Then, in the film’s most surprising twist, Nora/Jane is implicated in the murder of herself! Trying to explain her way of this predicament is obviously fruitless, and the film has an interestingly expressionistic decoupage of images pronouncing her guilty. Although Strange Impersonation is remarkable for creating a mood, it is undone by its cheat of an ending. Among the least of the B noirs made by Anthony Mann (who did superior genre films Raw Deal and Railroaded), there is however a surprising amount of intensity in this farfetched story.
Trivia Note: producer W. Lee Wilder was the older, estranged brother of writer-director Billy Wilder. W. Lee is probably best known today for his string of low-budget science fiction films, including the infamous Killers from Space, but also directed some impressive B noirs, like The Pretender and Once a Thief.