THE WEB

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 439, 21 November 1947, Page 32

THE WEB

/ (Universal-International)

F we are going to have to keep on suffering a spate of films preoccupied with violence, murder, and other forms of nastiness and mor-

bidity-and it seems there is little chance of escape at present-then The Web is as good a model for this type of thriller as any you are likely to find. It is neat and clever and tightly-woven; actual physical brutality is reduced just about to a minimum; and there are, so far as I could see, no loose ends to the closely-spun plot of sinister intrigue which gradually envelops the hero. This hero is an engaging newcomer (at least to me) named Edmund O’Brien; he’s tough in the modern manner of screen heroes, not too squeamish as a poor young lawyer taken on as bodyguard to a shady Wall Street financier, but capable of suffering some pangs of conscience when his job requires him to shoot, in apparent self-defence, the financier’s ex-partner who has just got out of a jail. Prompted by his conscience, and by the suspicions of a police detective (William Bendix) he makes further inquiries which suggest that it wasn’t selfdefence at all-but if it wasn’t he is in a very embarrassing situation indeed, because in that case there has been a murder and he has committed it. It then becomes clear that a web of fancy. double-crossing has been very expertly spun around the distressed young lawyer. But just when, with the rather unwilling aid of the capitalist’s secretary (Ella Raines), he shows signs of being able to break loose from it, some. extra strands are thrown about him: there is a second murder and once again the hero is neatly framed inside it. This time, however, the spidery capitalist has. been a little too clever. The Web not only has the advantage of a plot that seems more sensible and more logical than the average, but it also has the advantage of some of the ingredients that count most in good thriller-making-crisp, imaginative, but not too fanciful direction by Michael Gordon, sharp photography, a bracket of high-grade performances, and the sort of smart, rapid-fire dialogue which almost. nobody in real life would be

capable of uttering on the spur of the moment, but which is always amusing ‘to hear. So long as one can accept the proposition that.a Wall Street wolf as suave and villainous as Vincent Price makes him could possibly exist, not to mention a secretary-heroine like Ella Raines, a hero like Edmund O’Brien, and a policeman like William Bendix, then The Web hangs together as a pretty competent and exciting movie.