Nightmare

Writer/director Maxwell Shane holds the honor of being the only noir director to have remade his own film, and the latter version, Nightmare, is just as quirky (some would say unworkable) as the earlier Fear in the Night (1947). Based on a novel by Cornell Woolrich, Nightmare amps up the star power by casting Edward G. Robinson in the role of Rene Bressard, the police detective married to the sister (Viriginia Chrstine) of main character Stan Grayson (Kevin McCarthy), a clarinetist who’s had an intensely realistic nightmare in which he murdered a strange man in a mysterious, mirrored room, waking up to find marks of attempted strangulation on his neck. Unable to kick the feeling that he’s actually killed someone, he recruits the skeptical Bressard to help him unravel the mystery. The plot contrivances and coincidences require a hearty suspension of disbelief, but the film entertains even as it maintains a dream-like atmosphere, punctuated by musical numbers conducted by popular bandleader Billy May and occasionally innovative cinematography (reflections, deep focus, etc.) by the renowned Joseph Biroc.