Strange Impersonation

The plot of Anthony Mann’s Strange Impersonation is completely insane, but that doesn’t make it any less entertaining: with echoes of Nora Prentiss (1947), a woman is put on trial for killing herself (but there’s no suicide involved). The woman is Nora Goodrich (Brenda Marshall) and how she arrives in such a predicament involves a femme fatale, an experiment, a car accident, an explosion, a fall off a balcony, and plastic surgery, as well as a nutty nurse who speaks only in the first person plural. Notable for its nontraditional female roles (a research scientist, a femme fatale who victimizes not the male lead but another woman), the film is one of director Mann’s earliest noirs, his famous camera work shining throughout in the form of low angles, Dutch angles, closeups, montages, and an affinity for lampshades (the doctor’s office, the interrogation room). Hillary Brooke plays the witchy Arline Cole, who lies to the hospitalized Nora to steal her boyfriend Stephen (William Gargan). Some will be disappointed by the ending, but suspend your disbelief (of course falling off a balcony would make your face unrecognizable!) and the ride will be lots of fun.