The Chase (1946)
“He drove for a killer, dreamed of escape, and woke into a nightmare.”
Streamed free from the Internet Archive · no signup, no cost — this film is in the public domain.
Synopsis
The Chase is Arthur Ripley's hallucinatory adaptation of Cornell Woolrich's novel The Black Path of Fear, and it remains one of the strangest entries in 1940s film noir. Robert Cummings plays Chuck Scott, a penniless, war-rattled drifter who returns a lost wallet to gangster Eddie Roman and is hired on as his chauffeur. When Roman's frightened wife Lorna begs to be smuggled to Havana, Chuck agrees, only to find that escape leads somewhere darker than the life he fled. Drenched in shadow and dread, the film abandons conventional logic for the rhythms of a bad dream, sliding between waking and sleep until the viewer shares Chuck's disorientation. Peter Lorre lurks at the edges as Roman's watchful henchman, and Steve Cochran makes Roman a study in casual cruelty. Long circulated in battered prints, the film was restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive in 2012.
Cast
About the Director
Arthur Ripley — Arthur Ripley was a former gag writer and editor who directed only a handful of features, yet The Chase shows an unusual willingness to let mood overrule plot. Working with cinematographer Franz Planer, he builds the picture out of pooling shadows and unsettling silences, treating Woolrich's paranoid romance as something closer to a fever than a crime story.
Why It’s Free: The Public-Domain Story
The Chase is in the public domain in the United States. Produced by Seymour Nebenzal's Nero Films and released through United Artists in 1946, its copyright was not renewed in the required 28-year window, placing the film in the public domain.
Behind the Scenes
Producer Seymour Nebenzal bought the rights to Woolrich's 1944 novel and hired Philip Yordan to write the screenplay. Joan Leslie was originally cast as Lorna but a contract dispute with Warner Bros. forced her replacement by French star Michèle Morgan. The picture was entered in the 1947 Cannes Film Festival.
Did You Know?
- Much of the story was reframed as a dream sequence to satisfy the Production Code, which would not allow the characters to escape the consequences of their actions.
- The 2012 UCLA restoration includes an audio commentary by filmmaker Guy Maddin, a longtime champion of the film.
- Critic Eddie Muller has called it as close as any 1940s film came to the subconscious cinema of David Lynch.
Reception & Legacy
A commercial disappointment on release, The Chase later became a cult favorite among noir devotees. Critics praised its suspense and dreamlike atmosphere, and Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward judged it, apart from Phantom Lady, the best cinematic equivalent of Cornell Woolrich's dark, oppressive fiction.
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