EXPERIMENT PERILOUS Directed by Jacques Tourneur
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Experiment Perilous (1944), which screens this weekend, is probably the least known of Tourneur’s major films; it’s available on DVD only as a custom-burned disc from the Warner Archives site, and as far as I can determine, it hasn’t been screened here in at least 16 years. Produced by RKO as a vehicle for Hedy Lamarr, it certainly qualifies as a mystery in the generic sense: there are unexplained deaths, concealed motives, tantalizing clues, and a climax that finally exposes one character in all his wickedness. But even after the last shot, when the puzzle’s been solved and the hero and heroine stroll off into a field of daisies, there’s a strange residue of uncertainty, a feeling that people can never really be known, even to themselves.
Not long after they part at the train station, Bailey attends a party where, quite coincidentally, he hears Nick Bederaux mentioned and learns that Cissie has died suddenly of a heart attack. Through a friend, Bailey arranges to meet the tough, wealthy Bederaux (Paul Lukas) and his frail, stunning young wife, Allida (Lamarr), but out of discomfort he conceals the fact that he’s met Cissie and heard all about them. Another coincidence pulls Bailey even deeper into the Bederauxs’ personal lives: the hotel mistakenly gives him one of Cissie’s bags, and in it he finds a biographical sketch of Nick that Cissie was writing for Allida that reveals a great many family secrets. The doctor learns that Nick’s mother died giving birth to him, that his father committed suicide a year later, and that Nick has grown up feeling responsible for their deaths.
