The 1952 film "Don't Bother To Knock" directed by Roy Ward Baker, a British director working in Hollywood for part of his career is included in a retrospective on Criterion Channel of films featuring actors who were cast against type, in this case Marilyn Monroe.
Ignoring the film's title, that may suggest a light hearted romantic romp (there is in fact a later film with the same title that is a light hearted romantic romp) this, far from it, is a dark psychological film noir that inevitably invites the notion that Monroe was drawing on her own real-life troubled past and at the same time demonstrates an acting range that was denied her until John Huston's 1961 film "The Misfits".
This is not to say that she couldn't also hold her own in the string of light-hearted comedy Technicolor entertainers that followed, like 1953's "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" or 1959's B/W "Some Like It Hot" that really helped to consolidate her image for the cinema going public.
Headlining the film with Monroe is Richard Widmark supported by Anne Bancroft in an early role as a hotel restaurant singer.
The film opens with Widmark's "Jed Towers" in the middle of a break-up with Bancroft's "Lyn Lesley" and at the same time a well-heeled couple staying at the New York hotel have hired Monroe's "Nell Forbes", a reticent young woman, on the recommendation of Nell's uncle, the hotel lift operator "Eddie" (Elisha Cook Jr) to be a babysitter for their young daughter "Bunny" (Donna Corcoran) while they attend an evening function at the hotel.
In the couple's absence and after she has put the restless Bunny to bed, Nell oversteps her remit of being a babysitter by trying on Bunny's mother's jewellery and wearing one of her dresses and dancing to the music from a radio connected to the hotel restaurant where Lyn Lesley is performing. This is witnessed by Jed Towers from his hotel room across a quadrangle and seeking some solace and company after his break-up and overcome by curiosity and desire to meet Nell, an alluringly attractive young woman, he locates the room she is in using the hotel floor plan on the door of his room and calls her on his room phone, suggesting he drop by for some company.
This chain of events then spirals into something altogether darker as it is revealed that Nell is suffering from some kind of psychological disorder brought about by the loss of her husband to be, a bomber pilot whose plane had crashed and when she meets Widmark's Jed, who she discovers is an airline pilot, she becomes convinced that he is her former lover miraculously returned from the dead.
In the meantime her uncle Eddie, the elevator operator, is concerned that her behaviour is becoming increasingly erratic and insists she remove the dress and jewels, partly since his own job at the hotel is at risk. In addition, the presence of Widmark's "Jed", a stranger, in her parent's hotel room causes Bunny to awaken, adding another layer of complication as Nell desperately tries to cover her tracks before Bunny's parents return and not lose Jed in the process since she believes their meeting is fated. Nell threatens Bunny by telling her that she must not say anything about her behaviour nor Jed to her parents and she is then provoked into an extreme measure of tying up and gagging Bunny after she witnesses Nell hitting her uncle Eddie over the head with a lampstand through her bedroom keyhole that causes her much distress and crying that could alert other people in the hotel due to the commotion. By this point it has been established that Nell has self-harmed in the past and is on remission following a stay in a psychiatric ward, which "Eddie" explains to Widmark's "Jed", and "Jed" for his part has decided that pursuing a relationship with "Nell" is unwise - however, his concern for Nell's plight touches him and he discovers that the caring nature that Bancroft's "Lyn Lesley" accused him of lacking is present after all and he decides to reconcile with her.
The film concludes with a climax where it appears that Nell, now desperate, is driven to try and silence the troublesome "Bunny" forever and to accuse Jed of making unwanted advances towards her but by then the hotel's incompetent house detective and Bunny's parents have been alerted and Nell is forced to go on the run after Eddie tells her to replace the jewellery and dress that she is wearing. Finally, cornered in the hotel lobby as she threatens to kill herself with a safety razor blade stolen from the hotel shop, Nell gives in to the police and accepts her fate as Jed and Lyn, now reunited, offer to help her through recovery at a New York hospital instead of the feared psychiatric ward.
As you might expect Monroe sizzles in the role of Nell, switching between being both alluring and vulnerable, her expressive eyes revealing some inner torment and also a rarely seen menace that is genuinely unsettling when she threatens Bunny with terrible consequences. There are some disturbing moments in the film, primarily involving Donna Corcoran's "Bunny" in what must have been a difficult role for a child actor, opposite Monroe's Nell's psychopathic behaviour, a role that mirror's that of Monroe's own mother's mental health issues and her consequent troubled childhood and there is an inescapable sense that she was drawing on those experiences to give the role a degree of truth.
Anne Bancroft's role in the film may seem to be inconsequential but she shines in every scene that she is in and there is never any sense that she is upstaged by Monroe, instead adding a different kind of glamour that is worlds apart from the role that she is most well-known for, that of "Mrs Robinson" in "The Graduate"
I've occasionally commented on poster art for films and as usual the slant has been very much on highlighting Marilyn Monroe, here wearing a dress that she is never seen wearing in the actual film where she is dressed very simply. except for when she tries on the dress of her employer, besides the fact that the film is shot in monochrome and not colour. The Italian poster completely dispenses with a collage of scenes from the film to focus instead on the face of Monroe, for purely commercial reasons of attracting audiences for what is in fact a quite dark film noir where Monroe is cast against type.
"Don't Bother To Knock", Dir: Roy Ward Baker, 1952
Criterion Channel
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