Lady on a Train is more comedy than mystery; however, it possesses some nice dark touches that  give its holiday setting a noir flavor. The opening title cars starts us off with the blacks and greys, stark lines, and and dusky darkness of falling night so characteristic of noir. The essential plot gives us Nicki Collins (Deanna Durbin), a sassy San Francisco heiress, witnessing a murder from her compartment window as her train pauses before chugging into New York’s Grand Central Station shortly before Christmas. The image through her window is perfect noir. An old man  arguing with a overcoated and fedored form lowering over him. When the old man angrily turns his back, the menacing figure spots a crow bar on the table, pulls down the window shade without facing the outside, and then bludgeons his victim, visible only through silhouette on the drawn shade.  All just before the train pulls out and rushes toward the station.
Of course, no one really believes Nicki when she tries to sound the alarm, not fussy factotum Edward  Everett Horton sent to meet her at the station and definitely not the crusty desk sergeant (William Frawley at his crustiest best) – especially when the latter sees that Nicki is holding a sensational novel by her favorite mystery writer.
So, what is our undaunted heroine’s next step? Why, track down that mystery author, Wayne Morgan, to help her solve the crime. Played by David Bruce, the author does not appreciate her throwing this strange tale in his lap and expecting him to solve the murder – especially since she hounds him by interrupting his meeting with his fiancee and then tracking the writer and fiancee to a movie theatre – where Nicki sees in the newsreel that the famous wealthy man recently found dead from “falling while decorating his tree” is the same guy she saw murdered! Our poor author ends up really up against it while trying to fend off Nicki’s insistence he help her while he is under the gimlet eyes of a formidable fiancee ( the  elegant but indomitable Patricia Morison) and a secretary (Jacqueline DeWitt), whose dry cracks and skepticism over the writer’s capabilities would do Eve Arden proud.
 Even with Nicki’s feisty and cheery determination to get to the bottom of things, Lady on a Train has some deliciously noir moments: Nicki’s incursion on the murdered man’s mansion through sharp contrast of black night shadows with stark white snow; the mansion itself’s cobweb of shadows and hazy grey lighting, twists and turns of its interconnecting rooms, and the startling contrast of  double doors opening from a foyer’s gloom into a brightly lit room filled with relatives listening to the dead man’s will – themselves an disconcerting mixture of charm and menace. A noir staple of mistaken identity comes into play when Nicki is taken for the old man’s gold-digger girlfriend, the singer in a downtown night club that itself will contain a two-way mirror for spying, dark and twisted corridors leading to shadowy basement rooms of hidden  threats. Of course, there’s no forgetting the estate’s caretaker, who also seems to run the nightclub and have master-minded a plot to con and murder the old man – a smoothly sinister sort who slides snakelike through back ways and hidden doors, bearing a white cat – I guess I mixed a metaphor there with the cat and snake thing.
One particular sequence squarely fits the noir motif when Durbin inadvertently lets slip as she rides a car up an elevator in an urban garage a clue she may be wise to  the killer – who likely is her companion, the murdered man’s nephew Dan Duryea (a noir stalwart if there ever was one). What follows is a pursuit through chiaroscuro shadows and  interconnected rooms, people framed or trapped in doorways, people being pursued or unknowingly spied upon, even through the dunes of sand waiting to be used against the  snow outside. Another scene finds the other nephew, played by Ralph Bellamy, addressing her with a creepy smile and revealing that that old stiff Aunt Sarah used to visit him at night and . . . we never find out what?! Brrrrr!!!!!
The mystery author does arrive on the scene to save our heroine; however, his doing so brings chuckles as well as anxiety over the result.
So, how is this playful take on noir a Christmas movie? Well, we did see that Nicki arrives near Christmas Eve, and there are trees all over the place in this one – including the one that allegedly did in our murder, correction, our first murder victim. Lots of snow as well. Maybe the best connection is the lovely version of “Silent Night” that Durbin sings to her Dad over the phone. Check it out here. Anyway, it’s a nifty noir to drive away the holiday blues. If you want to see Durbin do full on Christmas Noir (more noir than Christmas, though), check out her and Gene Kelly playing against type in Christmas Holiday.
Screen shots by author from the film Lady on a Train, Universal films, copyright 1944.
 Check out my other Holiday Noir blogs:
The Lady in the Lake
Beyond Tomorrow
Coverup |
give its holiday setting a noir flavor. The opening title cars starts us off with the blacks and greys, stark lines, and and dusky darkness of falling night so characteristic of noir. The essential plot gives us Nicki Collins (Deanna Durbin), a sassy San Francisco heiress, witnessing a murder from her compartment window as her train pauses before chugging into New York’s Grand Central Station shortly before Christmas. The image through her window is perfect noir. An old man 
arguing with a overcoated and fedored form lowering over him. When the old man angrily turns his back, the menacing figure spots a crow bar on the table, pulls down the window shade without facing the outside, and then bludgeons his victim, visible only through silhouette on the drawn shade. 
All just before the train pulls out and rushes toward the station.
Sharon Healy-Yang 