Noir’s antiheroes are often driven by a yearning to escape the sins of their past. Regret and a burning desire for rebirth will come to consume their thoughts, but the noir typically endorses fatalism, meaning that second chances are hard to come by. Which makes Alfred L. Werker’s underseen Repeat Performance, a strange concoction of noir, gothic melodrama, and high-concept sci-fi, a striking outlier of sorts.
Repeat Performance opens with the image of the dark, starry sky on a New Year’s Eve night, before a crane shot swoops down to the outside of a New York City apartment. Then a sudden gust of wind dramatically bursts the balcony shutters open, after which Lew W. O’Connell’s camera jolts forward, rapidly dollying inside to reveal an actress, Sheila (Joan Leslie), standing over the corpse of her playwright husband, Barney (Louis Hayward), with gun in hand.
The film’s aesthetics subtly hint at some sort of supernatural intervention, as if an unseen force has taken hold of Sheila. The filmmakers then fully indulge the fantastical when the young woman flees the scene of the crime in a panic to get help from her close friend, producer John Friday (Tom Conway). After bemoaning what a horrible year it’s been and expressing her desire to “rewrite it, play it over again,” Sheila is granted her wish as Repeat Performance suddenly, and inexplicably, turns the clock back a full year to the previous New Year’s Eve. Yet for all Sheila’s efforts to change the past, the film relishes in the folly of her intentions, cleverly revealing that fate always has a way of working itself out.
It’s a setup that could have easily capsized under the weight of its ridiculousness. But Repeat Performance remains surprisingly grounded thanks to a graceful and dynamic turn from Joan Leslie. Whether it’s capturing Sheila’s gradual acceptance of the bizarre, metaphysical intrusion into her life or her struggle to prevent the tragic fates of her alcoholic husband and her poet friend, William (Richard Basehart), who’s institutionalized by year’s end, Leslie invests her heroine with an emotional complexity that give her journey a sense of urgency.
Louis Hayward’s ham-fisted performance may leave you wishing Barney never rose from the dead. But the supporting cast (including the aforementioned Basehart and Conway, as well as Virginia Field as Barney’s temptress, Paula) are all notably more subdued, helping to round out the portrait of Leslie’s fiercely determined, yet endlessly compassionate, thespian.
The film’s screenplay is a bit methodical in doling out fate’s inevitable blows, leaving the audience occasionally waiting for the next domino to fall. Nonetheless, the tension that arises from Leslie’s almost delusional tenacity and the matter-of-fact manner in which the past repeats itself lends the film a delicious irony and black humor that’s even further heightened by its New York City theater milieu. Sheila may get to play out her fantasy, but in a cruel twist of fate, it’s her playwright husband who ensures that, while much of this second year plays out in variations of the first, the conclusions of the third act can’t be escaped.
Image/Sound
Repeat Performance has been restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive and the Packard Humanities Institute, and the results are nothing short of stunning. There’s nary a scratch or speck of dirt on Flicker Alley’s transfer, and the clarity of details and depth of the image impresses throughout. The perfectly even grain distribution also gives the transfer a soft, film-like texture and the high contrast ratio results in inky blacks and captures all the subtle gradations of grays. The audio isn’t quite as exceptional, but the dialogue is clean as a whistle and the mix clearly separates sounds in the louder, more rambunctious party scenes.
Extras
Film historian Nora Fiore, a.k.a. the Nitrate Diva, provides an incredibly informative audio commentary. She talks as fast as a screwball heroine, but it’s all in the service of covering plenty of ground: the history of Eagle-Lion Films, Joan Leslie’s career, the critical response to Repeat Performance, and the film’s formal and structural qualities. A 35-minute documentary by Steven C. Smith goes deeper into the short-lived but fascinating history of Eagle-Lion and its aspirations of cross-Atlantic synergy. Elsewhere, author and film historian Farran Smith Nehme offers a brief but thoughtful breakdown of Joan Leslie’s career, paying particular attention to her contentious time at Warner Bros. and her ability to bring complexity to her characters. And Eddie Muller, the Czar of Noir, discusses Repeat Performance’s commercial unavailability and fusion of noir and fantasy. Finally, an accompanying 20-page bound booklet includes an essay by writer Brian Light, who discusses the connections and differences between the film’s script with the original 1942 William O’Farrell novel.
Overall
Flicker Alley’s release of this long unavailable and unusual noir fantasy features a gorgeous transfer and a number of illuminating extras.
Since 2001, we've brought you uncompromising, candid takes on the world of film, music, television, video games, theater, and more. Independently owned and operated publications like Slant have been hit hard in recent years, but we’re committed to keeping our content free and accessible—meaning no paywalls or fees.
If you like what we do, please consider subscribing to our Patreon or making a donation.
