Cause for Alarm! (1951)

(On Cable TV, July 2021) You have to have some appreciation for films that have the guts to pick a title like Cause for Alarm! complete with an exclamation point. A plot summary is almost useless: who can resist finding out what kind of title this is? Well, it turns out that the film is a bit like the title — unusual, flashy and a bit nonsensical in its hyperactivity. Often hailed as a film noir, it nonetheless features a narrative that takes place over the course of one beautiful sunny day in suburban Southern California. There’s a catch, obviously:  A death, and a survivor frantically trying to absolve herself. The twisted tale gets going when the heroine’s bedridden husband writes a fanciful incriminating tale and gets her to mail it before inconveniently dropping dead from a heart attack. What follows is a suburban race against time, as she frantically tries to get the letter back (the postman won’t have any of it — sacred duty to the mail, etc.) while her crazy deceased husband starts decomposing in the bedroom. It’s a bit silly (which the comic punchline of the film highlights), a bit timid (hinting but not delivering what, in a modern film, would be a consummated adultery subplot) and a bit too short to surprise at a mere 74 minutes. Reportedly shot quickly and efficiently in an attempt to rival the then-ascendant TV drama format, Cause for Alarm does, at times, feel like a TV episode writ large, with subplots distracting from a rather efficient suburban suspense premise. But it still works, and much of that effectiveness can be traced back to Loretta Young in the lead role. She looks amazingly beautiful here in long dark curly hair (a classic case of an actress aging gracefully if you compare it to earlier roles), and there’s a fascinating blend of repressed panic at play here, as she tries to keep up appearances even as there’s a dead husband elsewhere in the house and she must stop that letter from being sent. The sunny suburban setting does project an ironic counterpoint to the mounting darkness of the story, making the film still distinctive even today. Cause for Alarm may not be among the first choices for classic film noir, but it’s still an intriguing thriller that is sufficiently off-the-wall to remain interesting.