THE 13TH LETTER is a very moody, atmospheric remake shot on location in Quebec, though one gets the feeling a lot was lost in translation from the original French picture. Reviews of the earlier film say it offers a biting social commentary, but this film seems to shy away from that.
I thought "The 13th Letter" was a pleasant surprise, a good mystery that keeps you guessing until the end of the picture. In hindsight, it seems a good idea to place the film in Quebec - it seemed a little quirky when the film began but you gradually get used to it.
While Michael Rennie is a fabulous underrated actor (best known for the sci-fi classic "The Day the Earth Stood Still"), as a romantic leading man, he's an odd choice, and in this film noir set in Quebec, he's wanted by a good majority of the young ladies in this town. Somebody in the town, though, has it out for the big city doctor who has re-settled there, and he begins to get a series of poison pen letters demanding he leave town before all of his scandals come out to destroy him.
I used to think of the Hollywood proclivity toward remaking foreign films in English to be a modern phenomenon until I encountered the 1951 remake of Fritz Lang's German classic "M" from 1939. Well, that comment segues nicely into the American remake of "Le Corbeau.
1st watched 5/30/2000 - (Dir-Otto Preminger): Well-done whodunit which revolves around a series of letters written supposedly to defame a local doctor in a Canadian town, but ends up becoming more fatal.It keeps you guessing until the end which is pretty much the measuring stick for this kind of movie.
Michael Rennie plays a doctor at a Canadian hospital who receives a series of poison pen letters. Soon these letters are sent to others which leads to tension amongst the inhabitants of the small Canadian town.
Copyright 15 February 1951 by Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp. U.
The notorious "Le Corbeau" (1943) is an intriguing film directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, with the storyline about a mysterious character entitled The Raven that writes poison pen letters and the power of rumors and the effect in the population of a small town in France. The film was banned in France since it was produced by the German company Continental Films during World War II in the occupied France.
Otto Preminger directs "The 13th Letter" from 1951, a remake of the Cluzot film, "Le Corbeau."This dark and heavily atmospheric film takes place in a small town in Quebec.
