Danish heartthrob Poul Reichhardt is cast against type as the male lead in a gloriously opaque plot that unfolds like a Chinese box of secrets, with blackmail, mysterious motives and the ever-fatal coincidence determining the turn of events. Max (Reichhardt) is a man with a questionable past and an even more questionable future. He lives with his fiercely jealous wife, Grete (Grethe Thordahl), who constantly suspects that her husband is seeing other women, possibly even her own sister Beth (Astrid Villaume). Grete’s worst nightmare seems to come true when a local woman named Sara Klint (Jeanne Darville) is found murdered. It turns out that Max knew the deceased, and suddenly all the evidence points to Max as a suspect. The film’s director, Torben Anton Svendsen, originally trained as a classical musician (he played the cello) and directed theatre and opera productions at the Danish Royal Theatre. His love for classical music is apparent in this film’s score, composed by the famous Danish composer and pianist Herman D. Koppel. While Svendsen’s name is today mostly associated with the popular romantic Danish musical Mød mig på Cassiopeia (1951), in this elegant noir he creates a dramatically different and much more sombre ambience, which transforms the sunny streets of Copenhagen into a dark and claustrophobic urban landscape. The final sequence, in which a crucial telephone call is made exactly two minutes too late, is a tourde- force in accelerated suspense, leading to the ultimate film noir conclusion: you can never escape your destiny.

Sophie Engberg Sonne