The Man Who Cheated Himself (1950)

The Man Who Cheated Himself: Directed by Felix E. Feist. With Lee J. Cobb, Jane Wyatt, John Dall, Lisa Howard. A veteran homicide detective who has witnessed his socialite girlfriend kill her husband sees his inexperienced brother assigned to the case.

“This is one of the better second tier film noir …. within its limits, it seems to me rock solid: performances,(save one), script, photography, and is surely commensurate with excellent Fleischer Bu0026#39;s of the same period such as u0026quot;Armored Car Robberyu0026quot;…however perhaps not quite in the same league as the latteru0026#39;s u0026quot;Narrow Marginu0026quot;…there are these kinds of films in which, under obvious budgetary circumstances, it is hard to imagine what could be done better, with the exception of Jane Wyatt, who does indeed give a horrible performance…but hey, thatu0026#39;s why itu0026#39;s a B…and one often wonders, given more money in the budget, whether the whole thing would have been somehow ruined…this last seems to be to be the best way of defining the undefinable u0026quot;Bu0026quot; that I have come across. John Dall lends that undefinable air of perversity, of which he was the acknowledged master, and, to the vieweru0026#39;s delight, seems wonderfully and profoundly miscast as a policeman. Dall makes this worth seeing.”