This will be a more straight-forward review than usual, as befits a movie that is, at the risk of sounding ungenerous, economical. 1946’s Smooth as Silk is a lean, noirish suspense film that scans like a mystery though, much like the series Columbo, you already know who committed the murder. Admittedly, it takes a while to even get to the crime, long enough that I started to wonder if the mystery was who the victim would be.
There will be many characters interacting, though it is easy to follow their relationships with each other. At the center of everything is Virginia Grey as a shallow actress who will do anything to achieve fame and fortune. The former she is pursuing with dogged determination, as she keeps annoying Broadway producer John Litel to cast her as the lead in his next production. The latter might be found through his playboy nephew, Danny Morton, whom will inherit a fortune should that man die.
And he will be killed, except I was surprised high-profile lawyer Kent Taylor is the one who shoots him. You see, Taylor had also been pursuing Grey, only for her to scorn him for both Litel and Morton. Given there are four people involved in these romantic entanglements, I suddenly realized there is no such phrase as a “love square”, and that’s probably because that doesn’t seem to have the dramatic heft of “love triangle”.
What is clever about Taylor’s plan, and why this movie is worth seeking out, is the complexity of his scheme. He will immediately confess to district attorney Milburn Stone that committed the crime, but every detail of his account is so suspect as to make it appear he is covering for somebody else. It is an interesting setup, and the script does right by it.
It is even an enjoyable, though slight, picture before the homicide. It begins with Morton exiting court after Taylor helped him to beat murder charges. Given Morton was blackout drunk in the hours immediately after supposedly running over a woman, it is immediately suspect what had really transpired. Later, when we see Taylor’s Machiavellian machinations (Machianations?) in effect, I wanted to know more about that event which happened before the film even started. Taylor’s potentially diabolical cleverness is established early on, when he gives Grey a bracelet up on which the date of the trial’s successful resolution is engraved. He was so sure of the outcome, and exactly when it would occur, that he had ordered it weeks before.
But Grey gets the meatiest part. Something I enjoyed about her performance is she is so upbeat while openly pursuing fame, fortune and multiple men. Even the men fighting for her hand might further her theatrical career: “I’ve had men fight over me before and I love it. It will make great publicity for the show.” This is somebody who knows who they are and makes no apologies for it. Litel naively believes at first that she isn’t the right person for his new play, where the lead “is a mercenary character. She does nothing but lie and cheat for three acts […] You could never be a person like that.” But he will get to know her better, and his butler (Harry Cheshire) can see Grey’s true nature. Litel asks him if he can picture her as the duplicitous lead, and Cheshire replies he had been thinking of nothing else the entire night. Touché.
I’m not sure if Smooth as Silk is noir, despite being included in one of Kino’s three-movie sets dedicated to the genre. Whatever it is, it is a solid B-movie which kept me engaged through its short runtime. It has two interesting and mercenary characters in Taylor and Grey. In a way, the picture channels some of their nature in how it manages the story. It gets in, does what it needs to accomplish, then ends promptly.
Dir: Charles Barton
Starring Kent Taylor, Virginia Grey, Milburn Stone, John Litel
Watched as part of Kino Lorber’s blu-ray box set Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema XXVI