Outside of genre, films are usually grouped by their director or a particular actor. Rarely are they known for their producer, but cineastes tend to make an exception for Val Lewton. Known largely for his work with director Jacques Tourneur, the films he produced effectively used atmosphere to cover the low budget.
Lewton’s influence over his production was so strong that it even carries over to films that weren’t even directed by Tourneur. 1943’s The Seventh Victim passes those reins to Mark Robson, capable hands getting the opportunity to direct after being an uncredited editor on Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons.
Kim Hunter makes her debut performance here. It is always surprising when an actor’s first time on the screen is in a leading role. We first see her being summoned to the office of the girls school she’s attending. I suspected they wanted to talk to her about her obviously being too old to be a student there. Instead, it is to address the issue of her unpaid tuition, as they have been unable to reach her sister, who has been making those payments for the education of the orphan.
That sister is played by Jean Brooks, but we won’t see her for quite a while. I think Orson Welles had less of a build-up before the reveal of his character in The Third Man. As we follow her investigation, she and we learn Books had a successful cosmetics company she gifted to an employee (Mary Newton). There’s also a room she rented above the Dante Restaurant, a room which is revealed to contain only a chair with a noose dangling over it.
There were also many men who are smitten with the elusive Brooks. Erford Gage is a poet hanging around the restaurant. Lewton staple Tom Conway is her psychiatrist and, obviously, a man with shaky professional scruples. A lawyer played by Hugh Beaumont conceals from Hunter for no reason, and for too long, he is the missing woman’s husband. Many of the characters address this lawyer by his last name, which is “Ward”, and that had me very confused, as that is the first name of his character from Leave It to Beaver. I wondered if he was keeping this first marriage as much of a secret from June as he is from Hunter.
I like how Hunter keeps a level head for most of her investigation. When it is finally revealed her sister is hiding from Satanists, she laughs in disbelief. Oh how I wish most people would react to such an announcement in these current times. I also like how she initially shrugs off an offer to investigation from Lou Lubin’s private investigator who had been hanging out around the missing persons department like a lawyer chasing an ambulance. But it is Lubin who discovers the cosmetics business gifted and not sold, as Newton had told Hunter, and he decides to investigate on his own.
There are a few very solid suspense sequences in this film, and one of the earliest has Lubin and Hunter debating whether to go down a dark hallway in that company’s offices when they break in that night. Not unlike the sounds of the wind in I Walked with a Zombie, the only thing we hear aside from some whispered dialogue is the ticking of a clock.
What is even more effective are many isolated moments that are almost Lynchian in their strangeness. When we finally see Brooks, the first thing she does is raise a finger to her lips before pulling the door shut. As soon as Brooks can reopen that door, her sister has vanished. My most favorite bits in the film concern Elizabeth Russell, the sickly woman staying in the room next to the one Brooks has been renting. When these two characters finally speak, they have a deeply unsettling conversation that is lit solely by a flickering, malfunctioning light bulb.
The one scene most people isolate when discussing this picture is one where Newton confronts Hunter in her apartment while she’s showering. In a moment which will instantly recall Psycho for modern viewers, we only see the shadow of Newton from inside the shower curtain. I assume she is wearing a scarf or some odd hat on her head, because that silhouette almost seems to have horns.
But the real reason to see The Seventh Victim is for the ending, where something so shocking happens, and with such subtlety, that I had to immediately rewatch the final minute of the film just to ensure I correctly interpreted something we’ve only heard. This moment may be the most nihilistic thing I have seen in a major studio film before the 1950’s. I swear this violates the draconian production code of the time, so even more kudos to however RKO got away with that. And the way the scene is accomplished shows director Robson was capable of realizing the budget-conscious ideas of producer Lewton, keeping this film in such company as Zombie, with which it is paired on the Criterion Collection blu-ray.
Dir: Mark Robson
Starring Kim Hunter, Tom Conway, Jean Brooks
Watched on Criterion Collection blu-ray