An Unsung Dan Duryea Noir: Reviewing Kino Lorber’s ‘Walk A Tightrope’

Early in Frank Nesbitt’s Walk a Tightrope, Lutcher (Dan Duryea) takes shelter near a police box while the woman he’s following ducks into a cinema. The double-decker buses were the first clue but Duryea is an American actor. Noir started out as an American genre (though there have been plenty of great international examples since). Without knowing the film was an American-British co-production the English setting comes as a surprise, but the best part is that if you were channel surfing and didn’t know what you were watching it would be easy to mistake this movie for an episode of Doctor Who. Is that the TARDIS next to Dan Duryea? Unfortunately not, but what a fun thought nonetheless.

Enough about what Walk a Tightrope isn’t though. This under-the-radar noir isn’t exactly going to surpass Duryea’s collaborations with Fritz Lang, but it is a good time. Patricia Owens is Ellen, the very on-edge woman Lutcher appears to be tailing when the movie begins. Terence Cooper is her husband, Jason, and it either says something about me or the low bar set for husbands, but I was so waiting for him to lose his cool with her and be a bore. He’s actually quite kind and patient and doesn’t let her assurances that she’s fine erase the very obvious signs that she’s not. They run into each other while he’s supposed to be attending a work dinner, but as soon as she faints he immediately comes to her aid and won’t even entertain the idea of going to the dinner. At one point, he tries to comfort Ellen by saying they’re “as safe as Bugs Bunny” and I don’t know that that’s the common expression his tone would suggest it is (after all, aren’t Bugs Bunny cartoons usually violent?), but I guess he’s referring to the fact that Bugs tends to come out victorious — and on that point he’s right.

So not a gaslighting, evil husband movie, but something is definitely up with Lutcher. The question then becomes is Ellen his target or do they know each other? I’m not giving anything else away but at 69 minutes long, Walk a Tightrope is more an episode of TV than a movie; this also means there’s no fluff. Neil McCallum‘s screenplay gets right to the juicy stuff.

Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray comes with a commentary by film historian Gary Gerani and if there’s one thing disappointing about this release it’s that it only includes the American cut. 36 Hours, another British noir starring Duryea, was recently released on Blu-ray by Hammer Films and that included both the UK and US cuts. Gerani goes over all of the scenes that are missing, but it sounds like a lot of them were with Shirley Cameron and she steals the few scenes she’s in as Maisie, a not very bright but extremely loving woman who exists to prove Lutcher has a heart. The thought that we could have had even more screentime with her is cruel but, that aside, the movie is well worth a blind buy for any Duryea or noir fans out there.

Walk a Tightrope is available on Blu-ray now from Kino Lorber.