So refreshing! A sultry dame who gets off on being slapped. She yearns for abuse, for bruising, and for being body slammed and thrown across the room. A dame who seeks to be terrorized and dominated! She detests love and fears desiring it. She seeks terrifying and intense emotion. No, not the Proverbs 31 woman, but a dame from a weird Film Noir film about books and libraries. Let us look at 1942's "Quiet Please, Murder," directed by John Francis Larkin.
England and Germany are at war. Bombings of London have begun. Heinrich Himmler has sent henchmen into London to steal their treasures to include rare books. Martin Cleaver (Sidney Blackmer) is his man. He engages the sultry book dealer, Myra Blandy (Gail Patrick) to secure a rare copy of Hamlet. Uh oh, that book has just been stolen by book thief/murderer Jim Flag (George Sanders). Sanders is a psycho murderer, and also hates the Nazis. Myra actually is his partner and together they sell Cleaver a forgery of that book in question. Flag is a master forger. Cleaver finds out and wants the original and Flag's and Myra's heads. Enter handsome private eye, Hal McByrne (Richard Denning). He is looking for the book, too. He engages the services of book expert Myra, not realizing she is a cohort of psycho-book forger, Flag.
Hal doesn't trust Myra but realizes somewhere in her bag of secrets is the location of the rare volume. Flag does not trust Myra and figures she will fall in love with Hal. Flag owns and humiliates Myra into loyalty to him, and Myra loves it. She thirsts for this mistreatment...well, that's all chronicled in my first paragraph. Myra is indeed falling in love with Hal even though she knows she will have to kill him or be killed by him. Still in Flag's influence, Myra hesitantly assists him in the psycho's latest plan to secure all the rare books in London. Hal is putting all the clues together and realizes Myra is loyal to Flag, but she is so sultry, maybe he can look past that. Air raids! Murder! Nazis in libraries! Rare tomes go missing! Swapping spit between Myra and Hal! Flag planning torture, humiliation, and murder! The ambitious plot will leave you gasping for breath.
Will Flag kill either the Nazi guy, Myra, Hal...or all three? Do Hal and Myra have any shot at leaving their sordid pasts behind and living happily ever after in besieged London? Is Myra's affinity for being humiliated and destroyed by powerful men a fetish that has never gone out of style? This is a fascinating one and we waver between pulling for Myra or hoping Hal will shoot her. For a weird character study of a dame who thrives on chaos and destruction, set in World War 2 London's public libraries...see "Quiet Please, Murder."
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