Man on the Eiffel Tower (1950)

Director - Burgess Meredith

The Plot

A brilliant, but psychotic, university student named Radek (Franchot Tone) murders an elderly woman and frames a burglar (Burgess Meredith). Inspector Maigret investigates and Radek cannot help but play a cat and mouse game of intellects with the famed detective. The film was based on George Simenon's A Battle of Nerves.

Film Notes

From the Street to the Sky

The Man on the Eiffel Tower is a strange little independent movie filmed on location in Paris. In fact, the City of Paris is listed as one of the cast members in the opening credits.

Directed by actor Burgess Meredith, it's quite a cinematic brew, being a mechanical clock of a mystery combined with a few neo-realistic touches, some modern psychology, and a Hitchcockian dizzy climax on the Eiffel Tower.

Fast paced and a bit on the quirky side, it's well worth the short running time of film (82 minutes) to take a look.

See of Cortez

It's literally a crime that the "color" in this public domain print of this film is almost non-existent. Filmed in the somewhat experimental Anscocolor, The Man on the Eiffel Tower has suffered the awful fading fate of so many color films. But the crime is double here since it is the work of the legendary Stanley Cortez.

In the 1930s Cortez was a cinematographer for many of Universal Studios "B" films churning out product quickly and efficiently. In 1941, he joined Orson Welles for the The Magnificent Ambersons. RKO probably thought they would reign in Welles by using a budget conscious craftsman. Cortez instead fully bought into the Welles' artistic vision and provided all the time, effort and art demanded by director. Going over budget and schedule, in the end, the project was taken away from Welles and edited by the studio. Nevertheless, the final film, and especially the beautiful cinematography, remain a movie history masterpiece.

Though his punishment was less severe than that suffered by Welles, Cortez was given very few "A" list assignments over the years, instead working with Hollywood mavericks like Sam Fuller (Shock Corridor, Naked Kiss).

Another major highlight of his career was shooting Night of the Hunter for Charles Laughton. This wonderful 1955 film mixed two seemingly opposite styles, austere realism and Germanic Expressionism, a combination that provided the movie-goer with a fractured world view as in the dream-mind of a child.

Vive le Trivia

• Franchot Tone appears once again with Jean Wallace, his co-star in Jigsaw.
• Among Burgess Meredith's long lists of roles are George in Of Mice and Men, the Penguin in TV's Batman and the title role in Jean Luc Godard's King Lear.
• A major lowlight of Stanley Cortez career was the reuse of footage he shot for the unreleased Madmen of Mandoras in 1964's They Saved Hitler's Brain.
  

-- Ed Schneider

Cast & Production Credits

For more information on:

Franchot Tone

Night of the Hunter and Stanley Cortez