Phantom Lady

Siodmak’s first foray into the genre that would come to define his artistry, Phantom Lady already evinces the hallmarks of the German director’s work within film noir, namely a consummately macabre sense of atmosphere and a gift for rendering his characters’ troubled subjectivities through the arresting interplay of image and sound. Adapted from a novel by Cornell Woolrich, the film stars Ella Raines as a secretary who must prove that her boss (Alan Curtis) has been wrongly accused of murdering his wife, stumbling through an obscure labyrinth in search of a mysterious woman whom he met shortly before his wife’s death and subsequently vanished. What seems to be a simple enough set-up, in Siodmak’s hands, yields an exemplary and absorbing work of light, shadow, and psychology.

4K Restoration by Universal Pictures from the 35mm Nitrate Composite Fine Grain, 35mm Safety Composite Fine Grain, and 35mm Nitrate Optical Sound Track Negative. Restoration services conducted by NBCUniversal StudioPost.

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