An offbeat film noir from the 1940's. Pat O'Brien plays an art aficionado who holds court over art critique symposiums which are quite popular, so popular in fact he asks the gallery's board of trustees to reacquire some recently released works so he can give a new series of lectures on them. All that sounds fine until he gets an emergency call from his mother prompting him to leave town on the next available train but when it crashes, he seems to be the only person who experienced it, causing all those around him to question his sanity. For the most part this offbeat take on a noir is welcome since it isn't the usual criminal or mild mannered individuals falling victim to the paradigms of the genre but when the machinations of the gambit are revealed, I thought the overall plan was a little too far fetched for me to buy but if you do go w/it, you'll enjoy the ride.
