The Chase (1946)
A shell-shocked war veteran takes a job driving for a violent gangster, falls for the gangster's frightened wife, and helps her flee to Havana, only for the story's nightmare logic to keep circling back on itself.
The Chase adapts Cornell Woolrich’s novel The Black Path of Fear into one of the most narratively deranged noirs of the 1940s, built around a twist that recasts nearly half the film as a shell-shocked veteran’s hallucination; producer Seymour Nebenzal’s Nero Films had it restored by UCLA in the 2010s, and its fever-dream structure has since made it a favorite of noir historians drawn to the genre’s stranger corners.
Background
The Chase adapts Cornell Woolrich’s novel The Black Path of Fear into one of the more narratively unusual film noirs of the 1940s, following a shell-shocked war veteran who takes a job driving for a violent gangster, falls for the gangster’s frightened wife, and helps her flee to Havana, only for the story to circle back on itself in ways that recast much of what the audience has already seen. Producer Seymour Nebenzal’s Nero Films produced it on a modest budget typical of the independent noir productions of the period.
What to watch for
Watch for the film’s structural twist, which reveals that a substantial portion of the story was actually a hallucination experienced by its shell-shocked protagonist, a device that was unusually ambitious for a genre picture of its budget and era. The film fell into obscurity for decades before a restoration by UCLA brought it back into wider circulation, and it has since become a particular favorite among noir historians drawn to the genre’s stranger, more experimental corners.
