Lured

Women are disappearing in London. The method is the same each time: an advertisement is placed in a newspaper, written like poetry, and the woman goes to the meeting. Then poems arrive at the police. Sandra is an American dancer and her friend has disappeared too. The police bring her an offer: she will answer the advertisements and act as bait. Sandra agrees. A plainclothes officer will be with her. The meetings begin; each encounter turns up another man and none of them is innocent. Meanwhile Sandra meets a club owner and grows close to him. Douglas Sirk directs. Lucille Ball plays Sandra; George Sanders, Charles Coburn and Boris Karloff are in the cast. It is an American production, made in 1947. The film is a remake of Robert Siodmak's French film of 1939. Lucille Ball was known at the time for comedy; here she has the lead in a thriller. The character Boris Karloff plays appears in one short section and that scene is the film's strangest place. Sirk would later be known for melodrama; here the kind is crime and the manner different. The matter it treats is being bait; the woman goes into danger by her own consent and the police cannot protect her. The narrative gives the killer's identity late and moves the suspicion among several people. Its limit is structure; the narrative is in pieces, the interludes stop the main story, and the ending is rushed. Who it is for: viewers who like forties Hollywood crime films and Sirk's cinema. Who it is not for: it is old, episodic, and the ending easy.