15 reviews
First but not best collaboration between Hugo Haas and Cleo Moore
Hugo Haas is a famous European piano virtuoso who's brought to the States by wealthy widow Mona Barrie. Haas goes on a concert tour where he meets dancer Cleo Moore, and they end up getting married. As Haas struggles to break thorugh in the States, he also struggles to keep both Moore and Barrie happy. But Barrie isn't crazy about Haas's marriage and cuts off her financial support. And when Moore is also thinking about going back to her old dance partner, Haas gets desperate and thinks about collecting the insurance on his hands, somehow...
This was director, writer, actor and producer Hugo Haas ('Pickup') and Cleo Moore's ('On Dangerous Ground') first of 7 collaborations. Moore is far less of a femme fatale in this one than their subsequent movies, but Haas plays essentially the same role as in most of the other ones (ditto in his movies with Beverly Michaels), a 'simple' man who gets involved with the wrong woman and ends up in a downward spiral. Noone can accuse Haas of having too much talent as a writer, director or actor, but as with the title of this movie, he's strangely fascinating to watch. In some close-up's it almost as if you can see him thinking about how to portray emotions. In any case, and for whatever reason, with Haas I don't mind it, I find him very likeable somehow.
Haas's movies are almost invariably low budget affairs, but he does a nice job here with limited means, with a surprising high amount of sets. And experienced DoP Paul Ivano ('The Shanghai Gesture', 'Black Angel') also added a bit of noir aesthetic to this movie, unfortunately not a lot tho. But this is not one of Haas's best efforts, also because Moore's character is nowhere near the sultry and sleazy characters she would portray in her later movies under Haas. It's a decent noir-ish melodrama, but no need to go out of your way to see this one.
This was director, writer, actor and producer Hugo Haas ('Pickup') and Cleo Moore's ('On Dangerous Ground') first of 7 collaborations. Moore is far less of a femme fatale in this one than their subsequent movies, but Haas plays essentially the same role as in most of the other ones (ditto in his movies with Beverly Michaels), a 'simple' man who gets involved with the wrong woman and ends up in a downward spiral. Noone can accuse Haas of having too much talent as a writer, director or actor, but as with the title of this movie, he's strangely fascinating to watch. In some close-up's it almost as if you can see him thinking about how to portray emotions. In any case, and for whatever reason, with Haas I don't mind it, I find him very likeable somehow.
Haas's movies are almost invariably low budget affairs, but he does a nice job here with limited means, with a surprising high amount of sets. And experienced DoP Paul Ivano ('The Shanghai Gesture', 'Black Angel') also added a bit of noir aesthetic to this movie, unfortunately not a lot tho. But this is not one of Haas's best efforts, also because Moore's character is nowhere near the sultry and sleazy characters she would portray in her later movies under Haas. It's a decent noir-ish melodrama, but no need to go out of your way to see this one.
Good characters, good performances
I won't belabor you with plot details -- other reviewers have done that just fine.
I do disagree with most of the ratings that precede mine. Greatness here? No. But definitely watchable with two very real characters (that's scripting) and two solid performances.
I have no idea what the cost of making Strange Fascination was. It seemed low-cost but not corner-cutting. I'm no high-brow musically, I never heard of Hugo Haas and barely knew of Cleo Moore. I didn't enter with great expectations. I came away pleasantly surprised. I found a good mix of on-screen chemistry, despite the characters' wide variance in background and age.
Directors who act in their own films would probably want to be their own lawyers. (This means you, Heywood Allen.) Here, Haas comes out OK both in front of and behind the camera. Moore is appropriately attractive, as well as being effective.
Good, tight, well executed B-plus film. Worth your while. Mine, anyway.
I do disagree with most of the ratings that precede mine. Greatness here? No. But definitely watchable with two very real characters (that's scripting) and two solid performances.
I have no idea what the cost of making Strange Fascination was. It seemed low-cost but not corner-cutting. I'm no high-brow musically, I never heard of Hugo Haas and barely knew of Cleo Moore. I didn't enter with great expectations. I came away pleasantly surprised. I found a good mix of on-screen chemistry, despite the characters' wide variance in background and age.
Directors who act in their own films would probably want to be their own lawyers. (This means you, Heywood Allen.) Here, Haas comes out OK both in front of and behind the camera. Moore is appropriately attractive, as well as being effective.
Good, tight, well executed B-plus film. Worth your while. Mine, anyway.
- eospaulding
- Apr 21, 2020
- Permalink
Possession/Obsession
I happen to find these Hugo Haas-Cleo Moore films entertaining.
Haas was a famous actor in his native Czechoslovakia until he had to flee the Nazis. Once in America, he became a director and a writer of B movies usually starring a gorgeous blond.
The gorgeous blond in this case is Cleo Moore. Paul is an up and coming concert pianist with a sponsor (Mona Barrie). One night he drops into a bar while a dance routine is in progress, and makes too much noise as far as the female dancer Margo (Moore) is concerned. So, similar to the last film I saw them in, she sets out to ruin his life.
She attends one of his concerts and instead becomes enamored of his music. Slowly but surely she wields her way into his life, and the two marry.
Margo goes along with Paul on his concert tour. It's highly successful until it abruptly stops due to a flooding situation. Unfortunately, in part thanks to Margo, Paul is flat broke. And he can't depend on his female sponsor to help him.
This is where the film for me goes off the rails. The guy hits the skids in like five minutes. If this were Van Cliburn, would the cancellation of one concert cause total destruction? Suddenly he's a big nobody. When Margo tries to work, he becomes jealous and possessive and refuses to let her, mainly because she's a flirt.
It goes on from there. Haas is a very warm actor, and he gives us a sympathetic if unreasonable character.
Moore does a good job and looks very glamorous. It's hard to decide if she loves Paul or was just using him all along. I think she does care about him, but they're both suffering.
Very nice ending.
Haas was a famous actor in his native Czechoslovakia until he had to flee the Nazis. Once in America, he became a director and a writer of B movies usually starring a gorgeous blond.
The gorgeous blond in this case is Cleo Moore. Paul is an up and coming concert pianist with a sponsor (Mona Barrie). One night he drops into a bar while a dance routine is in progress, and makes too much noise as far as the female dancer Margo (Moore) is concerned. So, similar to the last film I saw them in, she sets out to ruin his life.
She attends one of his concerts and instead becomes enamored of his music. Slowly but surely she wields her way into his life, and the two marry.
Margo goes along with Paul on his concert tour. It's highly successful until it abruptly stops due to a flooding situation. Unfortunately, in part thanks to Margo, Paul is flat broke. And he can't depend on his female sponsor to help him.
This is where the film for me goes off the rails. The guy hits the skids in like five minutes. If this were Van Cliburn, would the cancellation of one concert cause total destruction? Suddenly he's a big nobody. When Margo tries to work, he becomes jealous and possessive and refuses to let her, mainly because she's a flirt.
It goes on from there. Haas is a very warm actor, and he gives us a sympathetic if unreasonable character.
Moore does a good job and looks very glamorous. It's hard to decide if she loves Paul or was just using him all along. I think she does care about him, but they're both suffering.
Very nice ending.
Hey why don't you play something great ya bum!
- kapelusznik18
- Dec 18, 2016
- Permalink
ups and downs of a concert pianist
Euro pianist paul marvan (haas) is brought back to the united states by the wealthy diana fowler ( monie barrie). But marvan falls for another girl (cleo moore), and marries her, sabotaging his own career. Or at least his steady income from mrs. Fowler. And when he needs money, he comes up with a low-down, illegal scheme to raise money fast. Will it work? What will happen to them? It's a bit over the top, but probably plausible, maybe during the depression. Written and directed by hugo haas. Sometimes bad things happen when the same person writes, directs, and stars in a film. But in this case, it turned out okay! Produced by haas himself, for columbia pictures. Haas and moore made a whole bunch of films together, with very similar plots.
Old man.
Good movie, but why did Hugo haas always have to play the fool, all the time? He's always playing the patsy, always with a girl young enough to be daughter or granddaughter. All of his movies have the same theme.
- valstone52
- Dec 2, 2020
- Permalink
Gone with the flood .
Cleo Moore replaces Beverly Michaels ,but both actresses play the same role : to spark off the middle-age lust ; "pick up "took place in a seedy place which looked onto the railroad track whereas " strange fascination" is located in the chic artistic milieu .
Haas is a famous pianist whose career is flourishing ; it's the story of his downfall ,the story being a long flashback; Moore 's dancing act is marred by the star's noise and revenge is a dish best eaten cold ,although she's a go-getter too ; she's less crude than Michaels ' bad gal in "pick up " ,and anyway she's in love with her partner Carlo; the flood which ruins the musician's career echoes to another flood of desire : once Margo entered his life,the game is up ,and one sees the failed artist going at a peak of masochism (latent in "pickup")when he gazes at the press,and in the pathetic last ovation.
Haas is a famous pianist whose career is flourishing ; it's the story of his downfall ,the story being a long flashback; Moore 's dancing act is marred by the star's noise and revenge is a dish best eaten cold ,although she's a go-getter too ; she's less crude than Michaels ' bad gal in "pick up " ,and anyway she's in love with her partner Carlo; the flood which ruins the musician's career echoes to another flood of desire : once Margo entered his life,the game is up ,and one sees the failed artist going at a peak of masochism (latent in "pickup")when he gazes at the press,and in the pathetic last ovation.
- ulicknormanowen
- Mar 1, 2022
- Permalink
Far from fascinating.
Below Average B noir
Entertaining run of the mill 1950s b movie brightened by the beauty and charisma of Cleo Taurus Moore.
First of Seven Cleo Moore/Hugo Haas Films
Hugo Haas was a middle-aged character actor who began writing, producing and starring in (though playing second fiddle to glamorous blondes) low-budget films in the 1950's. His first two films as "auteur" starred Beverly Michaels but it was his seven collaborations with beautiful Cleo Moore that are better remembered today. STRANGE FASCINATION was their first film together and one of the more conservative, less lurid of the bunch, a fairly conventional drama of a renown concert pianist (Haas) who becomes attracted to and marries a nightclub dancer (Moore) which starts him on the road to ruin. A few years later, Moore's character would have been a bad girl who took him for everything he had, here she's rather sweet girl who is really not responsible for his problems. Since the melodrama here is low key this is one of the duller Moore/Haas romps but Cleo looks close to her most beautiful with a pageboy hairstyle and cute clothes and for movie buffs there's 1930's starlet Mona Barrie in a featured part.
Worth it only for Cleo Moore
I was drawn to this by the 'pulp' artwork on the poster, the fact that it was from the same director of 'Pickup' and the fact it starred, Cleo Moore. Hugo Haas, wrote, directed, produced and starred in half a dozen films with the Jean Harlow like, Moore and this was the first.
The previous year he had made the superior 'Pickup' with Beverly Michaels and the final Moore film would be the effective 'Hit and Run'. This, however, is not very spirited at all and indeed is most predictable. Haas plays the naive concert pianist who falls for the younger woman while his sponsor lady (same age as he) becomes less keen.
Worth it only for Cleo Moore and still a bit of a drag.
The previous year he had made the superior 'Pickup' with Beverly Michaels and the final Moore film would be the effective 'Hit and Run'. This, however, is not very spirited at all and indeed is most predictable. Haas plays the naive concert pianist who falls for the younger woman while his sponsor lady (same age as he) becomes less keen.
Worth it only for Cleo Moore and still a bit of a drag.
- christopher-underwood
- May 27, 2013
- Permalink
Strange Fascination (1952)
A European pianist comes to America and falls for a dancehall girl. Written, directed, produced and starring Hugo Haas, who doesn't do a particularly good job in any of those roles. The script is lifeless and poorly written (including a second act twist that doesn't make a lick of sense), a lot of very prosaic drama that never catches fire. The camera-work is entirely uninteresting, and borderline amateurish. The performances and characterizations are bland. This is the first of seven films that Haas did with pin-up gal Cleo Moore, which is odd because here they have little chemistry together. The film is categorized as noir, but that seems like a stretch by any definition of the genre. Only in the final 10 minutes do we get any compelling plot material, and I will say I quite liked the ending. But otherwise it's a snooze.
- MartinTeller
- Jan 2, 2012
- Permalink
"I'm not the waiting type"
From the top to the bottom of the American quagmire of vulgarity
A well directed, well written and sad film like this calls to mind the works of Max Ophüls and Stefan Zweig, it's the same kind of deep melancholy pervading the whole work, giving it a dimension of bottomless despair. Josef von Sternberg's "The Blue Angel" bringing Marlene Dietrich to Hollywood also comes to mind, it's the same kind of story, an accomplished master in his field is brought down by his own strange fascination with a cheap nightclub dancer, who actually originally is intent on bringing him down and sabotaging his concert, but instead she gets a kick out of his fantastic Chopin interpretations although she understands nothing about classical music, and he commits the mistake of taking her seriously and falling for her, making of himself a self-destructive idiot. Of course he is foolish, getting carried away by his jealousy of a woman who could be his daughter, but he just can't help it, and Hugo Haas makes a very convincing character of a great man at a loss against his own weakness. Almost all Hugo Haas' films have the character of a sad pathetic self-revelation and self-confession, and here he plays the lead in his own film of such a case. It is extremely sympathetic in all its pathetic deplorability, but the case is saved by the fact that he actually keeps smiling. And the music, like in all Haas' films, is absolutely exquisite in its blend of the highest quality and the lowest vulgarity.
10/10
Middle-aged European pianist Paul Marvan (Hugo Haas) is brought to America by the wealthy widow Diana Fowler (Mona Barrie) and he meets and marries a canary blonde named Margo (Cleo Moore), who is a dance partner at a nightclub owned by Carlo (Mona Barrie). Rick Vallin). Margo's vague and flirtatious behavior fuels Marvan, who is also troubled by the increasing financial and professional difficulties, since Diana, his wealthy "sponsor," who was more a little troubled when Marvan married the little bum. He puts a hand into a printing press in hopes of collecting $50,000 insurance, but payment is denied when it is revealed that his accident was not an accident. Margo returns to Carlo and Marvan finds shelter in a Salvation Army shelter, where she now plays the piano with one hand.
- exepellinglogin
- Oct 16, 2021
- Permalink