Not really strange, or fascinating

I was recently looking through the list of "leaving Tubi soon" movies, and found one I hadn't heard of before: Strange Fascination. Not really knowing anything about it, I decided I'd watch it anyhow and then do a post on it here to give you all ample time to watch it before it leaves Tubi. I'm assuming that's at the end of May, since the contracts generally seem to run out at the end of a calendar month, and there was no "XX days remaining" notice that starts around two weeks before a movie leaves.

One of the reasons I had never heard of Strange Fascination before is because it stars and was directed by Hugo Haas. He was one of the many filmmakers who made their way to Hollywood to escape the Nazis, first acting as a character actor, and then directing a string of independent B movies. Most of the rest of the cast of Strange Fascination is even less distinguished, although female lead Cleo Moore starred in several of Haas' movies.

Here, Haas plays Paul Marvan, and as the movie opens he's listening plaintively to a piano concert. He leaves and walks through the sort of city you'd see in a noir, darkened and mildly seedy, also looking like he could fit into a noir what with his three-day beard and correspondingly disheveled look. He walks into a Salvation Army mission, finds the church hall part of it empty, with a piano up on stage. He gets up on stage and sits down at the piano, which is a cue for the flashback....

The flashback takes us to Salzburg, Austria, just after the war. Paul is a concert pianist who somehow survived World War II, although the war is really only mentioned as difficulties of the past few years. Salzburg holds a Mozart festival and has a storied relationship with classical music, so Paul is here in Salzburg to perform a concert. In attendance at the concert is wealthy American widow Diana Fowler (Mona Barrie), who likes Paul's playing. At dinner after the concert, she offers to sponsor Paul's immigration to the US, with a bit of an implication that he should consider some sort of mutually beneficial relationship for the two of them.

Paul lives with Fowler, practicing until he can get an agent and some bookings so he can strike out on his own. After a concert one night, he irritates a showgirl at the nightclub where he goes for drinks. That woman, Margo (Cleo Moore) decides she's going to go to one of his concerts to give him a piece of her mind. But she loves the music and falls for him, almost like a groupie. Some time later, after he's back in New York, she shows up, claiming that her boyfriend Carlo is treating her badly and she needs someplace to hide from Carlo.

This being the early 1950s, the Production Code is still there, so a man and a woman couldn't really shack up without at the very least some serious moral opprobrium. Indeed, a couple of people find out about the two of them living together and issues arise. It gets to the point that when Paul goes out on his next tour, he takes Margo with him so that he can have a quickie wedding away from the prying eyes of the New York set!

But it's not to be a happy marriage. The second half of Paul's tour gets cancelled due to flooding, and the contract states he won't get paid for it. He's already taken advances on his tour fee, so this leaves him heavily in debt. He starts drinking again, which really threatens his career. He's also got too much pride, resulting in his not wanting Margo to be the breadwinner in the family. She understandably chafes at this.

Strange Fascination is a decided B movie, playing on themes apparently common in Haas' work (I've read some on Haas but not seen that many of his movies), of the basically good man who marries a woman not right for him, and for this to bring him ruin. Apparently, later movies would have the woman be much more of the gold-digger/villainous type than what Margo is here. In the case of Strange Fascination, it feels more like a tragedy of two people jumping into something they might not be ready for and not able to deal with the consequences or the difficulty in backing out.

Hugo Haas doesn't have much of a reputation as a director, which I think is partially due to being stuck with B movies. Strange Fascination is certainly not great, but it comes across as Haas having sincere feelings about the material he was putting on the screen. He also comes across as somebody who knew how to stick to a budget and deliver stuff quickly. I have a feeling that had he been a few years younger, or American-born, he might have been able to make it as a director in episodic TV. Perhaps other of his movies really make Haas look like a terrible director, but Strance Fascination doesn't.