The Clay Pigeon (1949)

Lean mean amnesia machine.

*** This review contains a spoiler ***

The Clay Pigeon is directed by Richard Fleischer and written by Carl Foreman. It stars Bill Williams, Barbara Hale, Richard Quine and Richard Loo. Music is by Paul Sawtell and cinematography by Robert De Grasse.

Jim Fletcher (Williams) is a survivor of a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp who awakes from a coma with amnesia, and a charge of treason against him! Escaping hospital he aims to recover his memory and hopefully clear his name. The secret may be with another ex-POW inmate and the wife of the man who was killed on account of his supposed treason.

Stripped down to the bare essentials by Fleischer, The Clay Pigeon is a one hour TV episode in essence. Dealing in that old noir favourite, that of amnesia, the director doesn't hang around to build any sort of supporting characters. This is firmly a two character piece as Williams and Hale (real life husband and wife) run through a narrative that has her initially hostile towards him, only to then unsurprisingly warm to him as events conveniently fall into place to prove his innocence.

There's a willingness to balance out the anti Japanese slant that initially hangs over the story, and a twist in the tale, whilst hardly a surprise, earns writer Carl Foreman some grace to forgive the poor contrivances elsewhere. The night time sequences are nicely noirish, without really adding any sort of psychological dimension to the atmospherics, and the cast are adequate as per the quality of production. All told it's an enjoyable enough B-level noir out of RKO, even if it's hardly essential viewing. 6/10