Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 27-March-11
Spoiler Rating: Low

Knock on Wood (1954)

Notwithstanding Black Swan, which just won Natalie Portman an Oscar, or The Red Shoes (1948), which has been touring art house theaters in a restored print, the best ballet scene in the movies may be found in Knock on Wood. The finale of this espionage comedy finds Danny Kaye crashing a performance of a Russian ballet in an attempt to elude the police and a gang of killer spies. Wearing a costume that makes him look like Bumbly the albino Smurf, he performs Cossack kicks and tosses around an astonished diva. The scene is athletic and well choreographed and, above all, hilarious.

The rest of the movie is a fitting setup for this scene and a showcase for Kaye's several talents. He plays ventriloquist Jerry Morgan, who lands in hot water while on a European tour. Jerry is a commitment-phobe who sabotages romances by publicly insulting his girlfriends through his dummies. He doesn't mean to do this; it's a subconscious response to the threat of a serious relationship. After the fifth time this happens, his manager convinces him to interrupt his stay in London and fly to Zurich to see a psychiatrist. Shortly before Jerry leaves, a spy slips the stolen blueprints of a British superweapon inside his two dummies, setting off a chain of events that include murder, mistaken identity, and Miss Right.

At first two different spy groups incorrectly assume that Jerry knows what he's carrying. A rich and traitorous Englishman (Torin Thatcher) tries to buy him off during a conversation of crossed meanings. In Zurich, a competing agent tries to schedule a handoff. Meanwhile, Jerry keeps running into a prim blonde (Mai Zetterling) in the most embarrassing places, like the women's shower at a hotel. She turns out to be a psychiatrist who needs romantic therapy herself. (In probing Jerry's unhappy childhood, she prompts a vaudevillian flashback featuring Kaye as Jerry's father.) After returning to London, Jerry gets wise to the intrigue surrounding his dummies, largely because of the corpses that start filling his closets. Branded "the Red-Headed Ripper," he flees for his life, hiding out in an Irishmen's club where he sings an impromptu shanty, then impersonating a car salesman with a smashing British accent but questionable idioms. He makes his last stand center stage at the ballet. By this point it's clear that only a stroke of luck can save him — and that a singing, dancing, voice-throwing actor with good timing and a flair for slapstick is a lucky centerpiece for a movie.

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