The Seventh Victim (1943), Mark Robson.

The Seventh Victim alternates between silly and labyrinthine, seemingly portentous but ultimately devoid of meaning.  It may be rich for Lewton analysts, but in terms of a viewing experience for anyone seeking a concrete tale it will be unsatisfying.  Private school student Mary searches for her older sister Jacqueline, who has gone missing.  None of the facts that are offered to the audience makes much sense and are often contradictory.  Events that are depicted as mysteries worth solving become non-events that are casually revealed later.  Edward G Bansack claims that the film was heavily edited and key scenes were removed, which may explain the apparent fast pace of the film and some of the gaps in the logic of the story.  However, if the film is largely close to Lewton's original vision, it is a fascinatingly early example of someone deliberately playing with film narrative; fascinating especially because of the presumably straightforward expectations of both the studio that funded the film and the audiences that went to see it.  Some scenes are simply jarring and creepily surreal:  why was a policeman instructing Mary to call the police about her sister's disappearance?  How did Redi get into Mary's apartment?

As Bansack writes about the film's conclusion, "strangely, by this point in the film we have little concern for any of the remaining characters...even The Seventh Victim's main character, Mary, becomes less important, her callow romance with Ward bordering on the trivial. These artificial wrap-up scenes... are merely perfunctory and add nothing positive to the film." The biggest letdown was for me the infantile scene in which the devil worshipers are chastised by a recitation of the Lord's Prayer!  I tend to write off incomprehensible films with fatalistic characters as metaphors for life's journey (surely the fact that Jacqueline stays with a family that runs a restaurant called Dante's must count for something?) but who will ever truly know the meaning of this film - we do know that it was RKO's custom to simply provide Lewton with a title, asking him to fill in the rest!