Before THE NIGHT AND THE FOLLOWING DAY, the infamous Neo Noir with a troubled production and problems with star Marlon Brando ending the career of director Hubert Cornfield, it was important to go back and see how Cornfield made his few genuine film noir vehicles or in this case, post noir, the period before anyone knew exactly what noir was to realize it had ended...
Enter THE 3RD VOICE, a B&W thriller that plays out like one right up to the casting of Edmond O'Brien as a hired con artist who works very hard to impersonate the voice of a blowhard rich man, hired by his disgruntled secretary, another veteran in an effectively sassy, snaky Lorraine Day, and the set-up about O'Brien learning the man's voice and dealings is covered with more expository polish than the rest of an intriguing yet somewhat unfocused thriller...
Taking place in Mexico, where O'Brien, now solo, maintains the impersonation, mostly during a string of nervous phone calls (that include Noirish self-narration), and where the typical human "close call" occurs, almost meeting one of the real man's old friends...
And it's all suspenseful enough. But how he (and Day) have decided to get all the money (as the con plays out) is confusing... Yet everything becomes clear when the big twist is revealed, and it's a pretty good one...
But besides sexy ingenue Julie London and the well-shot wheeling/dealing, this is Edmond O'Brien's resilient one-man-show despite playing two people at once.