Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

A predictable film noir for fans of the genre. Pat O'Brien (ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES) is the lead and begins the film with a bang as he's involved in a train crash. Bizarrely, people then begin to tell him that the crash never happened, and it's all in his mind. The plot thickens as it transpires that O'Brien is the curator at a museum holding some priceless paintings that a criminal gang want to get their hands on. Is he genuinely going out of his mind, or are people trying to convince him of that for their own nefarious purposes? Shades of Danny Boyle's TRANCE here, but like that film, CRACK-UP is strictly average entertainment. O'Brien doesn't make for a particularly likable lead and I think others like Herbert Marshall (FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT) would have done a better job. There's a whole lot of mystery going on, a somewhat sluggish pace, a few rather unbelievable action sequences, and one of the most predictable endings you can imagine.

Art critic O'Brien is menaced by unseen forces and must find out who and why.No doubt about it, that train wreck scene is brilliantly conceived and edited. In fact, the whole train sequence amounts to an atmospheric triumph. Catch the passenger car interior when O'Brien opens the door—it fairly oozes closed-in flesh, along with that shrewish wife scolding her hubby on the evils of drink. Few films manage a truly memorable sequence, but this one does.Otherwise, it's a decent noir, though I agree it's also over-plotted and under-explained. Plus, many of those many narrow escapes are simply too contrived to stick. The movie's more one of compelling parts than a successful whole. Nonetheless, O'Brien handles his part in suitably restrained fashion, besides few actors were better at "drop dead" brush-offs, of which he gets to do several. Looks like the normally fast-talking Irishman was refashioning his image to align with the post-war crime drama craze.But my money's on the great Ray Collins. Was there ever a smoother actor, from Citizen Kane (1941) to TV's Perry Mason of the 50's and 60's. Here, he delivers in sinister spades. Then there's poor Mary Ware as the loyally devious secretary. I'm sure she was cast for her totally innocent demeanor and looks, the better to hook the audience. But then, oh my gosh, she has to speak her lines.The movie's subtext is in line with the war's common effort and everyman spirit. The villains act as properly outspoken elitists, first cousins presumably of the recently defeated Nazi's. At the same time, I thought art critic O'Brien's little lecture on the role of "art is what I like" made good sense.All in all, it's a strongly visual, if somewhat turgid, noir that probably did train travel no favors.

Pat O'Brien was wonderful supporting actor. Having him as your lead was kind of unusual -- not to mention having him play an expert in art. He does a great job, though, as does the whole cast. Claire Trevor, in a way, is the only major name actor. Ray Collins is good but maybe not up to the pivotal role he plays. In a small part, Mary Ware is very effective.Charlie Chan movies occasionally involved art thefts or forgeries. Of course, there is the black bird in "The Maltese Falcon." But generally, this is an unusual setting for a film noir, which this definitely is.It's tense but maybe not so tense as it might be. I like Hitchcock but do not worship at his feet. Whoever, had he directed this, it could have been a tight, thrilling picture. He'd have story-boarded it all before filming and we'd have been on the edge of our seats as ti played out.He didn't, of course, and it's still a really good movie. It's noir with a highbrow twist, just as "Red Light" -- which I haven't seen in 15 years and wish would turn up -- is noir with a religious setting.

**SPOILERS** Having helped expose a number of forgeries by the Nazis during WWII former US Army Captain George Steel, Pat O'Brian, got involved in the museum that he was working as a lecturer in the finer points of art. Even though the head curator Mr. Barton, Erskine Sanfod,was a bit taken back by his unsophisticated and earthy manner of how he lectured his audience. Where at time it almost lead to fists flying in his direction.It's when Steel cracked up and made a spectacle of himself one night breaking into the museum belting a policemen and almost getting crushed by a falling statue that things started really getting weird. With the opinion by Dr. Lowell, a member of the museum staff, that Steel lost his mind and needs to be institutionalized he's told to take a long vacation. With Steel calming to have survived a train wreck the night of his crack-up it becomes rather obvious, to both the police and Dr. Lowell, that the poor and confused man is either hallucinating of suffering workers burn-out. Steel doesn't take all this lying down by again going through the same motions that he did the night before. Getting on the same train and taking the same ride, to a town called Marlin. Then finding out that he indeed was not making up the story about his mental crack-up. Only that the train wreck, which he found out didn't happen, was somehow for some reason implanted into his brain! but why and by who?We later learn from a secretly on loan to the museum lawman named Traybin (Herbert Marshall), a Scotland Yard inspector of art forgeries, that things aren't exactly kosher with the art exhibits. Later Steel himself gets this cryptic phone call from his friend the museum's co-curator Stevenson, Damian O'Flynn, about a number of switch's of original masterpieces being copied and then purposely destroyed in suspicious fires. One of them is a painting titled Gainsborough, the originals ended up in the private collection of the person responsible for the destroyed copy.Going to see Stevenson at the museum Steel finds him murdered as he's spotted at the scene of the crime, by Mr. Barton, and becomes the chief suspect in Stevenson's murder. Realizing that this scheme of copying original works. At the same time having the copies destroyed in order, for whoever does it, to steal the original without anyone knowing about it. This has Steel going down to the docks where the painting that was the big hit at the museum "The Adoration of the Kings" is being shipped back to England. With Steel feeling that it's going to suffer the same fate that "Gainsborough" did some time before. With a fire suspiciously set in the storehouse, like Steel suspected, on the ship Steel saves the painting and takes it back to the museum. With the help of his friend reporter Terry Cordell, Claire Trevor, and museum technician Mary Ware, playing herself, Steel finds out through X-rays that the painting is indeed a forgery. Leading to the person responsible, an off-the-wall psycho art lover, of having Steel knocked out and then ,along with Terry, kidnapped. The kidnapper has Steel shot up with truth serum to make him talk talk about who else knows about his, the creepy and murderous lover of arts, diabolical plan. So he can have them done in like he's planing to do in both Steel & Terry.This has to be the only movie where the hero sleeps through the big slam bang final with Steel completely out of it, on the truth serum that put him on snooze control. The police and inspector Traybin come to Steel's and Terry's rescue with Steel later waking up, when all the fighting and shooting is over, and wildly throwing punches at the very people who saved his life, Inspector Traybin and police Capt. Cochrean, Wallace Ford. Yet being so drugged out of is head that he almost ends up falling on his head and breaking it.