Foster on Film » Page 117

Brighton Rock (1948)

Mar 021944

Seventeen-year-old psychopath Pinkie Brown (Richard Attenborough) runs a cheap protection racket in Brighton with his gang of Dallow (William Hartnell), Cubitt (Nigel Stock), and Spicer (Wylie Watson). He kills a reporter, and it is ruled a suicide, but Ida (Hermione Baddeley), a performer the reporter met briefly, doesn’t believe it and sets out to prove it was murder. Rose (Carol Marsh), a naïve and lonely waitress, has evidence, so Pinkie “courts” her to keep her quiet. At the same time, a larger gang is moving in.

This is British-style Noir, with daylight open-spaces bright and cheery, but nights dreary and dangerous and interiors gloomy and sickly. And unlike many of the top American Noirs, there are no even semi-competent crooks. Pinkie is not only evil, he’s stupid and acts without thinking. His gang doesn’t trust him, and the police are far too hands-off. The larger gang has a good deal of power in town but are just a bunch of thugs controlled by a “businessman.”

For Pinkie and his gang, crime has not paid. They live in a grimy boarding house, much more impoverished than those they harass. This is a bleak petty world of evil and foolish people. And like the Post-War British Comedies that were rising at the time over at Ealing studios, the characters are all a bit quirky and a touch removed from reality.

Graham Greene adapted his own novel and believed he improved on it. I’m not about to argue that as as the script is excellent, mixing clever dialog, character development, and rich themes effortlessly. At the helm were the Boulting Brothers, a pair who would produce a string of solid satires in the ‘50s and ‘60s (Private’s Progress, Lucky Jim, I’m All Right Jack, Carlton-Browne of the F.O., Heavens Above!). Perhaps their best move was casting a young Attenborough—best known now as the kindly but foolish maker of Jurassic Park. He brings an insane intensity to Pinkie, one of the great Noir villains. Pinkie always attempts to appear controlled, but you can see his anger and fear in every scene, ready to explode out of him. The rest of the film is good, but Attenborough’s performance is astounding.

The religious aspect is paired back from the novel (due to censorship concerns, which is also responsible for a statement at the beginning of the film saying that Brighton is a lovely spot now) but is still the foundation of the story. Rose is a good Catholic girl who would damn herself for Pinkie. Pinkie sees himself as already damned. Under his bravado, he is scared of a Hell he believes in as surely as Rose does. It is amusing that modern commentators think that the altered ending makes the film softer, but those people are overlooking the religious aspect. I’ll be vague to avoid spoilers, and say only that the ending as is has serious religious consequences.

Brighton Rock is well remembered in England, but is overlooked in America. It shouldn’t be.

Film Noir, Reviews Tagged with: Four Reels

Frenchman’s Creek (1944)

Feb 271944

Upper-class Dona St. Columb (Joan Fontaine) has had enough of her cloddish, uncarring husband (Ralph Forbes) and his cad of a friend (Basil Rathbone), so takes off to Cornwall with her two children. There she is taken care of by William (Cecil Kellaway), a servant who’s cleverer than expected and has a secret. She also runs into her neighbor, Lord Godolphin (Nigel Bruce), who warns her of pirates. She is not worried, but fantasies about a manly pirate, and soon-after meets one in the dashing Jean Benoit Aubrey (Arturo de Córdova). That is the beginning of adventure and romance.

Costumes, pirates, and swords—one would expect a Swashbuckler, but Frenchman’s Creek is more Harlequin romance. I imagine 1944 theaters filled with middle-aged housewives all-a-flutter. Dona is bold, but not to bold. She’s rich, but dreams of excitement. And Jean is one of those many well know bad boy pirates who is absolutely good. They trade nearly hidden innuendos and her bosoms heave to the extent allowed by the production code. It is a full fifty-five minutes before there is any pirating, and then it is quite peaceful and more about our plucky heroine running around dressed as a boy. Cannons and gunshots and thieving is just the greatest of larks.

While action is hard to find, there’s no such problems in finding rich colors, extensive sets, and beautiful costumes. This is an attractive film. No Swashbuckler outside of The Adventures of Robin Hood look better. It won the Oscar for art direction and it was deserved. The acting is good or bad depending on what you think it should be. If you are looking for realistic behavior, then this is a disaster. If, however, you are looking for stylized romance, with a touch of mustache-twirling, it isn’t bad at all. Fontaine makes a fine stand-in for the women whose fantasy this is supposed to be.

I found Frenchman’s Creek slow and a bit silly, and if I was requiring it to live up to the standards of a Swashbuckler, I’d rate it very low. But I’m not the intended audience. For someone looking for a Harlequin romance on film, I doubt there is better to be found.

Reviews, Swashbucklers Tagged with: Three Reels

Between Two Worlds (1944)

Feb 081944

Henry and Ann Bergner (Paul Henreid, Eleanor Parker), who have just committed suicide, find themselves on a ship. They are joined by a group of people killed in an air raid, including an unhappy newspaperman (John Garfield). Only the suicides understand that they are dead and they are warned by Scrubby (Edmund Gwenn), the steward, not to tell the others as they must discover the truth in their own time.

I was surprised they chose to give away the one element of suspense, that everyone was dead, at the beginning. Perhaps if it had been kept a mystery, if I had watched the characters discover clues and work it out, and I had figured it with them, this might have been interesting. Probably not, unless most of the dialog was also changed.

That Between Two Worlds was based on a stage play was obvious while watching as people talk and talk without moving much. I trust the play has better things for them to talk about. Here, its either hackneyed speeches, that anyone who watches bad film could write from memory, or over-the-top, incoherent muttering.

The characters are as interesting as the dialog. There’s the cruel industrialist, the sleazy (by 1940’s film standards), gold-digging actress, the cynical reporter, the upper-class snot, etc., and each acts out their stereotype. As this is a morality play, it’s pretty obvious what’s going to happen to everyone. The only person I cared about was Ann, and she was given little to do.

Considering the number of skilled actors (Sydney Greenstreet even pops up at the end), the low quality of the performances is hard to understand. Henreid and Garfield are particularly poor, finding new levels of overacting. Much of the blame has to be dropped in the lap of first-time director Edward A. Blatt.

If you’re looking for high school philosophizing on heaven, spewed forth without subtlety, and captured with near-static camera work, this is your film.

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Ghost Stories, Reviews Tagged with: One Reel

Double Indemnity (1944)

Feb 071944

What is often missed about Double Indemnity is that it is a comedy, a dark, twisted, comedy. The world of most Film Noirs is an extreme version of our world–everything has been kicked up a notch. Billy Wilder just took it up an additional “notch.” It’s a parody of Film Noir made while Film Noir was still forming. Just count the number of times the word “baby” is used.

Double Indemnity has one of the most common Film Noir plots. In this version, sleazy (though not “evil”) insurance man Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) tries to renew a policy with an unpleasant man, but instead is seduced by his young wife, Phyllis (Barbara Stanwyck). The two decide to kill the older man, but his death only leads to suspicion and their eventual destruction. James Cain wrote the novella after he’d already used the plot in his novel The Postman Always Rings Twice (replace the sleazy insurance man with a rough drifter and the two stories are close to matching). The first Postman film came out two years after Double Indemnity (a second version with Jack Nickolson and Jessica Lange came out in 1981). But The Postman tells the story with deadly seriousness.

Film Noir, Reviews Tagged with: Five Reels

Dead Men Walk (1943)

Oct 091943

Good Dr. Lloyd Clayton recently killed his evil brother Elwyn (George Zucco in duel roles), but Zolarr (Dwight Frye) digs up his old master’s body, and Elwyn rises as a vampire. He sets his sights on Gayle (Mary Carlisle), their niece. It’s up to Lloyd and Gayle’s fiancé to save her, a task that becomes more difficult as the town’s people come to believe that the living brother is the killer.

It’s not uncommon in the independent film world to claim that money doesn’t matter, only ingenuity. Well, sometimes it’s money. Dead Men Walk is a poverty row cheapie that looks like it was shot in three days, and probably was. The sets are few and simple, and obviously missing their fourth wall since the camera rarely moves. I’d be very surprised if there was paid rehearsal time; the actors show no sign of getting into character or reciting their lines with anything close to comfort. The entire town consists of no more than a dozen people, and only two of them are women. I’d hate to live there. Maybe the picture could have been saved in editing, but it looks like it was cut in less time than it was shot in. As an after thought, music occasionally swells in and vanishes again, with no connection to what is happening on screen, which makes me wonder if there was a sound editor at all.

George Zucco was an easily identifiable and always enjoyable character actor in the ’30s and ’40s, but was not strong enough to carry a picture. His kindly doctor is too drab to be of any interest, and his vampire brother is far from horrific. Zucco isn’t given much help. Only Dwight Frye (most famous as Renfield in Dracula) is memorable, and he just performs a poor version of the many psychos he’d played before.

There are no surprises in the script. It could have been cobbled together from previous vampire movies. Nothing’s new. And since there was no money for stunt men, it would have been smart to leave out the fight scene. Zucco just stands there holding a chair in the air as Frye whacks at it with a knife.

Dead Men Walk is a sad little film. There are plenty of more entertaining silver screen vampire flicks, so there is no reason to waste time with this one.

George Zucco appeared in multiple Universal monster movies, including The Mummy’s Hand (1940), The Mummy’s Tomb (1942), The Mummy’s Ghost (1944), and House of Frankenstein (1944) as well as the mystery After the Thin Man (1936), the old dark house film The Cat and the Canary (1939), and the ghost comedy Topper Returns (1941).

Dwight Frye also has a long resume with Universal, playing small roles in Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), The Vampire Bat (1933), The Invisible Man (1933), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Son of Frankenstein (1939), The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), and Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), as well as the swashbuckler The Son of Monte Cristo (1940) and the original version of The Maltese Falcon (1931).

Poverty Row, Reviews, Vampires Tagged with: One Reel

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)

Oct 061943

Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.), the Wolf Man, is freed from his tomb by grave robbers. His search for a way to die takes him to the remains of the Frankenstein manor and the still-living Monster.

The Frankenstein franchise had died a well-deserved death, having less than nothing of interest left (but they wouldn’t let it lie). Luckily, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man is more of a sequel to The Wolf Man and there was still fun to be had there. This isn’t deep stuff; it’s monster mash fun, and while this is the worst version of The Monster yet, the Wolf Man, still my favorite version of a werewolf, looks great. In a film that’s a big drop from the emotional The Wolf Man, Lon Chaney Jr. manages to impart his cursed man with a good deal of pathos. I cared about Talbot and could understand his suffering. I understood a whole lot less on why his immediate move on finding a monster frozen in ice is to free it, but what else is a guy to do in a monster mash movie?

Patric Knowles does a better mad scientist than the one in the Ghost of Frankenstein, though it’s hard to figure why this scientist caught the monster-making bug. For a start, he isn’t even a scientist. He’s a doctor. Nor can I find any good reason for him to be hunting Talbot all over Europe instead of informing some German police about a killer. But it is such a short film that it’s over before the silliness becomes too obvious.

While mainly tied to The Wolf Man, this was also a sequel to Ghost of Frankenstein, so The Monster now has Ygor’s brain and is blind. Test audiences couldn’t accept the voice, so before the picture was given wide release, all of The Monster’s dialog was cut along with any reference to his blindness. However, nothing was re-filmed, so The Monster walks with a strange gait, his hands stretched before him (so that he wouldn’t knock into things). This is the origin of The Monster’s strange walk which has become such a comic cliché.

The other films in the series are Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Son of Frankenstein (1939), Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), and House of Frankenstein (1944), and House of Dracula (1945).

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Classic Horror, Mad Scientists, Mad Scientists, Reviews, Werewolves Tagged with: Three Reels

Titanic (1943)

Oct 041943

The board members of White Star, led by Bruce Ismay (E.F. Fürbinger), use the fragile financial condition of the company brought about by the expense of building The Titanic, as an opportunity to buy up stock. If the ship’s maiden voyage can break speed records, the stock price will rise and they’ll make a fortune. Captain Smith (Otto Wernicke), securely in Ismay’s pocket, ignores the danger of high speed in icy waters, with well-known tragic results. Only German officer Petersen (Hans Nielsen) opposes the actions that will cause the sinking of The Titanic. At least he finds an ex-girlfriend (Sybille Schmitz) on the ship, so he has someone to help him when things go horribly wrong.

Before Leo and Kate turned the deaths of over a thousand people into a romance, the German film industry used it to demonstrate the decadence of British capitalists. It’s hard to argue against their broader point, but they were playing fast and loose with the facts. But hey, it’s safe to say that the plot of this film wasn’t the biggest lie to come out of NAZI Germany, and the greed of wealthy industrialists is easier to believe than Leo’s yell of “I’m king of the world.”

As a disaster flick, divorced from its propaganda aim, it’s not too bad. There are plenty of slimy characters whose unpleasant deaths will make you smile. There’s a reasonable amount of tension, and plenty of the twisted relationships that would mark the Irwin Allen films of the ’70s. The special effects are adequate, although they don’t build excitement. The best shots of the ship were reused (without permission) in 1958’s A Night to Remember. The only real dramatic flaws are the dropping of the youthful romantic subplot two-thirds of the way through the movie, and the lack of a likable primary character. The second is the real problem. In a disaster film, half the fun is watching people drown, burn, or fall from great heights, but the rest comes from struggling with someone you want to live. There’s no such person here. All the main characters are amoral scum-buckets who are cowardly to boot, except for Petersen, who can charitably be described as a dick. He whines, he cajoles, he demands, he insults a kindly woman, and in the middle of the disaster, takes time out to say, “I told you so” to everyone he can find. Perhaps I missed a socio-history lecture, but I find it hard to believe that even in NAZI Germany this guy would get invited to any garden parties.

So, is Titanic a piece of corrupt propaganda that should be grouped with Triumph of the Will? Not really. You can’t blame them for putting a German front and center. It’s less obnoxious than making a movie about Samurai and placing a white guy in the lead (The Last Samurai) or having another white guy, surrounded by hot American Indian women, finding the only Caucasian chick in a hundred miles (Dances with Wolves). Filmmakers want an entry point that their viewers can understand. It’s raciest and nationalistic, but it hardly sets Titanic apart. And as previously mentioned, that German entry point is an unpleasant jerk, so it hardly puts Germans in a superior light. Yes, the movie does attack English and American aristocrats as greedy SOBs, but Hollywood has produced a lot of films doing the same thing. And in many other ways, the flick is kinder to the Brits and Yanks than the 1997 version. The poorer passengers are not imprisoned below deck, and are even allowed to walk into the grand ballroom to be informed of the situation. It’s hard to find a NAZI outlook here (except for a text sentence tacked on at the end condemning the British). If anything, the movie has a communist slant (it did play well in the East after the war). The propaganda may be slight due to director Herbert Selpin, who was less enthusiastic about The Third Reich than was good for his health. He was arrested by the Gestapo during production for making disparaging remarks about the German navy, and died in prison—almost certainly murdered.

By the time Titanic was complete, the war wasn’t going well for Germany. Joseph Goebbels decided that the panicking celluloid passengers might inspire actual panic in a population that was living through nightly bombings, and banned the movie. So it wasn’t very successful propaganda anyway you look at it.

Titanic is a slightly above average disaster movie that is made more interesting due to historical context. And there are worse takes on the story.

Actress Sybille Schmitz also appeared in Vampyr.

Disaster, Miscellaneous, Reviews

Son of Dracula (1943)

Oct 021943

Occultist Kay Caldwell (Louise Allbritton) brings Count Dracula (Lon Chaney Jr.)—not his son no matter what the film’s title might be—using the name Alucard, to her Louisiana plantation. This vexes her conventional sister (Evelyn Ankers), her unstable boyfriend Frank (Robert Paige), and the pushy Dr. Brewster (Frank Craven). Her plan is to marry Dracula, gain eternal life, and then get rid of him. Not the greatest of plans.

This second sequel to Dracula is even weaker than its predecessor: Dracula’s Daughter. There’s a good movie here in concept, though not in execution. Trading British/Euro-gothic for Southern-gothic was an excellent idea, giving us a new setting for Universal and allowing for scenes of long flowing Southern gowns floating over a fog covered bayou. Heat and sweat and decay are marvelous metaphors for evil. Kay’s desire to become immortal and Frank’s insane subservience are the basis for great melodrama.

The direction is B-movie level, but nothing’s wrong with a fun B-movie. It all goes wrong with the casting of Chaney. He could play a hulking brute, a friendly playboy, or a tragic victim, but a cultured master of evil was not in his range. He doesn’t know what expression to use from moment to moment and can’t match them to his actions.

The second error was a refusal to choose a protagonist. Kay seems to be our main character at first, but then Frank takes over, but not for long. Dr. Brewster slips in as an exceptionally uninteresting hero. Then we’re back to Kay and Frank before moving back to Brewster. If we’d stuck with Kay (and insane Frank) verses Dracula, we’d really have something. Everything with Brewster and company should have been cut and replaced with relationship material for Kay and Frank. But that’s what should have been, not what is. Instead we get a mildly watchable C-film, and one of the weaker Universal monster pictures.

Classic Horror, Reviews, Vampires Tagged with: Two Reels

Ossessione (1943)

Sep 291943

Gino (Massimo Girotti), a listless wanderer, falls for the wife (Clara Calamai) of an older bar owner (Juan De Landa). When she won’t run off with him, the two murder the husband. But neither deal well with the guilt and begin to mistrust each other. A homosexual peddler and a prostitute offer Gino alternative life-paths, but he can’t escape his fate.

Made in 1943 and based on James M. Cain’s dark novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Ossessione must be Film Noir. And I suppose it is, though the Italian setting and language, as well as the direction by Luchino Visconti, whose style was already approaching the neo-realism he would become known for, leaves its classification in doubt. No matter. We’re back to that most basic of Noir plots, where the sexy femme fatale seduces the flawed man into committing murder. Except here, she’s less a femme fatale than a tired housekeeper.

For a movie entitled Ossessione there’s little obsession on screen. The character’s talk about it, but there is no heat. Gino must lust after Giovanna, the wife, since he mentions it repeatedly, but we never see it. As for Giovanna, she’s no siren. She’s oddly dull, wanting nothing more than to run a restaurant, and her only displays of passion are connected to her fear of not having a proper home. Ah, nothing spells excitement like hanging around talking about security. They are good looking people, but exhibit no sensuality, which makes their desperation hard to feel. Since they also aren’t multifaceted, deep, or even smart, they aren’t interesting or engaging.

The murder plot can’t even be described as a plan. They look at each other, decide to kill the husband, drive a bit, and then there’s a jump to after his death. Once that’s done, so is the plot. The Noir elements depart to be replace by ponderous melodrama.

Things pick up with the introduction of two characters who have little to do with the story. The first is Lo Spagnolo, a homosexual drifter who is the voice of the director. Fulfilling the role of an angel, he tries to talk Gino out of adultery and murder (and apparently into his bed). He’s enigmatic, perhaps because there are mysteries around him to examine, but more likely because he doesn’t make sense. The other is a kindly prostitute Gino meets in the park. She is considerably more erotic than Giovanna and shows Gino that there can be excitement in life without betrayal and corruption. I would have been interested in her tale, but she pops into the film and leaves again with little effect.

Ossessione was shot in fascist Italy during the war, but nothing in it is of that time. Perhaps the events are supposed to occur before Mussolini came to power. Whatever the setting, the movie did not go over well with government censers, though Mussolini himself had little problem with it. It was released only in substantially cut form and the negatives were destroyed. However, Visconti saved a nearly uncut print, and all current versions come from that. Until the ’70s, the movie could not be shown in much of the world because no one connected to it ever attained the rights to the source material, but the picture is now readily available.

Cain’s book has been filmed four other times: as the French Le Dernier Tournant (1939), twice in Hollywood with the novel’s title, the first in 1946 with John Garfield and Lana Turner and the second in 1981 with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange, and finally as Szenvedély (1998) in Hungary.

Film Noir, Foreign Language, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943)

Sep 241943

Doctor Watson (Nigel Bruce) summons Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone) to Musgrave Manor to look into an attempted murder. The wealthy Musgrave family has allowed part of their mansion to be used as a convalescence home for injured soldiers, so living on the property are multiple family members, servants, soldiers, and the medical staff. Soon, in the old dark house, people begin to die, and Holmes sets out to find the killer.

When Universal took over the Holmes franchise, they kept actors Basal Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, but updating the setting to then present day. They also ill-advisedly changed the genre from mysteries to propaganda spy pictures, with Holmes chasing Nazis. And for an unknown reason, gave Holmes a comically bad hairstyle. After three of these, they did a partial reset, putting Holmes back in Gothic murder mysteries. They didn’t change the date, but had Holmes popping up in places where the modern world would have minimal effect, such as out of the way fishing villages or old castles on Scottish crags. Sherlock Holmes Faces Death was the first of these, with the setting being an old manner house of a landed family. We are still very much in wartime, with the house filled with soldiers, but they could have been from any war as far as the story is concerned. The appearance of the house (generally) and the social norms followed by the rich and their servants fit more naturally into a 1890s setting than a 1940s one.

The switch had another huge advantage: Universal knew how to do Gothic. Not only were we back into mysteries, but some, such as this, The Scarlet Claw, and The House of Fear, drifted into horror, particularly Old Dark House horror. Here we have a house Holmes describes as having a personality, and being “gruesome.” The grounds are foggy, there are long shadows everywhere, the building is filled with secret passageways, and under it all is an ancient crypt. Add in a strange ritual incantation a family member must say over a dead body, and stories of ghosts haunting the halls, and we’re solidly in horror territory. And Universal even had the sets already prepared for that; they just repurposed what they’d used for Dracula and the Frankenstein series. It’s no surprise that it all looks good.

Rathbone is also in great form. He’d later tire of the part, though even at his most disinterested he was still enjoyable, but that was in the future and here his Holmes has a bit of an imp about him. It helps that he’s given sharp, playful banter to toss at Dr. Watson.

The mystery itself is not one of my favorites (although worlds better than the spy stuff) and the killer is given away in a far too obvious way too early, but this is a fun, creepy film, and one of the better Holmes movies.

I’ve ranked all of the Rathbone Holmes films here.

Dark House, Reviews Tagged with: Three Reels

I Walked With a Zombie (1943)

May 031943

Betsy Connell (Frances Dee), a beautiful, young nurse, takes a job on the island of St. Sebastian in the West Indies to care for Jessica (Christine Gordon), the wife of a plantation owner (Tom Conway). Is the wife sick or is she a zombie, and will her cure come from medicine or voodoo?

A strange title, but a good film. Go back to a time before George Romero, before zombies were brain eating undead, but were creations of island voodoo, and you’ve reached I Walked With a Zombie. Val Lewton has become known as one of the great names in horror, and his 1940s RKO films are one of the three legs of classic movie horror (the others belonging to Universal and “poverty row”). Lewton always had to make the most of very little, so he went with subtlety. The studio was less concerned with art then quick money, so here handed him a title. He dumped the vague idea he was given, and matched that title to Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre. He kept the gothic romance, with a governess falling in love with a rich and troubled married man, but instead of a mad wife in the attic, there is an undead one.

Lewton’s films exist in an ambiguous never-never land. It’s never clear if it is magic and monsters or just the natural world. It is not a matter of clarity that brings ambiguity to judging that world, but rather that the world is both a thing of beauty and wonder and of dread and death. Often these things are the same. While this is a theme in all his films, it is clearer in I Walked With a Zombie than with any other.

A slight majority of Lewton fans and scholars place Cat People as the panicle of his career, but an only slightly lesser number, including me, label this his masterpiece. It does not pretend to be going for scares, but instead it is filled with an uncomfortable atmosphere. It is creepy. There are no cheap jump scares, but an eeriness and that stays with the viewer long after the film is over. It is poetic, subtle, and shares a writer with the classic 1941 The Wolf Man. The film also bears the mark of its director, Jacques Tourneur, who shared Lewton’s vision and had worked with him the year before on Cat People.

For such a low budget film, the acting couldn’t be better, the pacing is excellent, and occasional scenes could be plucked out, framed, and hung on the wall as art. There are few good voodoo films, and this is the best.

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Classic Horror, Reviews, Zombies Tagged with: Five Reels

This Gun For Hire (1942)

Oct 301942

Hired killer Philip Raven (Alan Ladd) is betrayed by his employer, being paid with marked bills. He’s chased by Lieutenant Michael Crane (Robert Preston), who is engaged to Ellen Graham (Veronica Lake), who happens to have been recruited by a senator to uncover a spy ring that includes Raven’s employer. She also happens to be the person Raven sits next to on a train.

For the ultimate in cold-blooded killers, Raven sure is chatty. If I was going to murder someone, I wouldn’t make a lot of comments about it to the first person I met.

This Gun For Hire was—once upon a time—famous and popular. Like its stars, Ladd and Lake, it has lost some of its undeserved luster. It’s a nice little thriller, but brought down by the tone and requirements of ‘40s Hollywood. The WWII propaganda and spy material doesn’t fit with the dark Noir side. The songs (they did love inserting songs into films) have the wrong tone. And why is merciless Raven leaving people alive? (Ah yes, because the studio was told to tone done the violence for the Production Code.)

Ladd was a limited actor, but Raven falls with his range. Lake could manage a bit more, and as the tough girl, who combines sexy and childlike, she’s perfect. But then the script also wants her to be the submissive good wifey-girl (it’s the ‘40s) and no actress could combine that in to make a character.

The film functions on coincidences: Raven happens to sit by Graham. Graham happens to be hired by Raven’s employer. Raven happens to arrive at the employers house just when Crane is there on the phone. Actually, everyone arrives everywhere just when someone else is doing something important.

When Lake is speaking in her breathy-sexy style, and when Ladd is in full-tilt assassin mode, This Gun For Hire is entertaining. The rest of the time it is good to have a book handy.

Lake and Ladd co-starred in two other Noirs, The Glass Key (1942) and The Blue Dahlia (1946).

Film Noir, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

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