By David in TN
Friday, September 13, 2019 at 5:27:00 P.M. EDT
TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight ET and Sunday Morning 10 a.m. ET is Nocturne (1946). This RKO feature stars George Raft with Lynn Bari, Virginia Huston, Joseph Pevney, Edward Ashley and Mabel Paige, and was directed by Edwin L. Marin.
Film Noir Guide: “A songwriter (Ashley) writes his final tune, ‘Nocturne,’ while simultaneously breaking up with one of his numerous girlfriends. A shot rings out, and the composer falls to the floor dead—his masterpiece left unfinished. Despite the official verdict that Ashley committed suicide, homicide detective Raft becomes obsessed with proving murder even after he’s suspended from the force. Using photographs that hung like trophies on the songwriter wall, Raft tracks down ten beautiful girls, all of whom Ashley had called ‘Dolores.’ The investigation seems to point to Bari as the prime suspect, but Raft doesn’t rule out her nightclub singer sister (Huston), Huston’s pianist husband (Pevney) or an oafish brute (Hoffman), whose job it is to push Pevney’s piano from table to table for customer requests. Raft nicely underplays his role as the soft-spoken, two-fisted detective, who lives with his elderly mom (Paige), an amateur sleuth herself.”
It was said George Raft “couldn’t act,” due to giving the same characterization every time, whether playing a detective or a mobster.
N.S.: George Raft has a secure place in history, due to his stupidity (poor judgment and stubbornness). In middle age, he was offered and rejected one great role after another—High Sierra (1941), The Maltese Falcon (1941), and Double Indemnity (1944)—the first two of which then went to Humphrey Bogart (and with Double Indemnity going to Fred MacMurray), who was plagued neither by poor judgment nor stubbornness.
The result: Bogie is listed #1, ahead of Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Marlon Brando (in that order), and everyone else, on the American Film Institute’s list of the greatest stars, while nobody lists George Raft as one of Hollywood’s greatest stars.
Saturday, September 14, 2019
TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 a.m. ET is Edwin L. Marin’s Nocturne (1946), from Noir Central, RKO, Starring George Raft, and featuring Lynn Bari, Virginia Huston, Joseph Pevney, Edward Ashley and Mabel Paige, and Written by Jonathan Latimer, Frank Fenton, and Rowland Brown
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight ET and 10 am ET Sunday is Jean Renoir's The Woman on the Beach (1947). Featured are Joan Bennett, Robert Ryan, Charles Bickford, and Nan Leslie.
Ryan is a Troubled Veteran.
Film Noir Guide: "French director Jean Renoir, in his last American film, applies the noir treatment to the hackneyed triangle plot. Unfortunately, it's all atmosphere and no substance. Ryan plays a Coast Guard officer, recuperating from severe mental and emotional stress as a result of his combat experiences. One day, while horseback riding on the beach, he runs into Bennett as she collects firewood from an abandoned shipwreck. Feeling an immediate attraction to the woman, Ryan quickly drops his fiancee (Leslie), and he and Bennett begin a torrid love affair behind the back of her husband (Bickford), whom she accidentally blinded several years earlier. Once a successful artist, Bickford is now an embittered and jealous husband. Ryan believes the man is faking his blindness and goes to extremes to prove it so the guilt-stricken Bennett will feel free to leave him. But Bickford plans to hold onto his wife no matter what. Beautifully photographed but not one of Renoir's or noir icon Ryan's best."
Post a Comment