Saturday, July 31, 2021 at 1:03:00 AM EDT
TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 12:30 a.m. ET (only) is Steve Sekely’s Hollow Triumph (1948) with Paul Henreid, Joan Bennett, and John Qualen.
Film Noir Guide: “Henreid plays a criminal just released from jail and already in deep trouble. He and his gang rob a gambling joint owned by Qualen, but only Henreid survives the heist. Knowing that he’s being hunted by the vengeful mobster, he goes into hiding, taking on menial jobs and eventually concocting a plan to assume the identity of a psychiatrist who’s his exact look-alike (except for the scar on his cheek). But the plan has some major flaws, which result in a wonderfully ironic twist ending. Bennett, the psychiatrist’s secretary and mistress, falls in love with his impersonator. Also known as The Scar.”
David: TCM has a bonus with Marked Woman (1937), early Sunday Morning at 6 a.m. ET. Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart star in one of the first “Ripped from the Headlines” film dramas. Marked Woman was based on the Lucky Luciano case. In the movie, the gangster is tried for murder. In real life, it was for prostitution. Bette Davis plays the main female character. She and the other women are called “clip-joint hostesses.”
Humphrey Bogart plays a “crusading” prosecutor based on Thomas E. Dewey. Bogart was being cast against type; usually, he played gangster types in the 1930s.
N.S.: I once stumbled onto a wonderful movie music blog, where one commenter talked about how the 1940s were a Golden Age for character actors. He noted how directors gave actors who were used to having bit roles big scenes, like what Jack Ford did for John Qualen in The Grapes of Wrath (1940).
Muley, like the Joads, is a sharecropper. The bank which owns their land, suddenly throws them off. When this happens to Muley, he about loses his mind, and gives a powerful soliloquy:
“Do you think I’m touched?”
Muley’s soliloquy made such a powerful impression on my future chief of research, who was then eight or nine years old, that he worked it into a speech he had to write the next day for a school essay. He played the son of a tribal chief who had been murdered, and who now had to avenge his father’s murder.
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TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 12:30 and 10 am ET is Francis Searle's Cloudburst (1951) with Robert Preston, Elizabeth Sellars, Colin Tapley, Sheila Burrell, Harold Lang.
Film Noir Guide: "A Canadian cryptographer (Preston) working for British Intelligence on post-war London plans to buy some land and start a family with his loving wife (Sellars), who suffered torture during the war at the hands of the Gestapo rather than betray him. After leaving their car to look at the property, Sellars is run down by a has-been boxer (Lang) and his girlfriend Burrell) who are on the run after killing a watchman during a robbery attempt. As Preston tries to prevent the panicky driver from backing up over his critically injured wife, Burrell stabs his hand with a pair of scissors, permitting Lang to speed away, running over Sellars once again and killing her. After deliberately withholding information from the police about the crime, Preston, a highly skilled commando, goes looking for payback. A suspicious Scotland Yard inspector (Tapley) is his only obstacle. Preston is excellent as the laid-back vigilante in this violent British noir."
Eddie Muller returns. This is a British film I haven't seen. TCM has a new logo and surroundings "for the 21st Century," but still the same films. No telling how Eddie will be presenting himself.
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