By David in TN
Thursday, September 6, 2018 at 11:19:00 P.M. EDT
TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 12:15 a.m. ET (and 10 a.m. ET Sunday Morning) is Desperate (1947). It's a 73-minute RKO product with Steve Brodie, Audrey Long, and Raymond Burr, directed by Anthony Mann. This is Mann's first film noir, and according to Film Noir Guide "as hard-boiled and violent as they come."
Brodie plays a newly married (to Long) war veteran, now a truck driver. A baby is on the way and Brodie's character needs money. Enter Burr, in one of his noir "heavy" roles, inducing Brodie to do a "hauling job." It turns out to be a warehouse robbery. Brodie alerts a passing cop who is killed in the ensuing shootout.
Burr threatens to kill Brodie's wife to get him to take the rap. Brodie and Long go on the run.
It's a standard noir of the time, people chasing the American Dream get themselves into big trouble.
1 comment:
TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 12 am ET (and 10 am ET Sunday Morning) is Angel Face (1953) with Robert Mitchum, Jean Simmons, and Herbert Marshall. Otto Preminger directed.
Film Noir Guide says "When casting directors needed someone who could play a handsome but gullible sucker for a dame, did they always check first to see if Bob Mitchum was available? (See especially Out of the Past and Where Danger Lives, which is remarkably similar to this film)."
Cast against type, Jean Simmons plays the femme fatale planning to murder her stepmother. Mitchum's character becomes the family chauffeur-a sap involved in murder. Angel Face has one of the most spectacular endings in film noir.
Our host, Eddie Muller, will have info on the film's strange back story.
Post a Comment