Saturday, July 27, 2019

TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 a.m. ET is Jules Dassin’s Thieves’ Highway (1949), Starring Richard Conte, with Valentina Cortese, Lee J. Cobb, Jack Oakie, Millard Mitchell and Barbara Lawrence, and Written by A.I. Bezzerides; Plus, a Sunday Night Bonus of George Stevens’ Multi-Oscar-Winning, True Crime Masterpiece, A Place in the Sun (1951), Starring Montgomery Clift, Shelley Winters, and Elizabeth Taylor

By David in TN
Friday, July 26, 2019 at 11:49:00 P.M. EDT

TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 a.m. ET is Jules Dassin’s Thieves’ Highway (1949). The cast is Richard Conte, Valentina Cortese, Lee J. Cobb, Jack Oakie, Millard Mitchell and Barbara Lawrence. It was written by A.I. "Buzz" Bezzerides.

Film Noir Guide: “Conte is a veteran who returns from the war to find his truck driver father has lost both legs in an ‘accident’ deliberately caused by a crooked produce wholesaler (Cobb) to avoid paying the old man for his load. Vowing revenge, Conte teams up with Mitchell to deliver two truckloads of apples to Cobb who, aided by a seductive hooker (Cortese), proceeds to cheat Conte out of his money. Reminiscent of They Drive By Night, Thieves Highway has a convincing, fast-moving plot, and the actors are excellent, especially Cobb as the shady wholesaler and Cortese as the femme fatale with second thoughts. Soon after he made Thieve's Highway, Director Dassin (Brute Force, The Naked City, Night and the City and Two Smart People) was identified as a Communist by fellow director Edward Dmytryk during House Un-American Activities Committee hearings."

Host Eddie Muller will wail and cry over this one.

For a bonus, Sunday Night at 8 p.m. ET, TCM shows George Stevens’ A Place in the Sun (1951), starring Montgomery Clift, Shelley Winters, and Elizabeth Taylor. Clift plays a factory worker about to marry a rich girl (Taylor) only to have his former girlfriend (Winters) come along to mess his life up, with tragedy ensuing.

It’s based on a then-shocking, early 20th Century crime, which inspired Theodore Dreiser’s 1925 novel, An American Tragedy.


1 comment:

David In TN said...

TCM's Film Noir of the Week is on hiatus during August while TCM has its Summer Under the Stars. Each day has a different Hollywood Icon.

On Tuesday, August 8, Ava Gardner is the star. At 9:15 pm ET, Robert Siodmak's The Killers (1946) features Gardner with, Edmund O'Brien, Burt Lancaster, Sam Levene, Albert Dekker, and hit men William Conrad and Charles McGraw.

Lancaster in his film debut plays a sap who throws over a nice girl for femme fatale Ava Gardner, leading to his destruction.

The film takes the Ernest Hemingway short story and expands it to a classic noir.

The nice girl is played by Virginia Christine, later Mrs. Olsen in the Folger's coffee commercials. It's fun to see a young "Mrs. Olsen" as a late 1930's girl about town, who marries the Lancaster character's police detective former friend (Levene).