Saturday, October 26, 2019
TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 a.m. ET is Abraham Polonsky’s Force of Evil (1948), Starring John Garfield, with Beatrice Pearson, Thomas Gomez, Roy Roberts and Marie Windsor, and Written by Polonsky and Ira Wolfert, Based on Wolfert’s Novel; Plus, Notes on This Gun For Hire (1942)
[Previously: “Frank Tuttle’s This Gun for Hire (1942) was Alan Ladd’s First Big Role, and the First Teaming of Ladd with Veronica Lake, with Robert Preston, Laird Cregar, and Mark Lawrence.”]
By David in TN
Thursday, October 24, 2019 at 7:23:00 P.M. EDT
I never liked This Gun For Hire (1942) that much, though it’s noteworthy for the first Ladd-Lake pairing.
In his outro, Eddie Muller said of Alan Ladd’s film persona: “He played the crisp, aloof, icy loner, adeptly moving through a murky world of corruption. And “Veronica Lake played the distaff side with more humor.”
TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight ET and 10 a.m. ET is Force of Evil (1948). It is directed by Abraham Polonsky and starring John Garfield, Beatrice Pearson, Thomas Gomez, Roy Roberts, Marie Windsor. Red Eddie will go into overdrive about “witchunts” and “paranoia,” regarding Polonsky and Garfield.
Film Noir Guide: “This noir, despite the social commentary about the evils of capitalism (disguised as organized crime) is a pretty good crime story about greed, conscience and the love-hate relationship between two estranged brothers (Garfield and Gomez). Garfield is excellent as a well-paid lawyer for gambling czar Roberts, who wants to legalize and thus monopolize the numbers rackets.”
Further down, Film Noir Guide calls it an “enjoyable (but overrated) film noir.”
I saw Force of Evil years ago but it didn’t make much of an impression on me.
TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 am ET is Sweet Smell of Success (1957), with Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Susan Harrison, Martin Milner, Sam Levene, Barbara Nichols, Jeff Donnell, Emile Meyer, written by Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehmann, directed by Alexander Mackendrick.
ReplyDeleteThe phrase "Sweet Smell of Success" came from this movie. Several years ago, your old friend John Podhoretz wrote a lengthy article on this film in The Weekly Standard. He had rhapsodic praise for Tony Curtis' performance.
Film Noir Guide: "Curtis, an unethical press agent, will do ANYTHING to curry favor with an important New York columnist (Lancaster), who's even more repulsive than Curtis. When Lancaster's sister (Harrison) starts seeing jazz guitarist Milner (star of TV's Route 66 and Adam 12), the perversely jealous Lancaster convinces Curtis to break up the relationship by refusing to give Curtis' clients any space in his all-important column, 'The Eyes of Broadway.' With his bread and butter at stake, Curtis invents a slanderous story about Milner and entices a libidinous columnist to run it by fixing him up with his girlfriend, the unwilling Nichols. When the obstinate young musician refuses to buckle under Lancaster's sadistic attempts to ruin his career and his relationship with Harrison, the unholy alliance comes up with yet another plan, only this time they go to far. Levene plays Milner's loyal manager, Donnell is Curtis' secretary, and Meyer is a vicious cop who owes Lancaster a big favor. Lancaster is terrific as the arrogant columnist who makes and breaks careers on a whim, and Curtis is equally good as the press agent 'immersed in the theology of making a fast buck.' This is a sordid but highly entertaining film. James Wong Howe's outstanding cinematography and the hot jazz score by the Chico Hamilton Quarter are the icing on this delicious noir cake."
Lancaster plays a negative character here, which is ironic because he sort of created one of film's phoniest tropes--"Look what nice people prison inmates are." Brute Force (1947) and the "true story" The Birdman of Alcatraz (1962). The latter, Robert Stroud, was described by fellow inmates (and prison administrators) who knew him as a "psychopath." To say the least unlike Lancaster's characterization.
Lancaster got his start playing a Nice Guy-Sap enticed into crime by a femme fatale in The Killers (1946) and Criss Cross (1949).