By David in TN
Friday, March 13, 2020 at 12:01:00 A.M. EDT
TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 12:30 a.m. and 10 a.m. ET is I Wake Up Screaming (1941), with Betty Grable, Victor Mature, Carole Landis, Laird Cregar, Elisha Cook, Alan Mowbray, Allyn Joslyn, directed by H. Bruce Humberstone.
Film Noir Guide: “In this film noir take-off of Pygmalion, Mature plays a sports promoter who, for kicks, turns waitress Landis into a celebrity.
"Has-been actor Mowbray and columnist Joslyn, who are involved in Mature’s plan to make Landis famous, fall head over heels for her. Unfortunately, someone murders her just as she’s about to travel to Hollywood to star in her first movie. Landis’ sister (Grable) is hoping the killer’s not Mature, but homicide detective Cregar goes after the promoter with a vengeance.
"Veteran character actor Cook plays a weirdo desk clerk in the sisters’ apartment building.
"This is an entertaining film (if you can ignore the constant playing of ‘Over the Rainbow’), with moments of genuine dread thanks to Cregar’s remarkable performance. Mature and Grable, in her first major non-musical role, are excellent together.
"The dark city streets, dense shadows and unusual camera angles sometimes clash with the film’s humorous moments, but somehow the suspense is maintained.
"Two of the stars died several years later—Cregar, at 28, in 1944 due to complications associated with a crash diet, and Landis, at 29, in 1948 from an [suicidal] overdose of sleeping pills. Remade as Vicki in 1953.”
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1 comment:
TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 am ET is Louis Malle's Elevator to the Gallows (1958) with Jeanne Moreau, Maurice Ronet, and Jean Wall.
This is a French film released in the United States in 1961. It's an example of the proverbial Perfect Crime Goes Bad.
Femme Fatale Jeanne Moreau persuades her lover (Ronet) to kill her husband (Wall) in his office and make it look like a suicide. Ronet eagerly does the crime, but is trapped in an elevator when he returns to remove a piece of evidence he left behind.
I've never seen Elevator to the Gallows before but, in those days especially, French films were said to be more "realistic" than American films.
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