Sunday, November 29, 2020

TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 12:15 and 10 a.m. ET is Frank Tuttle’s Suspense (1946), with Barry Sullivan, Belita, Albert Dekker and Bonita Granville; Plus, More on Mickey Spillane and Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly, “McCarthyism” and “Subversion”

By David in TN
Saturday, November 28, 2020 at 10:45:00 A.M. EST

TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 12:15 and 10 a.m. ET is Suspense (1946), with Barry Sullivan, Belita, Albert Dekker, Bonita Granville, directed by Frank Tuttle.

Film Noir Guide: “Sullivan plays an ambitious drifter who gets a job selling peanuts at an Ice Capades-type show. He’s soon promoted by the producer (Dekker), whom he thanks for the career advancement by seducing his wife (Belita), the star of the show.

Enter former girlfriend Granville. An avalanche and two murders do nothing to advance the lame plot, and several lengthy ice-skating numbers (designed especially for former ice-skating star Belita) only slow things down even more. Contrary to the title, the suspense is non-existent.”

David in TN: Although Suspense is a mediocre film, last week in his outro, Eddie Muller exulted how much he likes it.

In his intro and outro last week for Kiss Me Deadly, Eddie told how left-wing director Robert Aldrich hated Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer character (Aldrich considered it “fascist, McCarthyite”) and subverted it, making Kiss Me Deadly the “best” version of Hammer. When released in 1955, it failed at the box office. But (naturally) critics ever since love it. What Eddie doesn’t get, is it was Spillane who was “subversive,” not the left-wing film critics.

I first saw Kiss Me Deadly on The Late Show, while in college. It didn’t sustain the Hammer of the books. Ralph Meeker was a strong actor, and would have made a good Mike Hammer with the right script.

N.S.: David, I have seen so many lefties thrive in 1950s and early 60s Hollywood, and so many later lie and say they were “blacklisted,” that I no longer believe anything I read or hear from them, their comrades, or their groupies.

 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Here's a film noir they'll be showing in 50 years:"The Big Vote"(2021)starring Joseph Biden,Charles Schumer and Nancy Pelosi.

Using corrupted technology from a company sympathetic to their cause,the Democrats defeat Donald Trump,shutting down investigations into the scam election,merely by controlling the courts and running out the clock.

2071 Film guide edition:"When this film was made 50 years ago,through news footage,no one realized the depths the socialists had sunk to in order to literally steal the Presidency from under the American people's noses.Witnesses were silenced,records of electronic ballot counting were destroyed to cover up the brazen crimes.It was as brazen as the 9-11 terrorist attack 19 years earlier--and over the next 30 years,became a thousand times more destructive in terms of casualties.The Republicans never regained the White House until 2052--AFTER the Civil War ended."

-- GRA

David In TN said...

TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 am ET is Felix Feist's Tomorrow is Another Day (1951), with Ruth Roman, Steve Cochran, Ray Teal, Lurene Tuttle, Hugh Sanders.

Film Noir Guide: "An ex-con (Cochran), imprisoned when he was thirteen for murdering his father because he 'slapped my mother around once too often' can't seem to stay out of trouble. On the day of his release, after serving eighteen years, he's almost arrested for beating up a reporter who befriended him simply to get a scoop. Cochran travels to New York, where he falls for a beautiful, but hardened, dime-a-minute taxi dancer (Roman). When Roman's lover (Sanders), a jealous cop, shows up at her apartment and starts slapping her around, Cochran tries to protect her. When the cop pulls his gun, Cochran disarms him, but Sanders knocks him cold. While Cochran is unconscious, the panicky Roman shoots the cop as he approaches her, ready to administer another of his frequent beatings. When Roman realizes that Cochran doesn't know what happened, she manages to convince him that he killed Sanders. They go on the lam, fall in love, get married and, amazingly, become lettuce pickers. All seems well until Cochran's photo appears in a pulp magazine offering a thousand dollar reward for information leading to his capture, which causes their new friends (Teal and Tuttle) to start thinking how much they could use the reward money. Cochran is terrific as the recently released ex-con, and Roman is enjoyable as the repentant femme fatale. The ending, however, is disappointing."

Tomorrow is Another Day is another recycled film that was shown on Noir Alley two years ago. In his outro last week, Eddie Muller called Steve Cochran "the Elvis of Noir."