Friday, September 3, 2021 at 9:31:00 P.M. EDT
TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 12:30 and 10 a.m. ET is Francis Searle’s Cloudburst (1951) with Robert Preston, Elizabeth Sellars, Colin Tapley, Sheila Burrell and Harold Lang.
Film Noir Guide: “A Canadian cryptographer (Preston) working for British Intelligence on post-war London plans to buy some land and start a family with his loving wife (Sellars), who suffered torture during the war at the hands of the Gestapo rather than betray him.
“After leaving their car to look at the property, Sellars is run down by a has-been boxer (Lang) and his girlfriend (Burrell) who are on the run after killing a watchman during a robbery attempt.... [N.S.: FNG spoiled the picture.]
“After deliberately withholding information from the police about the crime, Preston, a highly skilled commando, goes looking for payback. A suspicious Scotland Yard inspector (Tapley) is his only obstacle. Preston is excellent as the laid-back vigilante in this violent British noir.”
David in TN: Eddie Muller returns. This is a British film I haven’t seen. TCM has a new logo and surroundings “for the 21st Century,” but still the same films. No telling how Eddie will be presenting himself.
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TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 am ET is Richard Quine's Drive a Crooked Road (1954) with Mickey Rooney, Dianne Foster, Kevin McCarthy, and Jack Kelly.
Film Noir Guide: "Rooney plays a shy, lonely, auto mechanic who dreams of becoming a professional race car driver. Capitalizing on his loneliness, Foster, sexy girlfriend of bank robber McCarthy, lures Rooney into joining the planned heist of a Palm Beach bank. After refusing McCarthy's offer of fifteen grand to drive the getaway car, Rooney relents when Foster drops him. Rooney gives a surprisingly sensitive performance as the lovesick mechanic, and Foster is excellent as the femme fatale whose conscience pangs might cost Rooney his life. Kelly (brother Bart TV's Maverick) plays McCarthy's partner."
A standard Noir trope of a sap lured to his doom by a woman.
TCM has a bonus on Saturday at Noon ET, Jules Dassin's The Naked City (1948).
This is the first police procedural, still about the best. On location shooting shows New York City and the people who lived and worked there in 1947-48. Some reviewers think the climax was on the Brooklyn Bridge. A sign clearly reads "Williamsburg Bridge."
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