By David in TN
saturday, november 26, 2022 at 12:43:00 a.m.
TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 12:30 a.m. and 10 a.m. ET is Death of a Cyclist (1955).
This is a Spanish film of supposedly "social realism." A man and woman conducting an illicit affair have a hit-and-run accident. It was a big hit in Europe at the time, but was panned by American critics. Red Eddie Muller will probably claim it was a rebuke of Franco's Spain.
N.S.: Uh, oh. When David uses so few words to discuss one of Red Eddie's programming choices, it means he's underwhelmed.
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TCM Shows Robert Siodmak's The Killers (1946) Thursday Night at 8 p.n. ET with Edmund O'Brien, Ava Gardner, Burt Lancaster, Albert Dekker, Sam Levene, William Conrad, Charles McGraw, Jack Lambert, Jeff Corey, Charles D. Brown.
Film Noir Guide: "Two brazen hit men (McGraw and Conrad, in his film debut) show up one evening in an unlikely film noir locale (Brentwood, New Jersey) and put eight slugs into a filling station attendant (Lancaster) who had waited passively for them in his cheap hotel room. (When asked by a friend why the killers are after him, Lancaster replied simply, 'I did something wrong once.')"
"An insurance investigator (O'Brien), obsessed with discovering the reason for the killing, seeks out Lancaster's friends and enemies--his beautiful but scheming girlfriend (Gardner), his prison cellmate (Brown), his partner in a big heist (crime boss Dekker and goons Lambert and Corey) and a police detective (Levene)."
"What the investigator uncovers turns out to be the 'double cross to end all double crosses.' Lancaster, in his film debut, gives a sensational performance as the depressed loser. Gardner distinguishes herself in the femme fatale role, proving that she was mot just a gorgeous sex symbol but a genuinely talented actress."
"This classic noir, based loosely on an Ernest Hemingway short story of the same title, was remade in 1964 with John Cassavetes in the Lancaster role, Angie Dickinson as the femme fatale, Lee Marvin and Clu Gulager as the killers and Ronald Reagan (in his final film before turning to politics) as the crime boss. The classic TV show Dragnet borrowed Miklos Rozsa"s compelling score (dum da dum dum) and made it famous."
David In TN: Red Eddie Muller has yet to feature this classic Noir on Noir Alley. He has shown the 1964 version. Virginia Christine, the "Mrs. Olsen" of the Folger coffee commercials and character roles on TV for decades, plays Lancaster's Nice Girl date who gets thrown over for Bad Girl Gardner, and then marries Sam Levene's character. It's fun to see a young "Mrs. Olsen" dressed up as a late 30s Girl About Town.
The Killers is being shown due to Ava Gardner being Star of the Month. For a bonus, at 2 a.m. ET see East Side, West Side (1949) with Barbara Stanwyck, James Mason, and Ava Gardner. A New York high society marriage's disintegration leads to murder. it's a soap opera type but good for James Mason fans.
TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 a.m. ET is Jack Bernhard's Decoy (1946) with Jeane Gillie, Edward Norris, and Herbert Rudley.
Decoy was made by Monogram's Poverty Row and wasn't rated highly until "rediscovered" by Red Eddie Muller among others.
Jeane Gillie (1915-1949) was an English actress briefly in Hollywood. She was married to the director, Jack Bernhard, who was a minor director. Gillie plays a gang moll who with cohorts, revive an executed killer from the gas chamber to find where he buried a fortune in stolen money.
Eddie Muller has raved about Gillie's over the top performance as a ruthless killer femme fatale. The screenwriter was Communist Nedrick Young. The film's selling point is supposed to be how women can be as bad as men.
Gillie and Bernhard divorced in 1947. She went back to Britain and died in 1949, age 33.
I've seen Decoy once, didn't make much impression.
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