By David in TN
friday, january 20, 2023 at 4:18:00 p.m. est
TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 a.m. ET is Peter Godfrey's The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947) with Humphrey Bogart, Barbara Stanwyck, Alexis Smith, Nigel Bruce, Patrick O'Moore, Ann Carter and Barry Bernard.
Film Noir Guide: "Bogart is a psychopathic artist who paints his wife as the angel of death and, when she no longer inspires him, poisons her so he'll be free to marry his new inspiration (Stanwyck). After less than two years of marriage, Bogart finds his creativity once again heading South.
"Then he meets the beautiful and wealthy Smith and starts making plans to get rid of the second Mrs. Carroll. But complicating his scheme are Stanwyck's former fiance (O'Moore), who's still in love with her, and a greedy, blackmailing chemist (Bernard). Bruce plays Stanwyck's bungling doctor, and Carter as the killer's precocious daughter from his first marriage."
"Overly melodramatic and lacking suspense, this disappointing Bogart vehicle, at best, prepared him for his future role as the paranoid Captain Queeg in 1954's The Caine Mutiny, and Stanwyck for her portrayal as another wife in distress in 1948's Sorry, Wrong Number."
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TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 a.m. ET is Andrew L. Stone's Highway 301 (1950) with Steve Cochran, Virginia Grey, Gaby Andre, Edmon Ryan, Robert Webber, Wally Cassell, Richard Egan, Edward Norris, Aline Towne.
Film Noir Guide: "Despite the hokey opening statements by the governors of Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina ('This picture may save the life of someone in the audience') and the equally hokey closing remarks by the narrator ('You can't be kind to congenital criminals like these'), this underrated little gem really delivers. The brazen 'Tri-State Outft' (Cochran, Cassell, Webber, Egan, and Norris) has been pulling bank jobs in broad daylight, and law enforcement officials from three states and the District of Columbia can't come up with a clue to their identities."
"Accompanying the gang are Grey and Towne (Cochran's and Cassell's molls) and Webber's latest girlfriend (Andre), who naively believes he's a traveling salesman. Led by vicious killer Cochran, the gang pulls off an armored car heist, the fabled 'biggest haul of all time,' which turns out to be one of film noir's darkest ironies."
"Breathing down their necks is the shrewd cop (Ryan), whose extensive manhunt forces the desperate thugs to scatter to their many hideouts. This is an exciting, fast moving, and exceptionally violent film. While the entire cast is excellent, it's Cochran who shines as the despicable, psychopathic gang leader, who will shoot a dame in the back without blinking an eye. Crime may not pay, but it sure is entertaining."
David In TN: Unusually violent for the time. Cochran gives his standard Bad Guy characterization. Ryan usually plays a villain in noir films. This time he's the detective tracking down the criminal gang. The critics at the time were mixed. Bosley Crowther of the NY Times called it "an exercise in sadism."
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