By David in TN
friday, july 7, 2023 at 6:41:00 p.m. edt
TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 a.m. ET is Arthur Lubin’s Impact (1949), Starring Brian Donlevy, with Ella Raines, Helen Walker, Charles Coburn and Anna May Wong.
Film Noir Guide: “This is an interesting yarn about a ruthless businessman (Donlevy), the Double Indemnity-type victim of his scheming wife (Walker) and her lover (Clarence Kolb). The tables are turned, however, when Donlevy survives but is believed to have been killed.”
“Starting a new life in a small Idaho town, he meets gas station owner and war widow Raines, who hires him as an auto mechanic. The fresh Idaho air soon has Donlevy falling in love and trying to forget his former life. Meanwhile, Walker is in a heap of trouble as the prime suspect in his ‘murder’ Will he do the right thing and reveal that the reports of his death were greatly exaggerated?
“The acting is good and the plot intriguing, but the ending is a big letdown. Donlevy is terrific, as is Walker, who gives Barbara Stanwyck a run for her money in the femme fatale department. Coburn, who should have spent more time perfecting his Irish brogue, plays the elderly cop who breaks the case, and Wong is Donlevy’s frightened housekeeper. Gossip queen Sheilah Graham makes a cameo appearance as herself.”
Friday, July 07, 2023
Was that Barbara Stanwyck? Lizbeth Scott? Ava Gardner? TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 a.m. ET is Arthur Lubin, Dorothy Davenport/Reid, and Jay Dratler’s Impact (1949), Starring Brian Donlevy, with Ella Raines, Helen Walker, Charles Coburn and Anna May Wong
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TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 a.m. ET is Douglas Sirk's Shockproof (1949) with Cornel Widle, Patricia Knight, John Baragrey, Esther Minciotti.
Film Noir Guide: "Wilde plays a Los Angeles parole officer who is tempted by his latest parolee (Knight), a woman who murdered her husband. After spending five years in prison, Knight returns home hoping to continue her romantic relationship with her bookmaker boyfriend (Baragrey)."
"Instead, she finds that it would be a violation of her parole to associate with him. When she gets picked up with Baragrey in a police raid on a bookie joint, Wilde gives her a second chance."
"He moves her into his house to take care of his blind mother (Minciotti) and begins to fall in love with her. They secretly marry, also a violation of her parole. Their marriage and his career are jeopardized when Knight becomes involved in a shooting, and the couple must go on the lam. Wilde and Knight are believable as the love-struck couple, but the otherwise entertaining film is spoiled by its cop-out ending."
David in TN: Film Noir Guide is always complaining about "cop-out endings." Modern critics (and TCM hosts) praise Douglas Sirk for his 50s Soapy films: Magnificent Obsession, All that Heave Allows, etc. They say Sirk is mocking and ridiculing 50s American society.
We'll see if Red Eddie Muller talks about Sirk's first wife and son whom he left behind in Germany.
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