jpseacadets Reviews

Germany Year Zero (1948)

Fear eats the soul.

[9/10 · 30 April 2007]

Rossellini's films just after World War II are to be appreciated as both social comment and for artistic advancement in the matter of film. This film, like no other, deals with Germany as a vanquished nation, driven downward toward annihilation. Edmund, a young boy, made to beggar himself in order to survive, gives one of the truly authentic portraits of youth driven to despair ever seen on the screen.

How used to sentimentality we Americans had become by the time Rossellini made this desolate vision of a destroyed post-war Europe.

How coddled and led astray were we by image after image of dimpled, freckled kids clutching hold of their pets. Children the likes of Mickey Rooney or Dean Stockwell. How engaging...and yet how unreal.

Edmund isn't just a child, we learn. But more so, a country.

A nation bombed into rubble and tasting its own ashes. Stripped of everything of any value and reduced to zero. Rejected by everyone and forced into murder...in the end made to stare death in the face.

Germany YEAR ZERO will shock you. Make you wince as the tragedy of a nation corrupted unfolds, and self-destructs.

Edmund is no longer just a boy made to suffer in a world he never made. In the end he's our conscience.

Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970)

A forgotten treasure.

[8/10 · 25 December 2006]

This movie may not be on a list somewhere of Liza Minnelli's best films or Otto Preminger's or one of Kay Thompson(Liza's Godmom)or James Coco's best efforts. I do think it ranks high on a list of one of the best movies about introverts ever made. That it wasn't a box office or critical success doesn't matter. Nor that it did nothing to advance the careers of anyone connected to it.

But I think TELL ME THAT YOU LOVE ME, JUNIE MOON deserves a special place with audiences who love quirky movies that go where other movies dare not go. Think of Altman's BREWSTER McCLOUD or Hal Ashby's HAROLD AND MAUD, for instance. Movies that deal with characters most others would call misfits because they are different or eccentric.

One, for example, is a gay man. For a 1970 film, this is rare to say the least. But to make him a disabled gay man trapped in a wheel chair due to an accident is a revelation. I can't imagine another such character either before or since this film came along. Another revelation is a disfigured woman, played by Minnelli, and not seen on the screen in a leading role since Joan Crawford in Cukor's A WOMAN'S FACE. Both of these characters completely dominate JUNIE MOON. They are truly amusing in using their wit to cope with an unkind world. The third eccentric is an epileptic, played by Ken Howard. His performance is the weakest of the three and this, unfortunately, weakens the overall impact. Had this part been cast better, honors would have come its way to be sure. The scene where the handicapped guy can't negotiate the smallness of his bathroom is a gem. Another is the vacation scene where these three descend on a hapless hotel staff. Another where a naive woman is seduced by three hunky members of an art colony is captivating.

This movie sparked controversy because of a scene where two people are having sex in a cemetery. A real graveyard is used and relatives of the dead buried there balked and so a lawsuit ensued. But knowing this to be an Otto Preminger film...that is not so strange(recall THE MOON IS BLUE and MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM). Preminger ate up such controversy. No doubt such headlines added to his film's box office. JUNIE MOON is his weirdest movie, but far from his worst. None of the films after this one are even half as good. Even Saul Bass, whose title drawings are a trade mark for Preminger films, excels in it.

Judy Garland died while Liza was filming her part in this. A year later she began work on her greatest role, that of Sally Bowles in Fosse's CABARET. While both her roles in these films are about introverted and unstable vulnerable women...CABARET is the first where she gets to show her strongest suit: that of a musical performer whose star power is as good as her mother's. Her work in CABARET solidified her image as a singer and dancer the way FUNNY GIRL did it for Streisand. While TELL ME THAT YOU LOVE ME, JUNIE MOON may not be legendary, it still boasts having a legend in it.

Crash (I) (2004)

Spike Lee rides again.

[1/10 · 9 April 2006]

On a hot summer day in Brooklyn, New York, tempers are boiling over, the streets are snarled with traffic, and long-simmering resentments are coming to a boil. Sound familiar? You bet. Only now it's the West coast version and memories of the Rodney King riot have not subsided because we have these racist white police officers who...

Don't you all get the feeling of being manipulated, cursed-out, stereotyped to death? Don't you also get this film should have a tag-line that reads RIPPED FROM TODAY'S HEADLINES! If this movie is supposed to make us more tolerant of each other by getting us to understand about racism, then I think I'll just rent IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT or maybe GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER. This is certainly an improvement over Sandra Bullock, playing a rich white woman making it up to her Latina servant for years of abuse by uttering the following let's-be-friends drivel: "You're the only friend I've got left in the whole wide world!" Weep,weep,weep.

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

A revelation about human love.

[10/10 · 9 February 2006]

They told me this was a movie about gay cowboys. The ads for it read "Love is a force of nature." How confusing, I thought. So I went not knowing what to expect. First thing that struck me was how quiet the audience was....man, what silence. The actors looked pretty tough and rugged, like they always did in westerns. Then came the tent scene ...and right there it hit me with a wallop. Man, I don't think I've been this glued to the screen in years. The first thing I felt was how the West could never be quite the same anymore. The next was my amazement in how they got two such tough guys to portray sensitivity the way they did. The answer had to be director Ang Lee with such an expressive Americana I have not seen since George Stevens' time. What a craftsman. Another answer lies with the two stars. Jake Gyllenhaal and his doe-like eyes filled with devotion. So vulnerable and such human vulnerability. But if a masterful director and a congenial, gifted actor weren't enough - - and these are plenty - - my greatest impression from the movie is Heath Ledger. What a treasure trove of talent! He is simply amazing. A repertoire of voice, walk, gesture, glance, grunting... and he breaks your heart with them. His portrayal of a lovesick cowboy is unforgettable. He just grows and grows on you! Not since James Dean or Monty Clift has there been one like he. Playing a man of few words who handles his quiet moments on screen with sledge- hammer effect. But I'm straying from the story. Because for all their strengths and toughness, life throws them a curve-ball. I wish I could tell you more without giving the movie away. Suffice it to say that one of the men must struggle with his inner demons, a struggle so fraught with pain that it exacts a heavy toll not only on them, but delivers much collateral damage to the women in their lives. They too suffer over some things that are no fault of theirs. But it's the men, Ennis and Jack, who endure the most misery, a misery that cannot even be articulated by either man due to their isolation; neither afford to say the words "I love you" to each other. This happens because these are the rules society has made for them. Cowboys, especially. It's drilled into us from when we're little boys that a man can't have a romantic interest in another man. Even for lonesome drifters.

After witnessing these hardships and struggles most Americans know so little about, I leave the theater and go home, not in the mood to go shopping. I thought of myself as a kid wearing my cowboy hat, holster, and six gun, and how I realize my view of cowboys will be forever changed because of this movie. I even wondered what Randolph Scott, my favorite cowboy star, would feel about Ennis and Jack riding along the Chisolm trail with him? You've come a long way, Randy! Let me finish by telling everyone they have nothing to fear from this movie. They do only if human love is fearful to them. If they forget that love is truly one of nature's forces...and a transcending one. BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is a momentous movie I tell my friends. Especially when viewed more with the heart than with the eyes. It's a pivotal event in American cinema.

The Apartment (1960)

Entertainmentwise, it sparkles.

[10/10 · 11 July 2005]

Once in a great while along comes a movie that you'll just know you'll enjoy seeing. There was Billy Wilder directing it and he was my most preferred director of comedy films like SOME LIKE IT HOT, STALAG 17 and THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH. Then it had Jack Lemmon who just had to be the funniest guy on the screen up until then for me. Then it was set in New York City and that meant a greater level of charm and sophistication to me - - and since I lived there, why not? Needless to say, I was not disappointed. THE APARTMENT was everything I thought it would be. Everything the censors allowed; and everything Wilder was known to use in his scripts, including wit, charm, topical jokes and, of course, a heavy layer of cynicism.

Back then I was 18. Now I'm much older and watching it again was like flipping through the pages of an old family album...and why not? As Ray Walston says in this film..."We're just like one big happy family." Here is vintage Wilder doing everything most directors avoided doing, like giving us adultery, crummy business ethics, a drunken Santa Claus, attempted suicide and more...and still making everything turn out right in the end. In between everything sparkles as not a line of dialog is wasted. Hey, that's because Wilder has done up his characters humanity-wise. Not a line or piece of music or grain of furniture is wasted in this film. Everything is made to be useful in moving the plot forward-wise. Fred MacMurray sheds his good guy image to play a two-timing heel, not above corrupting his own employees to make whoopee. Joyce Jameson does her Marilyn bit that clues us in nostalgia-wise. Edie Adams, another Monroe mimic, this time playing it cold and calculating and a snitch.

Then there's the apartment itself, where a tennis racket is used to strain spaghetti and keys are left under the doormat in case the unexpected happens company-wise. The exterior featured a grand entrance, befitting an address near to Central Park. Let's see...51 W. 67th St...and bay front windows. Quite a pad for a lonely schmuck like Lemmon's character, inexpensive, too. Enter Shirley MacLaine who was just emerging from her Hal Wallis cocoon of playing sweet and nice on screen and partying with the Rat Pack off the screen, to play a kept woman to a married executive. But Shirley is worshiped from afar by Jack who thinks she's really a nice girl living at home with an older sister. So that's the plot until one Christmas Eve when all the loose ends come together and this comedy of an office workaholic trying to please all of his bosses by seeing to their libidinous needs turns itself inside out as comedy morphs into drama.

All this and music to hum to theme-wise in the form of Love Theme from The Apartment. It's played on the piano at a Chinese restaurant (and what would a movie about New Yorkers be without one of these?). A pair of twin piano players named Ferrante & Teicher had the hit recording of this tune and it was their biggest smash, second only to their Theme from EXODUS. Usually you remember the theme song long after you've forgotten the movie. But not with this movie. Maybe because it's so unique memory-wise, comedy-wise, and Wilder-wise.

Stromboli (1950)

Why bother?

[3/10 · 27 June 2005]

Why bother to see this movie? It probably rates an award for being the worst career move of a major movie star since Clark Gable's laughable playing of an Irish patriot in Parnell.

It's inconceivable that Bergman would choose both this movie and its director over a lucrative Hollywood career where she could choose among the finest scripts and directors being offered at that time. To begin with, there was no script to work with except a few notes. Then we are supposed to believe the polished Bergman as a poor refugee willing to do anything to be released from a refugee camp, including marriage to a poor Italian fisherman she doesn't even love. I read where Anna Magnani was the original choice for this part. If so, that made a lot more sense than to cast the luminous Bergman in such a proletarian part. But since she was in love with her director, common sense flew out the window.

So she goes to live in this poor village where the men must toil to extract a meager living from the sea. A place she obviously hates to be and where she doesn't fit in.

Her only friend is the village priest who knows she's not suited to the life of a poor fisherman's bride, but tells her that for the sake of love she must repress her true feelings of revulsion, and accept the poverty and despair she encounters each day. On top of all of this, there's this volcano always on the brink of erupting and drowning them all in hot lava. But like a true heroine, Bergman revolts against her misery by declaring war on just about everyone else in this dreary film. She even goes as far as trying to seduce the village priest, in a scene that would generate laughter if it were not so pathetic. Since her poor slob of a husband must lock her in a room to keep her from running away, she's forced to use her body to bribe a married man to take her off the island. To her, no sacrifice is too great; no man unapproachable if he is willing to help her to escape the island and her misery. I won't bother to tell you how this all ends. The no-script movie ending is as plausible as the rest of STROMBOLI. I even remember (from seeing it on late night TV) that it had two different endings! So be warned if you should feel brave enough to sit through this king-size turkey and catch the miscast Bergman. It led to her downfall in Hollywood for the next seven years and she was condemned for sleeping with her director while still married to Peter Lindstrom. None of the movies she made with this director(whom she later married) are noteworthy except as proof of a career gone berserk. I kid you not. It's pretty embarrassing.

• - SoundTrack

The Fountainhead (1949)

Great story, Great style.

[8/10 · 14 June 2005]

Ayn Rand's THE FOUNTAINHEAD is a long book filled with complex characters and strong philosophy that champions the right of the individual to own the things he creates - - in this case the designs of an architect - - and is opposed for his integrity by the people that would tear him down. King Vidor has directed this film. This is a superb choice for such a film in that Vidor reflects the views of THE FOUNTAINHEAD's Howard Roark, a non-comprising idealist, and has had battles with many studio heads that led to Vidor's eventual early retirement from the Hollywood jungle that cherishes commercialism and eschews art. So here's the perfect mating of director and material that, for the most part, succeeds in its purpose to make us think and be entertained all at once. Luckily, Vidor is given much that is great to go with: Max Steiner, for one, has written a dramatic score that perfectly accents the larger-than-life characters. From the opening credits, his stirring score alerts us that something big and profound is about to unfold. Gary Cooper's Howard Roark exudes the power and intellectual meaning behind Rand's idealism. His speech pleading for freedom of the individual to create what he envisions ranks among the great courtroom summations, as powerful as Paul Muni's Zola or Lionel Barrymore's A Free Soul. WHAT A WONDERFUL SPEECH! A speech that rivets the attention and sounds timeless. One imagines how the politically correct thought police of today must shudder at every word! Just to hear it has the power to make anyone stand his ground. Inveighing against corporate greed and conformity and how compromising means death to one's talents and integrity. Raymond Massey, as a newspaper tycoon who caters to the base instincts of the mob, is excellent. His gamble to prove himself the equal of Roark in both the bedroom and the boardroom, is one of the great moments of the film. Robert Douglas as the acid-tongue critic who believes all men, regardless of worth, must be subservient to the all-powerful state, is chillingly marvelous. So much like the drama critic George Sanders plays in ALL ABOUT EVE, only without his droll humor.

Patricia Neal here is given a rare opportunity in a meaty role she handles with great style and pizazz. I could not help but feel that Neal is the type of beauty Ayn Rand visualizes herself to be had nature been kinder. The attractiveness of this movie, however, lies in its words and breath-taking characters. I recommend THE FOUNTAINHEAD highly. It proves with great style that something intellectual need not be boring and stuffy. Warner Bros. is to be congratulated for giving us a film not usually found in its repertoire.

• - SoundTrack

My Dream Is Yours (1949)

Old Hollywood

[8/10 · 24 May 2005]

I've forgotten how vibrant and appealing the young Doris was.

She benefits here from a class director like Michael Curtiz.

I only wished he could have done the same for Rosie Clooney in "White Christmas" or with Peggy Lee in "The Jazz Singer" as they had this potential beyond being blonde canary birds, but never hit their stride in films the way Doris did. Here she visits such Hollywood landmarks as the Brown Derby and Schwab's drug store. Eve Arden scores again as the unlucky-with-men, wise-cracking best friend, a part Thelma Ritter played to perfection in "Pilow Talk," later with Doris. After the first hour, the ghost of "A Star is Born" begins to take form as Lee Bowman drinks himself out of a career and then the unknown Doris rises to become a bigger star than he. Also, the presence of both Jack Carson and Adolphe Menjou from both versions of " Star is Born" triggered my memory. But Bowman is no James Mason who evoked sympathy from the audience and, in fact, he's mainly a conceited jerk who deserves to fail.

But this is Doris's film and in it she showed the promise of what was to come in films like "Young Man with a Horn" (Curtiz again) and "Love Me or Leave Me." It's only when musicals dropped out of fashion and she was forced into doing mediocre comedies that made us forget her truly wide-ranging talents. Had she been given better co-stars than Jack Carson and the insipid Gordon MacRae, she might have risen to the heights of a Judy Garland!

Touch of Evil (1958)

What's good about Touch of Evil.

[9/10 · 2 May 2005]

(1) This movie is a remarkable example of what could be done in a hurry and under a small budget. The opening shot is truly amazing, like something out of Hitchcock made with major funding.

(2) How it predates Hitchcock by two years the way Janet Leigh is trapped and terrorized in a small motel a la Psycho.

(3) Those nifty camera angles, such as shooting between the throbbing legs of that stripper and filming Heston head-on through the windshield of that speeding convertible.

(4) The barroom fight where Heston drags that hood along the full length of the bar.

(5) Henry Mancini's mad mambo music played loud to drown out the cries of a murder victim.

(6) Welles gives us many indelible images here that it is no wonder Touch of Evil is shown at film-making schools.

Lecturers probably prefer this to Citizen Kane if only to avoid cluttering up the place talking about Marion Davies and William Randolph Hearst.

• - SoundTrack

Spetters (1980)

Worlds Apart

[10/10 · 21 February 2005]

This film is no "Saturday Night Fever." For one thing, "Spetters" is more of an art film; while the other reeks of commercialism throughout. The music by the Bee Gees, moreover, makes it look more like a record album vainly attempting to be a film. Second, sexual repression in SNF more impacts the lives of the American kids than it does the Dutch boys. The garage scene in the latter film (where the three young bikers compare erections to see who gets first crack at the carny gal)would be judged too homo-erotic for American audiences to take, for instance. While the American boys go disco dancing for fun; the dutch kids try testing their courage in more dangerous ways, such as bike racing. While the only death in "Spetters" occurs when a biker deliberately crashes into a moving truck (a suicide, rather than living his life as an impotent cripple); the American dies falling off a bridge while stunting! Even the role models for the two groups of young men are different. While John Travolta admires a poster of Al Pacino, an actor, on his bedroom wall and takes pride in his hairdo; the bikers' hero is a national cyclist whom they want to emulate and become someday. Defining manhood, in American terms, becomes just another marketing tool(since Travolta has no aspirations to act); while the three bikers know the way to manhood lies through courage, not false glamor and appearances.

The scene where one of the bikers gets paid back for robbing and beating gay men by being gang-raped by tough-looking homosexuals, is excellent. Here the tables are turned in a way we would never see in American films, since gays are supposed to be victims who never fight back against their attackers. This demonstration of courage to defend one's honor and dignity makes "Spetters" a far superior film than SNF. SNF, despite all its trendiness as a barometer of the seventies, treats both its men and women as garden variety, working-class stereotypes. For genuine closeness, heroism and male-bonding, check this one out at the video store (make sure it's the uncut 123 min. DVD Director's version). A better coming-of-age film you will never see.

Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)

The love that dared not speak its name.

[10/10 · 17 February 2005]

Being an admirer of both Monty Clift and Tennessee Williams, I went to see this film with great anticipation. I was eighteen at the time and topics such as homosexuality were taboo in the cinema back then. But with the by Tennessee Williams attached to it, I expected to be confronted with material, characters and situations that challenged my sheltered mind. But with "Suddenly, Last Summer," I was amazed to learn that Williams surpassed even himself! From the very beginning, I beheld a Katharine Hepburn playing a character so bizarre and cryptic, that it bordered on the comical. Even Monty Clift, his youth and tender looks despoiled by accident, pills & booze, looked tired. But Liz Taylor seemed perfectly okay, her beauty never more radiant. The only thing wrong with her character was her sanity. Apparently she witnessed something so awful the summer in question happening to her cousin Sebastian, that it drove her over the edge of sanity into madness. But the eccentric aunt and the deranged cousin aren't the focal point of this grim tale. Sebastian is the one who motivates all the others. The one we are tantalized with and shocked by and made so mysterious, that we don't even get to see his face, hear his voice or learn what made him the way he was. He's always shot from behind, as if to see his face might just make the audience care about him, know his humanity and, possibly, even sympathize with him. Sebastian was made to be abstract, and censorship being what it was, that made the producers breathe easier. Although he meets a horrible death at the hands of some Third World beach boys, he's not meant to be the victim of the film. Instead, his pretty cousin is the one who must be sacrificed to protect the memory and reputation of her cousin. Mama wants it that way and what Hepburn wants, she gets, even going so far as to blackmail two doctors to silence her niece! Mama Hepburn, to me, is the real monster of the film and Taylor her helpless victim. Made helpless by the need for secrecy at all costs. If anything, this tale can be about how an obsession with secrecy leads to madness.

As for Sebastian, we are supposed to think he got what he deserved. As for me, the movie left me emotionally drained. The predatory beasts unleashed, the primeval garden(replete with insect-devouring plants), the attempted suicide and gang rape by loony inmates of Taylor.... the long speech at the beginning about swooping blackbirds preying on baby turtles that Hepburn delivers, all made me limp at the end. Hepburn and Taylor both received worthy Oscar nominations for their work. The set designer as well for the foreboding lunatic asylum and simmering garden; the primitive operating room where lobotomies are performed - - all excellent. Rent the video if you can. But remember, this is set in 1937 when homosexuals weren't getting elected to Congress. Remember, also, that Sebastian is a martyr if only because he was before his time. Just like the saint he's named after.

I was made to realize above all else from this film that there is a beast that lurks in our unconscious mind; a remnant from our prehistoric past; and of which we are reminded by the frequent animal imagery used in this film. Something to think about whenever we see the strong preying upon the weak. To quote a line from the film: "Nature is not made in the image of man's compassion."

• - Sound Track

An Affair to Remember (1957)

To me this remains Cary Grant's best film.

[10/10 · 30 January 2005]

What is there to "Remember?" For one, this version begins with a haunting title tune sung by Vic Damone as gentle snowflakes daintily descend on what we presume is New York's Central Park. Wide screen and De Luxe color are added and the new title (from the older, simpler "Love Affair") signifies something more promising and alluring. Aside from this, the plot remains essentially the same with legendary director Leo McCarey again at the helm. The thing I remember most, however, is 53-year-old Cary Grant never looking better playing the carefree playboy, traveling on luxury liners and getting engaged to beautiful women he has no intention of ever marrying. Grant by now had been on Hollywood's A-list for over 20 years and, perhaps more so than any other older star, was concerned about his long-established image. Thus a tried-and-true remake with a director he'd worked with thrice before made for familiar territory.

Essentially a comedy in the first half, the film shifts into serious mode when the girl he meets and discovers he truly loves and wants to marry is also engaged to be married. Deborah Kerr shines at her loveliest and the two plan to meet six months later to see if they are still serious about each other. But fate intervenes and when Grant thinks his girl has jilted him, he turns to drink and painting to overcome his pain. But surprisingly his pain turns into profit when his paintings begin to really sell as never before. In addition, he ends his playboy ways and becomes a human being! Thus we get to see this affair is certainly worth remembering with such wonders to behold.

But getting back Debbie is another thing. Although still unmarried, to her eyes her eligibility has been damaged due to landing in a wheel chair from an accident. But when he arrives at her apartment to bring her a shawl his late granny has bequeathed her, he doesn't notice her disability. Debbie, you see, feared he'd want her only out of pity and her pride couldn't allow that. But we already know that Cary has had to swallow his own damaged pride...so why can't she? Well...love thieves are finally conquered and they are united despite her damaged state. "If it had to happen to one of us, why did it have to be you?" Cary asks her when he realizes the truth. "If you can paint. I can walk," Debbie says all misty-eyed...and by this time we are all kinda the same. He truly loves her more than ever, she finds out, and miracles do happen.

This film gave new life to Grant's career and for another decade he would enjoy, and so would we, hit after hit, more than holding his own against younger actors. His charm proved endless and the screens of today could use this. Miracles can happen off screen as well as on!

Night and the City (1950)

Widmark at his love-to-hate-him best.

[9/10 · 28 January 2005]

After seeing him in "Kiss of Death" followed by "Road House," I didn't think he could get meaner, sleazier, and bleaker as does Richard Widmark's Harry Fabian character in "Night and the City." But he manages to do so, if only to keep apace with others as repellent in the same movie. In this one, Widmark manages a bit more roguish charm as he cheats just about everyone unfortunate enough to come into contact with him. No, he's not doing anything so sadistic as to push an old lady in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs. But he comes close to it by goading an old wrestler out of retirement where he safely needs to be so as to win a fortune gambling. When Fabian's scheme backfires and the old man dies in the ring, Harry must flee into the night as the old wrestler's gangster son takes revenge. As Harry seeks the help of every type of underworld denizen London has to offer to escape his pursuers, he learns whom his enemies and friends really are.

"Night and the City" is the fourth of Jules Dassin's Film Noirs after "Brute Force," the superb "Naked City," and the lesser- known "Thieves Highway," (along with this film, now out on DVD).

The scene where the gangster's henchmen speed in a car through the night to spread word that Harry is dead meat is chilling and claustrophobic, as Harry's world slowly closes in on him. So very like murderer Ted De Corsia's futile flight up one of the Brooklyn Bridge's towers escaping an army of cops in hot pursuit from Dassin's "Naked City." We know De Corsia's going nowhere as we know the same thing about Harry.

But as dawn follows night, Harry has one last trick up his sleeve.

One final cheat remaining in his arsenal of weapons, much like the other Harry, surnamed Lime, when even the underground Vienna sewers fail HIM. Perhaps a final try at redemption will cleanse his soul? Widmark fans will eat this one up. Its got that snickering laugh of his that's a cross between a Peter Lorre chuckle and the sound a practical joker makes after giving you a hot foot! If you like this one, try getting hold of "O'Henry's Full House" and Sam Fuller's "Pick-up on South Street" for vintage Widmark.

Thieves' Highway (1949)

Dassin on a roll!

[8/10 · 28 January 2005]

Beginning with his compelling "Brute Force" ('47)followed by the richly atmospheric "Naked City" ('48), Jules Dassin became the hottest dealer in Hollywood of the Film-Noir genre. "Thieves Highway" adds ethnic tensions to the Dassin stew of lost souls always living at the edge of danger. Richard Conte was at his peak here as the tough trucker, quick to throw a punch when he's threatened and equally capable of rolling with them if necessary. In Robert Siodmak's "Cry of the City," he's held in a headlock by a butch Hope Emerson; in this one, a jack gives way and a truck fender lands on his neck....ouch!

Conte, like Burt Lancaster, came from a streetwise background that, second only to a boxing ring, fitted him neatly as a glove when it came to movies like "Thieves Highway." Conte was so good in this, he was selected to repeat the role on TV six years later under the title "Overnight Haul" on the old 20th Century-Fox Hour.

As for Dassin, he had yet a fourth fling at the genre the following year with the claustrophobic thriller, "Night and the City." A film worth commenting on later. As for "Thieves Highway," having seen it, you may want to follow it up with Clouzot"s "Wages of Fear," made three years later and the ultimate truckers' movie. As a boy I was privileged to have seen all four Dassin movies during their original releases. How thrilling to see "Thieves Highway" and "Night and the City" now out on DVD!