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karlbunker
Reviews
The Dark End of the Street (1981)
Wonderful film
Reviewer Wayne Malin got the plot a little wrong -- A teenager falls from a roof in an accident, not a murder, and as I recall (it's been a long time since I saw this film too), it's not clear at the end of the movie if his injuries are fatal. But I think he got most everything else right. Both Wayne and I may be hazy on plot details, but nevertheless we're in agreement that the emotional impact of the piece is unforgettable.
It may seem a cheap cliché' to praise a movie's "gritty realism," but I can't think of a better term for what this beautiful little film has in spades. The teenagers (and adults) in it are utterly, completely believable as they deal with poverty, racial tensions, honesty, loyalty, friendship, running away versus facing life's responsibilities. Also in the mix are some less-ennobling aspects of being human, like pointless, testosterone-fueled schoolyard one-upsmanship and plain teenaged stupidity.
This is a sadly-overlooked gem of a movie, and I hope it finds its way to DVD distribution some day.
Cry of the City (1948)
Criminally little-known film noir
This is, in my opinion, a vastly underrated gem of the film noir genre, and I fervently hope that some day soon it will get the restoration and DVD release it richly deserves.
Victor Mature is often a rather wooden actor, but in this film he plays perfectly against Richard Conte. The two men are like opposite sides of the same coin. Conte the flamboyant, emotional criminal, Mature the tightly controlled police detective; both from the same background and both driven by their different codes of behavior. Conte is a wounded cop- killer on the run who encounters a variety of richly drawn and often bizarre characters in his long flight through the dark streets of the city.
Often in film noir there will be a moralizing speech tacked in towards the end that is supposed to teach some imaginary, incredibly naive audience that "crime doesn't pay." In this film Mature's version of that speech actually rings true. He lists the people Conte has indirectly done harm to and says "He didn't forget them -- he didn't even think of them. He used them and brushed them aside just like he's used everybody he's ever known." There's a depth and honesty in that small speech that rises above its cliché'd origin. To this point we've been following the Conte character as an anti-hero; we believe that for all his criminality, there's some honor to him. But finally we realize that like everyone else, we've been fooled; in reality this character nothing but a hollow and worthless sociopath.
For all the films that have been made about crime and criminals, how often do you see one that actually makes you think about crime and criminals -- much less one that was made so long ago?
Human Desire (1954)
Unconvincing film noir
I'm generally willing to forgive old movies, and particularly old films noir, a lot. But this flick just goes way beyond forgivably (forgivableness?) in the unconvincing, unbelievable actions of its characters.
Broderick Crawford is introduced as an apparently nice guy. His wife (Gloria Grahame) is introduced as affectionate and supportive. Crawford gets fired from his job at a train yard, and asks his wife to put in a good word for him with a successful business man she knew before they were married. After she does so, suddenly Crawford is insanely jealous. He beats his wife and without so much as a twitching eyelid, he cold-bloodily plots the murder of the business man. Once the murder is done, his attitude is a hand-patting "well, that's that; let's get back to life as usual." Nothing has been shown to make you accept his character as this sort of raving psychopath; apparently this is supposed to be not-too-unusual behavior for a jealous husband. Meanwhile, Grahame is none too eager to get back to life as usual with Crawford, but she's "trapped," because he holds a note that he forced her to write to the murdered man. Huh? Finally, in the denouement of the story, Grahame decides to take revenge on her drunken and emotionally shattered husband by taunting him about her past sexual exploits. Not exactly something a sensible person would be likely to do with an insanely jealous and murderous husband.
On the plus side, the dark, maze-like train yard and the ominous, threatening power of the heavy locomotives make for some interesting noir imagery. And Gloria Grahame, with her odd voice and pursed lips, exudes an intense and slightly perverse sexuality that makes her fairly convincing in the femme fatal role she adopts toward Glenn Ford.
In all, not a worthless film, but perhaps one for film noir "completists" only.