Hey
Ken, I finally caught up with this "essential" Otto Preminger noir on a dvd!
Klondike, you gotta get this dvd.
It was most enjoyable, and was especially savory after relishing Preminger's
Fallen Angel (1945) recently. I was particularly taken with the silent moments given to
Dana Andrews in this film. His expressive face with that thousand yard stare comes in handy when he realizes that he's fallen into a spiral from which he may never return. This weariness of the soul is most touching during the sequence when
Andrews sits up throughout the night until dawn comes, smoking and thinking, without a word of dialogue.
Dialogue, (at least some of which is from the pen of
Ben Hecht), is pretty good here, especially when spouted by character actors such as
Ruth Donnelly,
Robert F. Simon (who's uncredited!), and the marvelous
Tom Tully. There's one extended sequence between
Andrews and his alienated partner
Bert Freed and Freed's wife,
Eda Reiss Merin (also uncredited!) about borrowing money that is probably a model of how to suggest a complex life and a dynamic among characters economically on film.
Possible Spoilers Below
My only quibble:
Gene Tierney, who's always lovely to see, but...her character behaves preposterously.
For instance, in one sequence she's riding the bus with
Andrews, who's trying to help her for his own duplicitous reasons. She tilts her lovely chapeaued head flirtatiously toward a haggard
Andrews and starts cooing that "You're an amazing man. You know something? I could just kiss you. Right here."
Tierney then goes on blithely to explain that the notoriety of the police case she's become involved in has led to her employer giving her the boot. Now, she's playing a character who has, until
very recently, been part of a stressful marriage to a troubled, battle-scarred war hero who knocked her around and bled her dry of money. Her father is languishing in The Tombs awaiting arraignment on murder charges against someone and she's already mentioned to Andrews that she and her old man haven't a sous, thanks to her hubby. Oh, yeah, and her hubby (
Craig Stevens, who's good in a brief but effective part), has just turned up floating in the East River. So she's a very recent widow under tragic circumstances, her old man may be going to the chair, and she can't pay the rent.
Now, I like an optimistic girl with stamina and bounce, but some things just wouldn't glide off this character's hide this easily, do you think?!! The ending tries for some optimism that preceding events don't entirely justify either, but it's always tough to send an audience out of the theatre realizing that the characters they've just observed and felt for might wind up locked into an even lonelier life than before. I just think I would've appreciated a stronger note of ambiguity about the possible future for
Andrews and
Tierney. Otherwise, this is a fine noir, full of long, dark nights, wonderfully seedy and oh, so cramped apartments, rooms, and rat holes.
Interestingly,
Neville Brand actually has a cooler head than the creepy hoodlums around him, one of whom, significantly, is
Gary Merrill, a few months before
All About Eve changed his life and career forever. Gary looks like a road show Sky Masterson with poor hygiene habits to me.