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Showing posts with label Edward G Robinson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Edward G Robinson. Show all posts
The Red House (1947)
Tales of Manhattan (1942)
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Tales of Manhattan (1942) is an accursed coat anthology portmanteau many star cast 1942 film which has solid noir quantities in the murder and intrigue elements, and in the alcohol and fated collapse of manhood elements, and of the femme fatale element too, the film is composed of these, and while full-billed melodrama, does have a significant noir-style and edge to its intense psychosexed up and indigently dangerous disaster stores, which are all based on the Mexican writer Francisco Rojas González's novel, Historia de un frac (Story of a Tailcoat) which he was not credited for, which he was not credited for, not credited at all, was it becauyse he was Mexican, and that would have spoiled the Manhattan vibe, I doubt it, he just was not credited, that's how it goes in Holly-hollywood?
Kid Galahad (1937)
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Kid Galahad (1937) is an ingenue in the ring classic boxing sports and bellboy Humphrey Bogart is the baddie high-thirties Michael Curtiz greatest director of all time steamer with a floof performance from Bette Davis and a flouncy show from Bette Davis' own acting discovery Jane Bryan, and Wayne Morris, Wayne who is his own mystery man of film noir, which shall be laid out a little below, while this Curtiz cut is not film noir, nor even not a little or with a slight flicker of noir, which oddly made it likeable material for the main event which appears to be the 1962 starring Elvis Presley remake of the matter.
Ingenue in the ring country bumpkin with his trouser legs cut off by a near blow jobbing Humphrey Bogart must have looked good on Elvis too, because he is as much of a bellhop as he is a boxer, and Wayne Morris, mystery man of film noir is the same.
The Sea Wolf (1941)
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The Sea Wolf (1941) is a nautical noir ghost ship of shame and cruelty dramatic abduction and high seas wrecking crew medical and maritime madness Jack London adapted tale of intersecting American narratives combining the frontier of the sea with the oldest narrative tropes known to the continent, including the olden mania of the rogue seamaster and the anti-Nietzschean struggle for the victory of normalcy over ubermenshcary.
Michael Curtiz's 1941 adaptation of Jack London’s The Sea Wolf occupies a peculiar intersection of seafaring adventure, psychological realism, and the film noir sensibility emerging in Hollywood during the wartime period.
House of Strangers (1949)
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House of Strangers (1951) is a corporate crime Italian-American family drama revenge and rags to riches corruption film noir with fragments of boxing noir and courtroom noir included, which stars Edward G. Robinson as a patriarch in a family of boys who can't sort their succession planning.
Richard Conte is the star of the show and its his story we follow as he smoothly and suavely negotiates this house of would-be strangers, acting as his own father's attorney in the courtroom and beyond, convinced that his rich and domineering banker of a dad is innocent of making his fortune on the backs of the misery of others.
This misery is present as usury, played out by character actor Tito Vuolo, the man who became the stand-by Italian American in many a film noir.
Double Indemnity (1944)
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Double Indemnity (1944) is the super-famous mutha-of-all-noir stylish insurance fraud double murder classic film noir thriller that stands central to all commentary, criticism, focus and definition of the great noir style of the 1940s, and the production which is usually cited as the best example of the medium, the finest of all noirs, the apogee of the instance of the style, and the exemplification and blueprint were it needed of all the thousands of brimming wonders of production that made up the hugely powerful film noir movement.
The frightening and exciting weakness of sex was never better shown than in the encounters between Fred MacMurray and a to-begin-with naked Barbara Stanwyck, whom as equals it seems, concoct a murder for the existential fact of morality take over and trip them both up.
Nightmare (1956)
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Nightmare (1956) is a tortured male lead psychological thriller mystery film noir directed by Maxwell Shane and starring Edward G. Robinson, Kevin McCarthy and Connie Russell.
It's such a mystery indeed to relate how a man can dream a nightmare and find a key and wash blood off his hands and not know what he has done, such a mystery that the story is told twice in the great film noir era because this same story was told in the film Fear In The Night (1943), also a great example of the style and its obsessions.
Essentially Nightmare (1956) is a tale of paranoia, murder and psychology, making of it noir mania in a deluxe package. Cracking weird action drives our hero played by Kevin McCarthy, doing a bit of what he was to later perfect in Invasion Of The Body Snatchers.
Larceny, Inc (1942)
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Larceny, Inc (1942) is a super-fun madcap comedy crime caper starring Edward G. Robinson, Broderick Crawford, Jane Wyman and Jack Carson, among several other golden age heroes of the screen.
Not your regular film noir fare, it's still important to patrol the edge of the style and find valuable curiosities such as this, a comedy to be sure, and a bold stab at comedy and crime collided. It's a lot of fun.
That said Larceny, Inc. is indeed a a swell 1942 flick, hitting the big screen on May 2, 1942, care of Warner Bros. Picture this.
It's a mix-up of comedy and gangster shenanigans, cooked up by director Lloyd Bacon. Starring heavyweights like Edward G. Robinson, Jane Wyman, Broderick Crawford, and Jack Carson, and spiced up with Anthony Quinn and Edward Brophy.
Tight Spot (1955)
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Tight Spot (1955) is a witness protection prison police tough-talking tough-cop versus mob boss film noir, inspired by Senator Estes Kefauver's tactics in coercing Virginia Hill to testify in the Bugsy Siegel prosecution.
It's based on a play by Leonard Kantor, and so is largely contained within a single set, a luxury hotel suite, and within the mix of styles are touches of screwball romantic comedy, courtesy of Ginger Rogers, and material far darker and more in line with the hand of noir.
It takes place over a weekend before the start of a mob trial and with crucial witnesses murdered, prosecutor Lloyd Hallett (Edward G. Robinson) has only one long shot left in order to prosecute public enemy and nemesis mob boss Benjamin Costain (Lorne Greene)
Bullets or Ballots (1936)
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Bullets or Ballots (1935) is a Warner Bros. corporate crime police detective gang infiltration classic from the pre-film noir years.
Starring the star of the show Edward G. Robinson, star of many Warner Bros. and other gangster films over three decades, perfectly paired with Humphrey Bogart, very much the rising star, in the first of five films the pair made together over the next twelve years.
That film noir charts multiple social, criminal, political, psychological trends in American society is one of its fascinations and why we're here.
Brother Orchid (1940)
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Brother Orchid (1940) is a Warner Bros. comedy gangster caper which while not a part of the classic film noir cycle, is an interesting stop on the route.
One of five films to star both Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson, Brother Orchid is a shenanigan-based production which manages to eke out comedy from gangsterism — never truly easy in the era — while combing a spiritual and moral aspect, which doesn't quite pull the criminality from crime, but refashions it for social purpose.
The story kicks off with crime boss Little John Sarto (played by Edward G. Robinson) retiring suddenly, giving leadership of his gang to Jack Buck (played by Humphrey Bogart) while he leaves for a tour of Europe to acquire 'class'. However, Sarto is repeatedly swindled and finally loses all his money in a series of daft newspaper headlines.
Smart Money (1931)
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Smart Money (1931) is a Pre-Code Proto-Noir comedy caper starring Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney, playing larger than life the all-American obsession with gambling.
This overbearing national pastime which had flourished via the stock tickers of the 1920s, resulting in the almighty and catastrophic crash of that same decade, is here presented in every popular form available, including horse racing, quiet gambling with dice in the back room and it appears the front room of the quiet small town barber Nick Venizelos, played by Edward G. Robinson.
Nick is a swell fellow and a charmer, and considered a champion gambler by all who know him. The back room seems like a swell place too, where the wisecracking cracks all night long and Nick and the others laugh it up no end, often at the uncomfortable expense of their African American 'boy' 'Snake Eyes' — played by an uncredited John Larkin.
The Little Giant (1933)
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The comedy is given legs by a real life conundrum in the form of the question regarding what bootleggers and racketeers can now do, since Prohibition has ended and they are now in competition with the government for the production and distribution of liquor.
Bugs Alhern ― Edward G. Robinson ― is comically ahead of the game ―and his plan is to take his millions to Santa Barbara and start living the life of a socialite, living swell with the swanks, and appreciating culture ― usually expressed in this caper through the medium of polo.
Manpower (1941)
Manpower (1941) starring George Raft, Marlene Dietrich and Edward G. Robinson is deserving of an honourable mention on classic film noir, for the habits it portrays and social directions it takes.
While likely classifiable as a dramatic film with comic elements, Manpower still has something to relate to noir audiences.
The story is about two friends and their supportive relationship, and essentially portrays the bonds between working men and their women.
The slapstick jollity of the era is well captured and has certainly, as comedy usually does, aged poorly. Edward G. Robinson's character in hospital is styled as an 'octopus' because of the way his hands grab the nurses. And this is the least of it.
Seven Thieves (1960)
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Seven Thieves (1960) seems too good a caper noir to miss, with Edward G. Robinson, Rod Steiger, Eli Wallach and Joan Collins, all in one tidy package of heist.
Instead, Seven Thieves maybe demonstrates what the style had lost by 1960, and the ways in which production and vision had altered, to knock classic film noir on the head.
With the odour of a caper movie, it's maybe a shame that Seven Thieves is not film in colour. Certainly VistaVision and other widescreen techniques do leave some directors offering large empty spaces on screen, especially in the shots of single individuals.
Illegal (1955)
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Edward G. Robinson plays superstar District Attorney Victor Scott, on fire in the courtroom, a wit and a showman, able it appears to convince any jury of his case.
Illegal opens with a salacious murder which is quickly executed, codified, examined and tried; much to the amusement of anyone who has ever enjoyed the television series, Star Trek; for the hapless hero in this vignette of justice and its flaws, is DeForest Kelley.
That's one reason alone to check in with this rather interesting variation on an increasingly important theme.
Scarlet Street (1945)
Scarlet Street is a 1945 film noir, directed by Fritz Lang, and is one of what you may call Lang's dream film noirs.
The dream film noir is a heady and difficult combination, and was almost exclusively the creation of Fritz Lang, who employed psychology and hidden impulse very well in his work, and did so brilliantly in The Ministry of Fear, with its dream Nazis, and most successfully of all in The Woman in the Window. (1944).
The same applies to many of Fritz Lang's films, such as The Secret Beyond the Door (1947).
Fritz Lang was born to this. Lang was born to mix the heady visuals of the new cinema with the relatively recent findings of psychoanalytic theory. All this amounts to in practice, and in film noir, are dark desires, so-called because they are both illicit and unknown.
Often in film noir, a man seeks to escape domesticity, while at the same time in film noir, a woman often feels trapped by it, subjugated by the commercial forces that were fast growing the world about her.
A Bullet for Joey (1955)
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The curious late-cycle film noir gangster-spy picture A Bullet for Joey (1955) unites the two stars Edward G. Robinson and George Raft, who had previously been paired in Raoul Walsh's Manpower (1941).
Edward G. Robinson was at ease in film noir, and able to play good guy roles, which he often did with pipe-wielding authority, and out and out villains.
George Raft in A Bullet For Joey plays the hoodlum figure, working here to kidnap a nuclear scientist, with Peter van Eyck as the true ring-leader.
Comparing it to Illegal (1955), also with Robinson and by director Lewis Allen, there is slightly less in terms of dark city noir qualities, paranoia, and psychological damage.
In Montreal, a police inspector (Edward G. Robinson) uncovers piece by piece a plan to kidnap a nuclear physicist. American mobsters, foreign spies and a blonde seductress are all involved in this rather staid caper.
Shout out, however, to monkeys in film noir.
Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939)
Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939) was not just the first but one of the most convincing anti-Nazi films to come out of Hollywood's Golden Age.
Amazingly, it feels like it was made by a country that was already at war.
That's not the case though, and even though it would be another three years before the United States were actually at war with Germany, what is remarkable is that World War 2 had not even started by the time Confessions was made.
It is funnily enough pointed out somewhere around the midpoint, when Edward G. Robinson enters the film. Someone says that it feels like they are at war with Nazi Germany, but Edward G., playing an FBI spy hunter here, corrects this erroneous interpretation of events.
"No," he says. "It's the other way round. It's as if Germany was at war with America."
Hell on Frisco Bay (1955)
Hell on Frisco Bay (1955) is a satisfying colour flick set in and around the fishing wharf areas of San Francisco Bay.
The picture opens as ex-cop Steve Rollins, played by Alan Ladd, is paroled and leaves San Quentin Prison in order to search San Francisco for the mobsters who framed him for manslaughter.
It's a pretty exciting opening few scenes, and it doesn't look like the gates of the prison have changed at all in the last seventy years. Of Steve Rollins prison years, we learn little, although they may likely have amounted to their own hell on Frisco Bay. Because of course, cops in stir are not usually that popular.
There at the gate of San Quentin, waiting for him, is his wife and former police partner. As his wife has been unfaithful to him while he was banged up, it appears, Steve Rollins rejects her and opts to take the bus to town.
In this decision, his partner joins him, leaving the wife alone; the first of many casually handled scenes involving women on Frisco Bay.