Showing posts with label Tyrone Power. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tyrone Power. Show all posts

The Razor's Edge (1946)

The Razor's Edge (1946) is an intergenerational returning veteran historical drama episodic male point of view romance adventure two and a half hour Somerset Maugham worldliness versus spirituality adaptation which was a huge romantic hit in its time, and which owes little to film noir, but offers a stable and repetitive cascading style of romance story that is a soft-soap kind of storytelling, offering the purest kind of escape known to 1946.

This is not a film noir, and yet within it lurks the genes of the style not quite activated, but present as the underscored factual spiritual well from which draws a grabbing interest, between the snogs and high-class encounters. In the 1940s they did not have slacker movies, but they did have loafer movies, and this is one.

Rawhide (1951)

Rawhide (1951) is a high stakes drama home invasion single mother out on the range heist and robbery ensemble gang on the run stagecoach robbery and overland mail company and relay station noir-inflected Western movie from the later stages of the golden era of the silver screen displaying tropes and sceneries that had been solidly familiar for decades 

It's a western but in any other form Rawhide (1951) would be a film noir. Deceit, revenge, a heist and a home invasion, with robbery, exploitation and a vulnerable hold up.

The western did not seem to update as quickly as did the classic film noir. 

Johnny Apollo (1940)

Johnny Apollo (1940) is an inter-generational double identity crime and prison break film noir from early in the cycle.

Directed by Henry Hathaway and starring Tyrone Power and Dorothy Lamour, Johnny Apollo tells the story of the son of a jailed financial and corporate embezzling broker who turns to crime to pay for his father's release.

Tyrone Power fits the title role of Johnny Apollo well. 

The name Johnny Apollo is a crazy, spontaneous, to-heck-with-it whassin-a-name spur of the moment decision for his character Robert Cain, Jr. whose father (played by Edward Arnold) has been jailed for some white collar securities violations, an event which brings his son's soft and privileged life to an end.