Tuesday 17 September 2024

Kiss the Blood off My Hands (1948 Norman Foster)

Burt Lancaster punches a man in a pub who falls and dies.. he goes on the run and takes shelter in the flat of Joan Fontaine. But dodgy bastard Robert Newton has witnessed the assault and puts on the pressure...

This Universal picture benefits from a particularly good Miklos Rozsa score, and Russell Metty is already showing us how great he is with low light:


The Eduardo Serra of his generation?

Newton always seems hammy when he's not directed by David Lean... though he's memorably nasty in close up attacking Joan Fontaine..

I don't know what they're worried about though at the end. There were no witnesses and nothing to connect his death to them. Ben Maddow and Walter Bernstein adapted Gerald Butler's novel. Leonardo Bercovici wrote the screenplay and Hugh Gray provided additional dialogue. They've forgotten which is the driver's side in this country. But remarkably, the cat o nine tails was still being used as a punishment in prison in the forties.

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