Updated Review 7 January 2016:
Most interestingly written noir sounds almost poetic - difficult to describe, like a forerunner of Poliakoff?; with its rhythms and repetitions and poetic imagery. The scenario is the organised numbers rackets with Cain and Abel (directly referenced) theme. 'Adapted from Ira Wolfert's keenly-researched journalistic novel' (Muller). Full of quotable and most interesting lyrics - I mean dialogue - between John Garfield and Thomas Gomez, Marie Windsor (boss's wife), Howland Chamberlain (nervous accountant who just wants out), Roy Roberts, Beatrice Pearson (her first - and almost only - screen appearance), Paul Fox etc. With arresting moments of action such as Chamberlain's murder, conclusion at bridge ("I kept on going down further") just before which there's a very early use of zoom lens, tapped phone.
Evocatively shot by George Barnes - see great compositions above, and who lights one particular staircase scene brilliantly - apparently guided by Polonsky towards Hopper - with distinctive music by David Raksin.
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| Like a perverse twist on the Romeo & Juliet image |
Doom, death, inexorability - loved also the symbolic moment where Garfield leaves Beatrice Pearson on a high-up fireplace. An independent (Enterprise) production, running a concise 80 minutes. Like Garfield, Polonsky was a Jewish New Yorker, who worked with the French underground in WWII, yet still fell foul of HUAC and was blacklisted, not working credited until his screenplay for Madigan (1968) and as director on Tell Them Willy Boy Is Here (1969).
Robert Aldrich is the assistant director.
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