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The tone of quiet seediness is expertly established with a bank robbery during the opening credits, a smooth job until the security guard lunges for a gun. The criminal's girlfriend (Kim Novak) waits in a swell flat after growing up in poverty, the object of contemplation in a police stakeout. "New car, mink coat, and no clocks in the joint. Probably the story of her life." Money was also what the folks of the undercover cop (Fred MacMurray) fought about, he meets her in a theater parking lot and soon the two are an item. "You get picked up often?" "Would you care?" Richard Quine has his own approach to noir desperation, this is less a variation of Double Indemnity than a companion piece to Drive a Crooked Road. The flatfoot and the moll, two hundred grand in loot in a botched con. "And I thought I was using you." Cigarettes and coffee with the partner (Philip Carey), whose binoculars wander to the nurse next door (Dorothy Malone). "A complication," the veteran lookout in the rain-speckled sedan (Allen Nourse), stuffing bubblegum into his mouth to keep his mind off the cocktail lounge across the street. A couple of rooms, a thrifty nightclub counter and a hallway are enough for Quine to conjure up a nocturnal atmosphere of urban loneliness, the couple's illicit rendezvous takes place on a rooftop streaked with TV antennas. Novak's doleful sensuality simmers throughout, her sense of hurt unmistakable even in a silhouetted profile. It all ends face down on the pavement and riddled with bullets, Godard avouches an influence on À bout de souffle. "It's been weird knowing you." With E.G. Marshall, Paul Richards, Paul Picerni, Tony Barrett, Don Harvey and Marion Ross. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |