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Feminine opposites meet at the penitentiary's door, the lens peeps and freeze-frames. "You're quite a problem." "Wanna solve me?" Two redheads, the secretary (Rhonda Fleming) and her sticky-fingered sister (Arlene Dahl), earnest and dangerous halves of the noir soul. The former works for the mayoral candidate (Kent Taylor) and the latter gravitates toward the truculent kingpin (Ted de Corsia), the art of working both ends against the middle is embodied by the "chiseler" (John Payne) navigating from one side of the law to the other. "Dirt to sell," out the window with the reformist press, election and escape to Mexico and revenge. Racket takeover, femmes divided. "Man's only as big as his dreams." Allan Dwan well at home with James M. Cain perversities, a gaudy tangle of manias analytically sketched in Technicolor and Superscope. The antihero pushes around the police lieutenant (Frank Gerstle) but has a harder time with the klepto-nympho, who singes his hand with a cigarette lighter and punctuates their date with a spear-gun. "We're two of a kind, both bad." A riot of audacious colors by John Alton, reds and greens and oranges plus looming shadow plays in the gangster's lair. (Dwan adds a characteristic gag in the vaudeville interplay between the henchmen, with diminutive George E. Stone and towering Buddy Baer contemplating a lottery payoff in half-lit interiors.) The fancy convertible goes up in flames, the showdown at the beach house hinges on the sights of Dahl's sprawled legs toying with a back scratcher and her bare feet against scattered bills on a blue carpet. "If you want more, just ask for it." "No fun that way." Godard has it in his Cahiers top ten list for the year, and then there's Marnie. With Lance Fuller, Ellen Corby, Myron Healey, and Roy Gordon.
--- Fernando F. Croce |