An unassuming Columbia "B" picture, really not given much more thought than say, Atlantic ADVENTURE, a picture it was paired with one morning on TCM. Atlantic ADVENTURE was the one about the newspaperman and his long-suffering girlfriend. He screws up and is fired and loses his girlfriend but finds the jewel thieves and the murderer and gets a scoop, his job back and marries his girl. AFTER THE DANCE is the one about the innocent guy wrongly convicted and sent to prison who breaks out and becomes a show biz hit but is recaptured and sent back to the pen. What's interesting about this little programmer is that in some ways it's a proto-noir.
If this had been made a dozen years later, the biggest difference would be in the protagonist. He is a gormless innocent, drawn into contact with evil fate though no fault of his own. The noir's protagonist would share in the guilt; have a tragic or even fatal flaw. The sense is that in the 30s the depression came in and people thought: What did I do to deserve this? Even the opening music echoes the theme of The Forgotten Man. In the 40s, because of the utter despair of war, mass murder, and atomic annihilation, people accepted some culpability and answered their own question: Oh.
The story is that a homicide has occurred before the picture has begun. The police arrive at a nightclub to find George Murphy admitting he punched out this guy who was assaulting his dance partner in her dressing room after the guy pulled a gun on him. He hit his head falling blabalbla. His partner, Thelma Todd can clear him just by telling the DA what happened but she refuses under legal advise. She has a record. She says, "I don't know" so many times she's like a member of the Bush administration testifying before congress or in court.
He pleads guilty to manslaughter and gets 2-10 in the big house. He gets into a fight with his bunkmate when he's called "deary". He doesn't squeal on his Bunkie to the warden but doesn't get into trouble because he asks the warden what he would do if some man called him "deary"? "Why I'd " he fumes. What was that all about? He makes Murphy a trusty driving a truck out of the gates regularly. His bad bunkmate, Jack La Rue, hijacks the truck in an escape attempt. The truck goes over the side of the mountain killing La Rue and Murphy is so convinced that he'll be blamed for the escape attempt that he takes it on the lam.
At one point he has to swim away and the transition to a ship's hold is handled by a simple diagonal wipe. There he's discovered by a black cook (an excellent Clarence Muse) who is afraid at first "Stay where you are white man. I know who you are " but is impressed by his prison number (7117) which encourages him to enter a crap game. He wins and brings Murphy food and clothes. This is followed by a very European montage of Murphy making his way on this escape trail.
Murphy is stealing a bottle of milk on a doorstep when he's caught by the resident, a nightclub dancer (Nancy Carroll). Eventually he becomes a nightclub star again this time in a mask and known as the Knave of Hearts. He's doing great until Thelma Todd shows up again and puts the screws to him. She blackmails him and eventually tries to get him to dump Carroll and start up an act with her instead. Murphy knows she's poison and makes plans to split and Todd borrows a nickel and drops it on him. The cops come, Carroll says she'll wait for him and they take him away.
It shares, probably for similar reasons, one of the great virtues of noir films, an economically and tersely told story. The outcome is never in doubt, which resonates with the fatalism of the noir. There is a femme fatale, an evil presence who opens wide the gate of hell for the anti-hero.
Compare George Murphy's hick dufuss with say Tom Neal's schulmpy wise guy in DETOUR. Another difference is that while Murphy is caught, it takes place after a strange throwaway scene between the kindly warden and a cop whose an implacable foe laying out the possibilities of a parole and that the best thing for Murphy would be to get caught, for his own good. Even his girl, the good girl assures him she'll wait. A noir would have the anti- hero dying bleeding in the gutter. It was thought that one day the depression would be over and right would be restored and everybody would be free and happy again. There was no optimistic future after The Holocaust and The Bomb.
Of course, in the typical depression picture, not only would Murphy have to be caught, because crime could never be seen to pay, but the evil woman would have to get her comeuppance and probably make a death bed confession freeing Murphy. In AFTER THE DANCE not only isn't she punished for her causing an innocent man to go to jail but also nothing bad happens to her after she blackmails and then betrays Murphy. In a noir she would have been pulled down for her sins just as surely as the protagonist.
All three scenes with the warden have an odd ambiguity. In one the warden has told Murphy his mother is seriously ill but refuses to give him a one-day pass to visit her. Murphy blows up and then there is a phone call that the warden, looking very dramatic, takes. We never find out what its about.
Frank Capra's cinematographer, 2 writers for Hopalong Cassidy and a Russian theatre director made this.
If this had been made a dozen years later, the biggest difference would be in the protagonist. He is a gormless innocent, drawn into contact with evil fate though no fault of his own. The noir's protagonist would share in the guilt; have a tragic or even fatal flaw. The sense is that in the 30s the depression came in and people thought: What did I do to deserve this? Even the opening music echoes the theme of The Forgotten Man. In the 40s, because of the utter despair of war, mass murder, and atomic annihilation, people accepted some culpability and answered their own question: Oh.
The story is that a homicide has occurred before the picture has begun. The police arrive at a nightclub to find George Murphy admitting he punched out this guy who was assaulting his dance partner in her dressing room after the guy pulled a gun on him. He hit his head falling blabalbla. His partner, Thelma Todd can clear him just by telling the DA what happened but she refuses under legal advise. She has a record. She says, "I don't know" so many times she's like a member of the Bush administration testifying before congress or in court.
He pleads guilty to manslaughter and gets 2-10 in the big house. He gets into a fight with his bunkmate when he's called "deary". He doesn't squeal on his Bunkie to the warden but doesn't get into trouble because he asks the warden what he would do if some man called him "deary"? "Why I'd " he fumes. What was that all about? He makes Murphy a trusty driving a truck out of the gates regularly. His bad bunkmate, Jack La Rue, hijacks the truck in an escape attempt. The truck goes over the side of the mountain killing La Rue and Murphy is so convinced that he'll be blamed for the escape attempt that he takes it on the lam.
At one point he has to swim away and the transition to a ship's hold is handled by a simple diagonal wipe. There he's discovered by a black cook (an excellent Clarence Muse) who is afraid at first "Stay where you are white man. I know who you are " but is impressed by his prison number (7117) which encourages him to enter a crap game. He wins and brings Murphy food and clothes. This is followed by a very European montage of Murphy making his way on this escape trail.
Murphy is stealing a bottle of milk on a doorstep when he's caught by the resident, a nightclub dancer (Nancy Carroll). Eventually he becomes a nightclub star again this time in a mask and known as the Knave of Hearts. He's doing great until Thelma Todd shows up again and puts the screws to him. She blackmails him and eventually tries to get him to dump Carroll and start up an act with her instead. Murphy knows she's poison and makes plans to split and Todd borrows a nickel and drops it on him. The cops come, Carroll says she'll wait for him and they take him away.
It shares, probably for similar reasons, one of the great virtues of noir films, an economically and tersely told story. The outcome is never in doubt, which resonates with the fatalism of the noir. There is a femme fatale, an evil presence who opens wide the gate of hell for the anti-hero.
Compare George Murphy's hick dufuss with say Tom Neal's schulmpy wise guy in DETOUR. Another difference is that while Murphy is caught, it takes place after a strange throwaway scene between the kindly warden and a cop whose an implacable foe laying out the possibilities of a parole and that the best thing for Murphy would be to get caught, for his own good. Even his girl, the good girl assures him she'll wait. A noir would have the anti- hero dying bleeding in the gutter. It was thought that one day the depression would be over and right would be restored and everybody would be free and happy again. There was no optimistic future after The Holocaust and The Bomb.
Of course, in the typical depression picture, not only would Murphy have to be caught, because crime could never be seen to pay, but the evil woman would have to get her comeuppance and probably make a death bed confession freeing Murphy. In AFTER THE DANCE not only isn't she punished for her causing an innocent man to go to jail but also nothing bad happens to her after she blackmails and then betrays Murphy. In a noir she would have been pulled down for her sins just as surely as the protagonist.
All three scenes with the warden have an odd ambiguity. In one the warden has told Murphy his mother is seriously ill but refuses to give him a one-day pass to visit her. Murphy blows up and then there is a phone call that the warden, looking very dramatic, takes. We never find out what its about.
Frank Capra's cinematographer, 2 writers for Hopalong Cassidy and a Russian theatre director made this.