Criss Cross (1949)

Criss Cross is a 1949 Universal International film noir directed by Robert Siodmak. The screenplay by Daniel Fuchs was based on Don Tracy’s 1934 novel of the same name. Criss Cross isn’t just a film noir. It’s one of the great classic noirs (and one of several superb noirs directed by Siodmak). It’s also a heist movie.

Steve Thompson (Burt Lancaster) works for an armoured car company. We know from the start that he’s involved in a heist and if we weren’t told we’d know anyway. When you’ve got a guy who drives an armoured car for a living you can figure that there’s going to be a heist.

This movie makes use of narrative techniques that would later be seen as defining characteristics of film noir - flashbacks and voiceover narration.

What we don’t know is how Steve Thompson comes to be involved in a robbery. He’s a regular guy. He’s a bit hot-headed but he’s a nice guy. Nice, but not too bright. He thinks he has his life under control but in fact it’s totally out of control. He’s a classic noir protagonist - a decent guy who allows himself to be drawn into a world of betrayals, a basically honest guy who ends up mixed up in crime.

How did Steve’s life get so mixed up? If you’re guessing there’s a girl involved then you’re spot on the money. The girl is Anna (Yvonne De Carlo). Anna is Steve’s ex-wife. Their tempestuous marriage ended in divorce but he’s never been able to get her out of his system. Steve had enough sense to leave town after the divorce and get as far away from Anna as possible, but he doesn’t have enough sense to stay away. He has to come back. He tells himself he just wants to see his family again but he knows quite well that he’s come back because he can’t stay away from Anna.

Maybe Anna’s no good. Everybody tells him that she’s no good. He doesn’t care. She’s in his blood.

There’s another guy obsessed with her and unfortunately that other guy is Slim Dundee (Dan Duryea). Slim is a bad ’un. He’s a gangster with a mean ruthless streak.

The fact that Steve is mixed up in a heist has a lot to do with Anna and with Slim Dundee but not in an entirely straightforward way.

The heist comes fairly late in the movie. For most of the movie we have no idea why and how Steve got involved but thanks to the use of flashbacks we know it’s coming and it provides the necessary sense of doom lurking in the background. When a nice guy gets involved in a heist we expect that it won’t turn out too well for him.

Dan Duryea gives one of his trademark menacing performances. He’s in fine form but he isn’t the main focus. The focus here is entirely on Steve and Anna and the success or failure of the movie depends to a large extent on the performances of Lancaster and De Carlo, both playing extremely complex characters. Fortunately they come through with flying colours.

Burt Lancaster is not a favourite actor of mine but he’s excellent here - he’s like a stick of dynamite with the fuse slowly burning. In a film noir the protagonist can be led to disaster by fate or by his own character flaws but in this case it’s something much more deadly - love. His love for Anna is both romantic and sexual. He wants all of her - her body, her heart, her soul. For Steve Anna is like a drug. He knows he’s an addict but he can’t kick the habit. On more than one occasion he has tried to go cold turkey but the craving just won’t go away.

The problem is that his obsession with her blinds him to everything. Maybe he’s not in love with Anna the flesh-and-blood woman. Maybe he’s in love with an Anna who only exists in his fever dream. He cannot imagine any future that doesn’t revolve around her.

I’m a major Yvonne De Carlo fan and this is possibly her greatest performance. We can see why Steve is crazy about Anna. Any man would be. She’s gorgeous and sexy. She’s a hell of a drug. She has all the hallmarks of a femme fatale but we can’t be sure that she really is a femme fatale. Maybe she’s like Steve. Maybe she’s just let her life get out of control. Maybe she’s a nice girl at heart, more of a victim than a villainess. Maybe she’s a scheming spider woman. Or maybe she’s like the rest of us - neither good nor evil. Maybe she’s half angel and half demon. What makes this a truly great noir rather than a merely good one is that right up until the end we have no idea which way Anna will jump. There’s a possibility that she doesn’t know herself.

We also have to bear in mind that we’re mostly seeing her through Steve’s eyes.

This is a beautifully shot movie. There’s not as much emphasis on night scenes and shadows as you generally find in noir but Siodmak makes the California sunshine incredibly oppressive.

Siodmak was one of the grand masters of film noir. He made a lot of terrific noir movies but overall Criss Cross is the most complex and the most satisfying. It’s certainly one of the half dozen greatest noirs of the classic era. Very highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed the 1934 source novel, Don Tracy’s Criss Cross. The novel is excellent and the movie is surprisingly faithful not just to the plot but more importantly to the mood and the flavour and the spirit of the novel.

The Rough and the Smooth (1959)

The Rough and the Smooth (AKA Portrait of a Sinner) is an almost entirely forgotten 1959 British melodrama. It was directed by Robert Siodmak, and that’s what is likely to attract most people’s attention to this film. Siodmak was a great director and an extraordinary visual stylist. He made several notable entries in the film noir cycle of the 40s as well as acclaimed thrillers such as The Spiral Staircase. He also directed the best of the 1940s Universal horror movies, Son of Dracula. So Siodmak’s name in the credits is usually an indication that a movie is going to be worth a look.

Michael Thompson (Tony Britton) is an archaeologist and he has a problem. He can’t find a cab. On this particular night cabs are totally unobtainable and he needs one badly, otherwise he’ll be in hot water with his fiancée Margaret (Natasha Perry).

Then he gets a lucky break. He goes into a pub for a drink and Ila Hansen (Nadja Tiller) agrees to let him share her cab. They don’t exactly hit it off but they’re only sharing a cab and at least it means Michael won’t be in too much trouble with Margaret.

Michael doesn’t seem to be all that excited about being engaged to Margaret. Her uncle is press magnate Lord Drewell (Donald Wolfit) and Lord Drewell has agreed to finance Michael’s next expedition (a hare-brained scheme to find Noah’s Ark). Margaret has it all arranged and that’s what bothers Michael. Margaret has Michael’s life all arranged. And both Margaret and Lord Drewell make him feel dependent. He doesn’t like that at all.

Then fate steps in. The following day he runs into Ila at the same pub. Of course it would be very foolish of Michael to start flirting with her. It would be even more foolish to invite her to dinner. It would be quite incredibly foolish to invite her back to his flat afterwards. But Michael does all these things. It’s clear that his intentions are far from innocent. He’s looking to get Ila into bed.

If you’re an ambitious archaeologist totally dependent on keeping in the good books with both your fiancée and her rich uncle then Ila is the sort of young lady you should avoid at all costs. She’s young, blonde, glamorous, very sexy and she’s European. Not the sort of girl you can explain away to a jealous fiancée.

Which could be an immediate problem. At the worst possible moment Margaret arrives on his doorstep. She’s very drunk and very amorous. She insists on staying. She insists on staying the night. That could be awkward since Michael has Ila stashed away in his bedroom. And it’s obvious that Margaret does not intend to spend the night on the couch. She has the bedroom in mind. But it’s Ila who ends up sharing Michael’s bed.

Michael thinks he’s a pretty sophisticated guy. He has no idea what he’s getting into when he steps into Ila’s world. It’s a world of twisted sexuality and he simply had no idea that such things were possible.

The question is whether he can survive Ila’s world. Or find a way back to the familiar comfortable world he knew before he met her.

The acting is pretty decent. Tony Britton went on to have a reasonably successful career as a TV actor and he’s quite good here. He’s very smooth but with a touch of innocence.

Nadja Tiller makes a splendid femme fatale. She’s cool, calculating, sexy and dangerous and she makes Ila believable. She really is superb.

William Bendix is excellent as Reg. Reg is Ila’s friend. Michael is not quite sure exactly what kind of friend Reg is to Ila but he will find out.

This was promoted as a shockingly daring movie and by 1959 standards it really is. There’s plenty of what would at the time have been regarded as illicit sex.It’s obvious that Margaret is accustomed to spending the night at Michael’s flat even though they’re not married yet. In 1959 that would have been considered pretty daring but this movie goes much further. It takes us into a world of sexual perversity. Lots of men have hurt Ila. Not just emotionally but physically. Ila likes it when men hurt her. The more a man hurts her the more she likes it. Not many movies at the time would even have hinted at such things but The Rough and the Smooth is fairly open about it. And there’s more sexual perversity where that came from.

This movie was based on a novel by Robin Maugham (the nephew of W. Somerset Maugham). Robin Maugham was a big deal in the English literary world for decades although he now seems to be forgotten.

Siodmak doesn’t go overboard stylistically but it’s a well-crafted movie with plenty of atmosphere.

I have no doubt that if this movie ever gets a Blu-Ray release it will be marketed as a film noir. I guess it could at a stretch be described as a noir melodrama. It certainly has a classic femme fatale. And a protagonist who finds himself drawn into a world that he just cannot cope with.

The Rough and the Smooth is all about sex and the things that sex makes us do. It tries to deal with sexual subject matter in a grown-up way and it succeeds surprisingly well. It’s an unusual movie and it’s a pretty good movie as well. It’s definitely a much much better movie than its reputation would suggest. Most people seem to think of it as a lesser Siodmak film. It’s different from his earlier better known films but I don’t think that makes it a lesser effort. Highly recommended.

The Suspect (1944)

The Suspect is a romantic/crime melodrama with film noir overtones directed by Robert Siodmak for Universal in 1944.

It is London in 1902. Philip (Charles Laughton) is a middle-aged man who runs a very exclusive tobacconist’s shop. It’s actually a very sizeable concern catering to the gentry and Charles is decidedly prosperous. He’s also very unhappily married. His wife Cora has made his life and their son’s life a misery. There is no love in Philip’s life.

Then a very pretty young lady named Mary (Ella Raines) walks into his shop looking for a job. He has no job to offer her but shortly afterwards he passes her in the street. She is crying. We have already seen evidence that Philip is in fact a genuinely very kind man. He’s not the sort of man who can remain unmoved by a woman’s tears. He decides, correctly, that she has a problem that she needs to talk about. He takes her for a meal.

Pretty soon Philip and Mary are seeing each other regularly. They might seem mismatched but Philip is charming and gentle and Mary is a delightful and very sweet young woman. Their relationship is entirely innocent. They’re just two lonely people who find comfort in each other’s company. Of course their relationship might not seem so innocent to others.

And it’s fairly clear that love is starting to bloom. They really are perfectly suited and could very easily make each other very happy. In other circumstances it’s clear they would soon marry. But Philip is already married. And there is no way his wife is going to give him a divorce. In fact if she finds out about Mary there won’t be any point in trying to explain to her that the relationship is really quite innocent. Cora will do her best to destroy her husband and the girl he loves. And of course the relationship between Philip and Mary really is more than friendship.

If only Philip didn’t have a wife.

I think you can guess what’s going to happen next but it’s left just a little ambiguous. Maybe his wife’s fatal accident really was an accident. We cannot be entirely sure.

The coroner’s jury brings in a verdict of accidental death. Inspector Huxley is not entirely satisfied. There’s no evidence at all to suggest murder but policemen have very suspicious minds.

The circumstances are sufficiently ambiguous to leave Philip open to blackmail, and when you’re vulnerable to blackmail then you can be pretty sure that a blackmailer will arrive on the scene.

Obviously there’s nothing startlingly original about the plot. It’s one of those cases in which the thing that matters is how well a rather hackneyed idea can be executed. Robert Siodmak can of course be relied upon to execute it very well indeed. This is the sort of thing at which he excelled.

Much also depends on the acting. Charles Laughton is superb. He makes Philip a very sympathetic character indeed. Philip is a truly kind man. When he says that he has never had any desire to hurt anyone we know he is telling the truth. And yet he may have killed his wife. And while Philip appears to be gentle and passive we get the feeling that there is more to him than that. He’s the sort of man who might well stop being passive if backed into a corner, or if he felt that the woman he loved might be in danger. There’s the suggestion of a strong will deeply hidden. Philip is kind and gentle because he’s always been able to be kind and gentle. That doesn’t mean he is as weak as he appears to be. Laughton gets the chance here to show that he can give a great performance that is also extremely low-key and subtle.

Ella Raines is delightful as well. Mary starts out being vulnerable and perhaps just a bit mousy but when she finds love the real Mary appears - a bright, vivacious high-spirited young woman.

Charles Laughton and Ella Raines seem an unlikely romantic pairing and it’s essential to the film’s success that we buy the idea that these two really are head-over-heels in love. And we do buy it, largely because Ella Raines does such a fine job of conveying to us what it is that motivates Mary. She is not just a woman who craves love. She desperately craves kindness and understanding. If a man shows her that kindness and understanding she is going to fall for him, even if he’s middle-aged, overweight and not good-looking. It’s also highly likely that she sees him as a father figure - a man she can trust and rely on completely. We really do believe that this is the sort of man she wants and needs. And Philip undeniably has charm as well.

Special mention must be made of Henry Daniell’s delicious performance as the blackmailer.

Is it film noir? Does it fit into the period noir sub-genre? I think you can make a fairly strong case that it does. It certainly has plenty of noir visual style. Being a Universal production you could even argue that the visual style is gothic noir.

Kino Lorber’s DVD (they’ve released it on Blu-Ray as well) looks great and there’s an audio commentary by Troy Howarth.

A good tight script, excellent performances especially from Charles Laughton and Ella Raines, stylish direction by Siodmak and lots of shadows and moody black-and-white cinematography - it all adds up to a very very satisfying movie indeed. Highly recommended.

The Spiral Staircase (1946)

I’m a great fan of Robert Siodmak’s films noirs such as Phantom Lady, and I loved his wonderfully southern gothic Son of Dracula. I remember liking The Spiral Staircase, made in 1946, and it seems like one of those movies that is worth a second look. In fact it’s worth seeing just for Nicholas Musuraca’s cinematography which is, as always, stunning. The combination of Musuraca’s film noirish lighting and the sumptuous Edwardian sets (the movie is set in 1916) gives the movie a decidedly gothic feel.

The situation of two step brothers living in the shadow of their dead father, a father who despised them, plus the bed-ridden matriarch of the family (played by Ethel Barrymore) enhances the gothic sensibility. The past cannot be escaped. Professor Warren (George Brent) and Steve Warren (Gordon Oliver) are both weaklings in their own ways and they dislike each other intensely.

A series of murders has terrorised the district. The victims have all been women and all with some form of weakness or affliction. Dr Parry (Kent Smith) is naturally concerned for Helen (Dorothy McGuire) who is mute, apparently as a result of some trauma in the distant past. Dr Parry has the idea he can cure her, and he’s obviously in love with her. Dr Parry has been called in to treat old Mrs Warren, a challenge for any doctor. The old lady keeps telling Helen to leave, to get away, that she is in danger. Is the killer outside trying to get in, or is he already inside?

To be honest I don’t think most people will find the mystery to be all that difficult to penetrate. In any case I think it’s an advantage in a suspense movie to know who the bad guy is, or at least to have a very strong suspicion. It makes the audience more anxious for the heroine’s safety (and this is definitely a Woman In Peril film). Of course it all depends on whether you’re trying to make a mystery film or a suspense film. This particular film seems to be trying to be both (which is also very much true of the source novel).

The actual plot is secondary to the atmosphere that Siodmak creates, a very unhealthy atmosphere. It’s the way Siodmak tells the story that matters, and he tells it with some marvellous visual touches. At this point in time there was probably no better cinematographer in Hollywood than Nicholas Musuraca. He knows when to go over the top visually but he also knows when to build the gothic atmosphere gradually and subtly.

The very solid cast certainly helps. Dorothy McGuire does very  well in a part that obviously doesn’t allow her to speak. George Brent was always likeable and sympathetic even when, as here, he played weak or morally dubious characters. Ethel Barrymore, being a Barrymore, overacts. But being a Barrymore she does it well.

Elsa Lanchester is great fun as the good-natured but eccentric housekeeper who likes a drop or two of brandy when she can get it.

There’s a decidedly diseased ambience to the Warren household and it’s not at all difficult to imagine that the crazed killer might be a member of this household.

The Spiral Staircase was based on Ethel Lina White’s 1933 novel Some Must Watch and it’s a fine example of the ability of a great film-maker to take a very mediocre novel and turn it into a great movie. Overly melodramatic plotlines tend to work a lot better on film than in books and the whole “it was a dark and stormy night” thing seems a hoary old cliché on the printed page. In a movie it’s still a cliché but it can still be made to work.

Ethel Lina White was a representative of the Had I But Known school of crime fiction which is excruciating in print but can make for a very successful suspense film.

Mel Dinelli wrote the screenplay which fixes the major faults in White’s original story. Dinelli did some fine things as a writer about this time, most notably The Reckless Moment and House by the River but also Beware, My Lovely which I think is rather underrated.

The DVD release includes no extras at all, but is fairly inexpensive and the movie looks superb. If you have a taste for film noir or gothic movies you need to see this movie. The Spiral Staircase is highly recommended.

Christmas Holiday (1944)

Christmas Holiday is a pretty strange title for a film noir. Even stranger, this is a film noir starring Gene Kelly and Deanna Durbin. On the other hand it is directed by Robert Siodmak, one of the grand masters of noir, and it is based on a short story by W. Somerset Maugham. It’s odd that more of Maugham’s stories weren’t given the film noir treatment - he was an author with the right sort of sensibility for film noir.

Maugham’s story has been Americanised but setting it in New Orleans gives it the kind of overheated slightly sinful tropical tone that is found in so much of Maugham’s work.

The film has the classic noir structure with most of the story being told through flashbacks. A young artillery officer, Lieutenant Charles Mason (Dean Harens), is heading to San Francisco on leave to marry his sweetheart. Just as he’s about to leave the catch the plane he gets a Dear John letter. He’s determined not to take this lying down and sets off for San Francisco anyway. The aircraft runs into bad weather and is diverted to New Orleans. The dirty weather has set in for quite a while. He ends up in a bar where he meets hardbitten night-club singer Jackie Lamont (Deanna Durbin). It is Christmas Eve and she asks him to take her to Midnight Mass. Afterwards she tells him her story, taking us into the first flashback.

Jackie used to be Abigail Martin and she was married to Robert Manette (Gene Kelly). Manette is the weak, self-indulgent spoilt offspring of one of the leading families in New Orleans. He’s a charming but decidedly shady character and Abigail gets her first glimpse into the noir abyss when he comes home late at night with a great deal of money and bloodstains on his clothing.

Robert and Abigail live with Robert’s mother. Mrs Manette (Gale Sondergaard) has all the strength that Robert lacks but it doesn’t do either of them much good since her strength expresses itself in over-protectiveness which simply encourages Robert’s self-indulgence and weakness of character. The relationship between mother and son is clearly not a healthy one. The second flashback tells us how Robert and Abigail met, and we get a bit more insight into that unhealthy mother-son relationship.

Abigail is just too innocent to see the obvious warning signs. Robert is a gambler with no self-control, selfish and immature but of course he promises her he’s going to give up gambling and she believes him. Sooner or later Robert is going to get himself into big trouble. Abigail isn’t strong enough or worldly enough to stop him and while his mother is aware of his character flaws he remains her blue-eyed boy and she has clearly made the mistake of rescuing him whenever he gets into trouble. He’s never had to deal with consequences and he’s never learnt responsibility. This is not going to end well but Abigail is going to go on loving him.

This is a role-reversal film noir with Gene Kelly as the pretty boy homme fatale who leads good girl Deanna Durbin into the noir nightmare world. Gene Kelly does a decent job. He’s charming enough to convince us that he could have persuaded the naïve Abigail to fall in love with him and he’s creepy enough to make us wish that she hadn’t fallen for him.

Deanna Durbin’s lightweight musicals were among Universal’s most reliable money spinners. She was obviously anxious to try her hand at some serious acting and she succeeds pretty well. It’s a challenging role since she has to play the same character at two different stages of her life - as the innocent kid from Vermont who fell for Robert Manette, and as the hardbitten night-club chanteuse that she is now. Wisely she doesn’t try to make Jackie too hardboiled - Durbin was no Joan Bennett but that’s OK because Jackie isn’t all that hardboiled - the sweet kid from Vermont is still there under the cynical shell that she tries to project. And naturally she gets to sing a couple of songs.

Siodmak displays his usual sure touch. This is a movie that switches between typical noir scenes (with seedy night-clubs and rainy night shooting) and bright cheerful sunlit scenes as we move between the present and Jackie’s chequered past. Woody Bredell’s cinematography is impressive (not surprising considering that he shot the classic noirs Phantom Lady and The Killers for Siodmak).

The script is perhaps just a little too predictable. Fortunately the movie has other compensating strengths - the interesting three-way dynamic between Abigail, Robert and his mother, some good atmosphere, a generally handsome look and fairly effective performances.

Special mention must be made of the contribution of the art directors, Robert Clatworthy and John B. Goodman. There are some wonderful multi-level partly indoor and partly outdoor sets that capture the New Orleans atmosphere very neatly.

The Region 2 DVD from Simply Media offers a reasonably satisfactory transfer although the sound quality is a little uneven at times.

Christmas Holiday is not one of Siodmak’s best efforts but it’s a worthwhile second-tier noir  made more interesting by the unusual casting. Recommended.

Phantom Lady (1944)

Phantom Lady is a movie that is quite special to me because it’s one of the movies that got me hooked on film noir. It still stands up extremely well.

Of course now I can see that this 1944 Universal film is not really film noir, it’s more of a Hitchcock-style wrong man movie. Stylistically however it’s very film noir, and good film noir.

A man (Scott Henderson, played by Alan Curtis) meets a woman in a bar. They’re both down in the dumps. He has two tickets to the theatre but as he explains he’s been stood up. She agrees to spend the evening with him on the condition that they don’t reveal their names. They’re just two unhappy people who will be companions for the evening.



When he arrives home later that evening the nightmare begins. His wife has been murdered. Their marriage was on the rocks and they’d quarreled about a divorce. The circumstantial evidence against him is strong, but luckily he has an alibi. Or he thought he did. Unfortunately no-one now remembers seeing him with the mystery woman. And of course he has no idea who she is or how to find her.

That unsatisfactory and unconvincing alibi helps to get him convicted of murder. One person still believes in him however - his secretary Carol (Ella Raines). She’s been in love with him for as long as she’s worked for him and she knows the man she loves could not be a murderer. Despite the odds she intends to prove that he is innocent and save him.



That damn-fool alibi has been worrying Detective-Inspector Burgess (Thomas Gomez). Why would a guilty man concoct such a stupid alibi and then stubbornly stick to it like that? The more he thinks about it the more it worries him. So Carol finds herself with an ally. She soon finds herself with another ally - Scott’s best buddy Jack Marlow (Franchot Tone). He’s not such a reliable ally. She has no reason to doubt him but the audience has very strong reasons to think he’s not playing with a full deck.

The usual formula for such movies is that the man accused of a crime he doesn’t commit has to escape from custody and prove his innocence. This movie doesn’t follow that formula. Scott spends virtually the entire movie behind bars. As a result it’s up to Carol to prove his innocence. That makes Carol the central character, and it means that the movie stands or falls on Ella Raines’ performance. Fortunately she’s more than equal to the task. She’s superb. Carol is a sweet kid from Kansas but she’s also a resourceful, intelligent and very determined young woman.




Franchot Tone made a lot of movies but rarely got good roles. This time he has to do some serious acting and he relishes the opportunity.

Elisha Cook Jr gets one of his meatiest supporting roles. He plays a drummer in the theatre where Scott took the mystery lady. He’s a key witness and the famous jam session as seduction/foreplay scene is one of the most memorable, and one of the most erotic, in all of film noir.



Alan Curtis has little to do but he’s solid and Thomas Gomez is good as Detective-Inspector Burgess, a man who has no personal feelings one way or the other about Scott Henderson but he does have a stubborn sense of duty and and it’s his duty to send guilty men to the chair, not innocent men.

Director Robert Siodmak and his cinematographer Elwood Bredell demonstrate a mastery of the visual iconography of film noir. The movie was based on a Cornell Woolrich novel and Woolrich’s dark and twisted novels always adapt superbly to film.



The Region 4 DVD seems to be the only one available apart from a Spanish release. It’s barebones but quite acceptable.

A terrific and very stylish noirish thriller, and highly recommended.

Cry of the City (1948)

Cry of the City is a superb example of late 40s film noir from 20th Century-Fox, enlivened by some terrific performances and directed by one of the masters of the noir style, Robert Siodmak.

The story is not strikingly original. Two kids, childhood friends, grow up in New York’s Little Italy. Martin Rome (Richard Conte) is seduced by the glamour of crime and fast living; his friend Candella (Victor Mature) becomes a cop. It’s a story Hollywood loved - two kids from the same background whose fates are very different but indissolubly linked. Now Rome is in hospital in a critical condition with four bullets in him after killing a policeman in a bungled robbery. He’s so far gone he receives the last rites. If he lives it won’t make any difference because he’ll get the electric chair anyway. We naturally expect that we’re going to get a classic noir flashback to explain how Martin ended up in this situation.



But that’s not what happens. This is not the end of the story, it’s just the beginning. Martin pulls through and finds himself in the prison hospital. While he lay apparently dying he was visited by a crooked lawyer who tried to get him to confess to a jewel robbery, a robbery that ended in a vicious murder, a crime that has been attributed to another criminal who just happens to be the shady lawyer’s client. He’s also visited by a young woman, apparently his girlfriend.

This jewel robbery is a major current case. The jewels have not been recovered and only one of the robbers was ever caught. Detective-Lieutenant Candella and his partner Lieutenant Collins (Fred Clark) start to think that maybe there’s something in the lawyer’s story, and maybe if they can find the girl they can find the real answers.



Martin breaks out of prison, determined to find his girl before the police do. He’s been a notorious womaniser but this time it’s different. He really loves her. He loves her almost as much as he loves himself, which is really saying something. Martin is still in a bad way, his wounds have opened up again and he can barely stay on his feet. He gets help from an old girlfriend, Brenda (Shelley Winters), and a shady doctor but he’s still not much more than a walking corpse. But he’s still capable of killing people. His latest murder has left him in possession of the much sought-after missing jewels and he’s closing in on the person who really committed the jewel robbery, hoping to do a deal - to exchange the jewels for money and a ticket out of the country.

Martin is also being assisted by his kid brother Tony who idolises him. This is one of the major things driving Lieutenant Candella - he’s known the Rome family all his life, he’s very fond of the patents and he can’t stand the thought that Tony is going to end up just like Martin. Candella is a cop who combines toughness with sensitivity and the thought that one day he’ll be watching Tony take the walk to the electric chair upsets him greatly.



The support cast is extremely strong. Shelley Winters’ role is all too brief but she’s excellent. Hope Emerson is extraordinary as one of the most villainous women in film noir.

Interestingly enough it was originally intended that Victor Mature would play Martin Rome. There are those who think this would have produced a better picture, Mature being a more likeable actor than Conte and therefore more likely to make us care about the fate of this killer on the run. I’m not convinced by this. Richard Conte makes Martin a glamorous but rather unsympathetic character. He’s incapable of feeling any real emotions. He uses people and he kills people without hesitation. This actually makes the film better balanced. In a movie such as this you can’t help feeling some sympathy for the hunted criminal but by making Martin so cold-blooded Conte ensures that we also empathise with the dedicated cop who’s hunting him.



Victor Mature’s finely judged performance perfectly complements Conte’s. Candella is a good cop and a good man, but without being dull or sanctimonious. It’s the less glamorous role but Mature shows his quality as an actor by making the most of it. Mature has been criminally underrated as an actor. If you put him in a costume epic he’d give you an outrageously camp performance, because that what’s he thought (no doubt correctly) was expected. But if you put him in a role that required real acting he’d deliver the goods.

In fact everything about this movie is perfectly judged. The cinematography is in the classic noir style and is suitably moody and atmospheric. Robert Siodmak’s direction is faultless. The acting is superb. Everything works just as it should. This is 1940s Hollywood film-making at its best.



Strangely enough although Fox have released most of their notable film noir titles from this era on Region 1 DVD Cry of the City has not been included, a bizarre omission. It is however available nearly everywhere else. Aztec’s Region 4 DVD lacks extras but it’s a nice transfer and is definitely recommended.