User reviews

I just returned from an American Cinemateque screening of a UCLA restored print of this movie. Here is ample evidence that Ulmer, the King of the B's, given bigger budgets might well have had a much bigger career. Detour may be his most famous movie, but this is his best. The Alvah Bessie screenplay about greed and the relentless pursuit of success has dated not at all. The cinematography is excellent, with strong noirish elements. The sets and costumes are very good. Zachary Scott, one of the screen's great cads, is somewhat toned down here if still fairly nasty. There is strong work by Diana Lynn, Lucille Bremer, and Martha Vickers as women who get used and discarded along the way. Sidney Greenstreet shows up mid film as an equally greedy and grasping character, dominating all his scenes. But the standout, unexpectedly, is Louis Hayward as a sympathetic boyhood friend and link to the entire storyline. Ulmer brings out more warmth in this actor that was usually seen. Raymond Burr has a small part early in his career when he seemed to be copying Laird Cregar as Scott's father seen in flashback. Ulmer's daughter this evening explained that the studio Eagle-Lion/Paramount cut some scenes just before release with a particularly anti-capitalist tone. I hope the footage still exists somewhere. That aside, it is thoroughly accomplished film that needs no explanation or apologies. The current recession gives it renewed meaning. Hopefully a DVD release will soon follow.

Or the twisted side of the true American Dream, a story that could have been written by Harold Robbins, Norman Mailer or Scott Fitzgerald. In the US film industry it has always been question of this kind of scheme: rise and fall; here we can analyze the genesis of such a character - Scott. We can think of George Peppard in THE CARPETBAGGERS, just an example. Also a proof that Edgard G Ulmer was not necessarily a lousy grade B pictures director. He could also made grade A powerful movies, this one is the best example. I doubt however that most B film makers could have done the same. What do you think?

Interesting study in the way of life of living only for worldly success and money. Zachary Scott makes the tycoon who from a humble start builds an empire but at the cost of everything human on the way. He simply refuses to take any no or objection to his ambitions seriously but grabs everything he fancies for his own and gets it - until there is Sydney Greenstreet, who turns the film into a very interesting drama, the finale towering into a frantic settlement with the inhumanity of ruthlessness.

Among the others Lucille Bremer as Christa makes an intelligent impression, and Louis Hayward as the friend who sees Zachary through and tries to follow but fails to save him, makes a credible enough figure of a real best friend who fails for no fault of his, while Diana Lynn as Martha and Mallory becomes something of an enigma - it's actually she who brings Vendig's ruin but unintentionally, as her only power over him is that she resembles his first love, whom he deserted - it's not her fault.

It's a very interesting story of opportunism, but like in so many of Ulmer's always most interesting films, the characters never really come alive. The acting is too stiff, and they act more like dummies than like live people, like statues in a grown up puppet play. Nevertheless, the film is still very much worth seeing for its message and lesson, as a morality of considerable weight, as people of this kind dominate and rule the world still today and make a mess of it.