Showing posts with label
Edward G. Robinson Film Festival.
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Showing posts with label
Edward G. Robinson Film Festival.
Show all posts
For years, farmer Pete Morgan (Edward G. Robinson) and his sister Ellen (Judith Anderson) have been raising Meg (Allene Roberts), who was orphaned as a child when her parents died under mysterious circumstances. With Pete’s bum leg acting up, Meg recommends they hire Nath Storm (Lon McCallister), a classmate of hers, to help out around the farm.
Reluctant at first, Pete eventually agrees, though he warns Nath to stay out of the surrounding woods. Pete insists both the forest and the red house in the center of it are haunted.
Heading home one night, Nath takes a shortcut through the woods, only to be overcome with fear. Instead of scaring him off, this experience piques Nath’s curiosity, and with Meg’s help he explores the forest, all the while closing in on a terrible secret that, once revealed, could tear Pete’s world apart.
Director Delmer Daves gets our skin crawling early on when Nath, ignoring Pete’s warnings about the forest and its “screams in the night”, cuts through the woods on his way home. It’s a harrowing journey, to say the least. With Pete’s words fresh in his mind, Nath shrinks from every shadow, and is convinced he does, indeed, hear screams on the wind. Punctuated by Miklos Rozsa’s booming score, it’s a creepy sequence, and does its part to build the mystery that will steer the first half of the film.
The Red House also features, in its initial scenes, a love triangle of sorts. Meg clearly has a crush on Nath, though he’s already dating their flirtatious classmate Tibby (Julie London). Complicating matters further is the fact that Teller (Rory Calhoun), who Pete hired to keep trespassers out of the forest, has the hots for Tibby! Both the mystery of the woods and these relationships will sort themselves out well before the final act.
And yet Daves and especially Edward G. Robinson still manage to keep us unnerved throughout the remainder of the film by taking the focus off of the haunted forest and putting it on Pete Walker himself. We sense early on that Pete’s love for Meg borders on obsession, and as the story plays out, we see just how deep his fixation runs, making the film’s final sequences more unsettling than anything that came before them. Pete has even taken to calling Meg “Jeannie”, and looking at her as if she was someone else entirely.
Robinson handles these scenes perfectly, taking Pete from the overprotective caretaker of the film’s first half to its villain without any major shift in his personality, building to a finale that is both dark and, ultimately, satisfying.
Rating: 8 out of 10
As the story opens, socialite Jean Courtland (Gail Russell) is in a railway yard about to commit suicide when she is saved by her fiancée Elliot Carson (John Lund). The two make their way to a nearby restaurant, where they meet John Triton (Edward G. Robinson), a psychic who inadvertently caused Jean’s suicide attempt by telling her she would be dead within the week.
Triton then gives the young couple a brief history of his life. Twenty years earlier, he and his fiancé Jenny (Virginia Bruce), with the help of their good friend Court (Jerome Cowan), had a stage act in which Triton would pretend to tell people’s fortunes, only to realize he could, at times, actually see into the future. Frightened by this power, Triton left Jenny and cut himself off from the world.
When Triton disappeared, Jenny married Court, and had one child: Jean! In an effort to save the daughter of the two most important people in his life, Triton came out of hiding to help alter the future and prevent Jean’s death. But when a skeptical Elliot drags the police into it, Triton finds his efforts to save Jean may be over before they can begin.
From the word “go”, Night Has a Thousand Eyes is a mesmerizing motion picture. The opening scene in the railway yard is perfectly staged, with Farrow and his director of Photography John F. Seitz utilizing darkness and shadows to get the movie off to an eerie start. From there, it becomes the Edward G. Robinson show, with the actor narrating his character’s flashback scenes, where we witness not only his uncanny ability to see into the future (during his stage show, he tells a young mother her son is in danger, and she should rush home to save him), but the negative impact it has had on his life (Triton is convinced that it was him seeing into the future that ultimately caused the terrible events he predicted; had he not seen them, they may not have happened).
The second half of Night Has a Thousand Eyes, in which Triton, Jean, Elliot, and police lieutenant Shawn (the always entertaining William Demarest) are holed up in Jean’s estate, hoping to avert the catastrophe that Triton predicted, is not quite as engaging as the film’s initial scenes. Still, they are entertaining enough, and by the time it is over Night Has a Thousand Eyes proved a near-perfect blend of fantasy and film noir, and is a movie that fans of classic cinema won’t want to miss.
Rating: 9 out of 10
As the movie opens, mild-mannered Chris is the guest of honor at a party celebrating his 25th year with the same firm. While walking home that evening, Chris spots a man on a street corner beating up a woman. Chris rushes over and hits the attacker over the head with his umbrella, at which point the man runs off. Chris then offers to walk the woman, whose name is Kitty Marsh (Joan Bennett), home.
Trapped in a loveless marriage to his shrew of a wife Adele (Rosalind Ivan), Chris eventually develops feelings for the much younger Kitty, who claims she is an actress. What Chris doesn’t know is that Kitty is actually a prostitute, and the guy who was hitting her is her pimp / boyfriend Johnny Prince (Dan Duryea).
Believing Chris is a wealthy artist, Johnny convinces Kitty to hit him up for money. Though he himself has very little, Chris doesn’t want to disappoint the new love of his life, so he steals cash from both Adele and his company just to keep Kitty happy.
Johnny even sells some of Chris’s paintings (which he had left with Kitty) to a street vendor, where they eventually catch the eye of a famous art dealer. Impressed, the dealer seeks out the artist, which leads him to Johnny and Kitty. Seeing an opportunity to make a small fortune, Kitty takes credit for the paintings, and soon has everyone in town believing she is a talented artist. But what will happen when Chris finds out?
Lang and his screenwriter Dudley Nichols approach the story at the center of Scarlet Street in an intriguing manner. At the outset, we’re introduced to Chris, who, as played (wonderfully) by Robinson, is kindly but meek. His wife forces him to paint in the bathroom because she can’t stand the smell, and makes Chris do all of the housework. Desperate and lonely, it won’t take much for Chris to fall in love with another woman, and that is exactly what happens when he meets Kitty.
Once their “relationship” is established, the movie shifts its focus, centering a fair portion of its middle act on Kitty and Johnny, and their plans to continue bilking poor Chris out of money he doesn’t have. Dan Duryea has always been a great screen villain, playing the heavy in westerns like Winchester ’73 and Silver Lode, and his portrayal of Johnny in Scarlet Street is no exception. A smooth talker who isn’t above slapping Kitty around, Duryea is positively loathsome as Johnny.
Equal to Duryea every step of the way is Joan Bennett, who, even when she’s pretending to fall in love with Chris, is a little rough around the edges. When playing up to Chris, Bennett’s Kitty is always the stronger of the two, the one in complete control. And the more time we spend with Kitty and Johnny, the more we dislike them, and hope they eventually get their just desserts.
The final half hour of Scarlet Street is chock full of plot twists and revelations, including one about Adele’s first husband that will knock your socks off. But as surprising as its story can be, the last act is also incredibly dark, with moments that, especially at the very end, border on psychological horror.
Bleak, tragic, and very, very engaging, Scarlet Street is one hell of a film noir.
Rating: 9.5 out of 10
Directed By: Alfred E. Green
Starring: Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney, Evalyn Knapp
Line from the film: "Well, you're a cute little package"
Trivia: While appearing in this movie, James Cagney was simultaneously filming The Public Enemy
Smart Money was Edward G. Robinson’s follow-up to Little Caesar, the 1931 crime film that made him a household name. But more than this, Smart Money marks the only time that Warner’s two most recognizable gangsters, Robinson and James Cagney, shared the big screen.
The proprietor of a barber shop in a small backwater town, Nick "The Barber" Venizelos (Robinson) is also one hell of a gambler. He’s so good, in fact, that his friends, including co-worker Jack (Cagney), stake him $10,000 to send Nick to the big city, where he can sit in on some real action.
Once there, Nick meets Marie (Noel Francis), an employee of the hotel where he’s staying, and she tells him that big-time gambler Hickory Short is hosting a poker game later that night. Hoping to strike it rich, Nick sits in for a few hands, only to lose the entire $10,000 to Hickory and his pals. The next day, Nick makes a startling discovery: the man claiming to be Hickory Short is, in reality, Sleepy Sam (Ralf Harolde), a con man and notorious cheater.
Nick does eventually get even with Sleepy, but has bigger fish to fry, and within a few months, has set up his own illegal gambling parlor. A careful man, Nick ensures there’s no paper trail linking him to the establishment, but that won’t stop District Attorney Black (Morgan Wallace), who is bound and determined to run Nick out of town.
Despite what the posters may lead you to believe, Smart Money is, start to finish, Edward G. Robinson’s movie. At the same time he was making this film, James Cagney was smack-dab in the middle of shooting his own breakout picture The Public Enemy. So he wasn’t yet the star that Robinson had become.
With the character of Nick the Barber, Eddie G. got a chance to play a more sympathetic gangster than Rico in Little Caesar (Nick is quick to hand over money to those in need, and makes sure his friends are always taken care of). Though Nick does prove on occasion he’s not to be trifled with (he is ruthless as hell when taking his revenge on Sleepy Sam), he remains a decent enough guy through most of the picture, and we can’t help but root for him.
As an added bonus, keep an eye out for a pre-Frankenstein Boris Karloff, who shows up briefly as a degenrate gambler.
With a strong story and an ending that’s far from upbeat, Smart Money proved the perfect vehicle for Robinson, who, in the span of less than a year, showed the world he could play vicious hoods and nice guys, and do both equally well.
Directed By: Mervyn LeRoy
Starring: Edward G. Robinson, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Glenda Farrell
Line from this film: "I don't want no dancin'... I figure in makin' other people dance"
Trivia: Warner Brothers' head of production, Darryl F. Zanuck, decided to make this film after one of his close friends was killed by a bootlegger
It might not have been the first American gangster movie (most agree that honor belongs to D.W. Griffith’s The Musketeers of Pig Alley), but Little Caesar kicked off a series of films that focused on an anti-hero, a criminal whose fearlessness and fortitude carried him to the top of the underworld. Usually lumped together with The Public Enemy (released later that same year) and Scarface (1932), Little Caesar made a lot of people sit up and take notice.
And not everyone liked what they were seeing.
Two petty hoods, Cesare Enrico Bandello (Edward G. Robinson) and Joe Massara (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.), tired of working in the sticks for chump change, head to the city, where they plan to make a name for themselves.
For Massara, that means leaving the criminal life behind and becoming a professional dancer. Paired with the lovely Olga (Glenda Farrell), Joe headlines at a posh nightclub, and before long is a big star.
As for his pal, Cesare Enrico (called “Rico” for short), he wants one thing and one thing only: power! Starting as the muscle in a gang headed by Sam Vettori (Stanley Fields), Rico’s blinding ambition and tough-as-nails mentality, not to mention his knack for knocking off the competition, helps him rise through the ranks.
But with the power comes notoriety, and it isn't long before police Sergeant Flaherty (Thomas Jackson), who has sworn to take down the city’s criminal element, comes gunning for Rico.
Will the pugnacious hood remain on top, or is this the end of Cesare Enrico Bandello?
Aside from initiating the Hollywood gangster craze, Little Caesar is the film that made Edward G. Robinson a star. A diminutive actor hailing from Bucharest, Robinson brought a calculated determination, as well as the feistiness of a rabid dog, to the role of Rico. In so doing, he made made Rico the most charismatic character in the entire film (even an actor as experienced as Douglas Fairbanks Jr. seems boring next to Robinson).
From the get-go, we know exactly what Rico is after, and never once does he veer from that path. It isn’t even the money he wants; he tells Joe early on that it’s the power he’s after, the knowledge that he is on top, and people will obey his every command. This is what drives Rico to steal and kill, and watching his meteoric rise is what makes Little Caesar such a fascinating motion picture.
As it would be with Cagney in The Public Enemy and Paul Muni in Scarface, Robinson’s performance ensured that the lawless Rico was the focal point of Little Caesar, something that didn’t sit well with either the censors or the moral majority (at one point, the American Legion threatened to boycott all gangster films). Yet try as they might to steer the tide of public opinion, American audiences connected with these anti-heroes, who used tenacity alone to climb the ladder of criminal success.
It didn’t even matter if Johnny Law won out in the end; for a while, Little Caesar’s Rico, The Public Enemy’s Tom Powers, and Scarface’s Tony Camonte were on top of the world, looking down on the rest of us. For audiences mired in the Great Depression, this taste of victory, however brief, was surely better than what the legitimate world was offering them.
