A Woman's Secret (1949)

Film: A Woman's Secret (1949)

Stars: Maureen O'Hara, Melvyn Douglas, Gloria Grahame, Bill Williams, Mary Philips, Jay C. Flippen

Director: Nicholas Ray

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Throughout the month of June we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

One of the tangential themes of this month that we're encountering is a "filling in the gaps" with my filmographies, particularly of some of my favorite actors of the film noir genre, and few figures fit that bill quite the same as Gloria Grahame.  Grahame, an Oscar-winning actress with an honestly salacious & tragic life (she would be married to both her director of this film, Nicholas Ray, and his son Anthony), would star in a number of film noir classics, including In a Lonely Place and The Big Heat.  Our film today is one of her lesser-known works, and weirdly doesn't star Grahame, who spent much of her career alternating between lead & supporting parts in her movies.  Instead, it stars one of the most unlikely film noir femme fatales imaginable: Maureen O'Hara, in one of only two film noir roles the prolific actress would have in her career.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is largely told in flashback, after an opening scene where it looks like Marian (O'Hara) has shot Susan (Grahame), potentially to her death.  We learn a bit of their backstory, about how Marian once had it all-a promising career as a singer, all the while she was clearly in love with her pianist Luke (Douglas).  But when she loses her voice from an illness, she becomes involved with an aspiring young singer (Susan), and through her starts to live her failed dreams, becoming maddened by it, even as Susan wants to quit the industry after some success.  The film eventually ends with us realizing that Susan was attempting to kill herself, and in the scuffle she shot herself.  Marian, torn up by her selfishness over making Susan stay in the industry, takes the blame and would've gone to jail had Susan not been revived and confessed what really happened.

This confession is the best part of the movie not because of Grahame or O'Hara, but because of a pip of a performance from Mary Philips.  Philips, best-known today as Humphrey Bogart's second wife, was a character actress during the time and aces her role as a busybody amateur detective, whose husband (played by Jay C. Flippen) is the actual inspector on the case.  In a different era, this would've made a fantastic idea for a TV procedural, as the two have solid chemistry, and Philips steals every scene of the movie she's in as a Jessica Fletcher-type.  One of those little performances that shows up in the sides of film noirs that you can't help but admire.

If only Philips was adding to a better movie.  A Woman's Secret doesn't work, primarily because O'Hara is miscast.  O'Hara was not a poor actress, but she was occasionally a limited one, and it shows here as she really should've gotten the part given to Grahame, as she'd be better as the put-upon sainted character while Grahame would've sunk her teeth into the role of a woman driven mad with jealousy by giving another woman her dreams after they are stolen from her.  O'Hara, though, was the bigger star of the two at the time, and the studio never would've let them swap, so we get a promising concept (doesn't that plot sound good?), without enough execution.

1940's: Act of Violence, The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Blues in the Night, Born to Kill, Brighton Rock, Brute Force, Call Northside 777, Criss Cross, Crossfire, Cry Wolf, Daisy Kenyon, Dead Reckoning, Detour, Fallen Angel, The Fallen Idol, Force of Evil, Gilda, High Sierra, I Walk Alone, I Wake Up Screaming, The Killers, The Lady from Shanghai, Leave Her to Heaven, Ministry of Fear, Moonrise, Murder My Sweet, The Naked City, Nightmare Alley, Out of the Past, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raw Deal, The Reckless Moment, Ride the Pink Horse, Scarlet Street, Secret Beyond the Door, Sorry, Wrong Number, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Stranger on the Third Floor, They Drive By Night, They Won't Believe Me, Too Late for Tears, The Woman in the Window, The Woman on the Beach

1950's: Ace in the Hole, Affair in Trinidad, The Asphalt Jungle, Beat the Devil, The Big Combo, The Big Heat, The Blue Gardenia, The Breaking Point, The Burglar, Cast a Dark Shadow, The Crimson Kimono, Elevator to the Gallows, Gun Crazy, The Hitch-Hiker, House of Bamboo, In a Lonely Place, Julie, The Killing, Kiss Me Deadly, Lightning Strikes Twice, Murder by Contract, Night and the City, Odds Against Tomorrow, On Dangerous Ground, Pickup on South Street, The Prowler, Slightly Scarlet, Sudden Fear, Sweet Smell of Success, They Live By Night, While the City Sleeps

Neo-Noir: Blade Runner, Body Heat, Farewell My Lovely, Fargo, From Afar, The Late Show, The Long Goodbye, Lost Highway, Night Moves, Nightcrawler, Le Samourai

Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)

Film: Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)

Stars: Harry Belafonte, Robert Ryan, Shelley Winters, Ed Begley, Gloria Grahame, Richard Bright

Director: Robert Wise

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Throughout the month of June we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

While the French New Wave (as we learned a couple of days ago) was already starting to invest in film noir elements as Hollywood began to lose interest in the late 1950's, that didn't mean that Hollywood had stopped making noir entirely, though the tale-end of the film noir is generally considered to be 1960 (most films after that are "neo-noir" and I refer to them as such if you look at the list of past film noirs at the bottom of this page).  One of the last important film noirs came from United Artists, and was the first film noir from a major studio to star a Black actor, in this case the late Harry Belafonte.  1959 was still within the peak of Belafonte's entertainment career.  At 32, he had starred in major movies, including the box office smashes Carmen Jones and Island in the Sun, and was a popular recording artist, just a couple of years out from "Banana Boat (Day-O)," the biggest hit of his career.  Odds Against Tomorrow represented a different chapter in his career, though, and was an opportunity for him to be seen in a different way by audiences, a dramatic actor who didn't need a musical to make an impression.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is a ticking clock story, as we countdown to a bank robbery being orchestrated by David Burke (Begley), a former police detective whose career is ruined when he refuses to provide evidence to state crime investigators.  He recruits a former con Earle Slater (Ryan) and a nightclub entertainer Johnny Ingram (Belafonte) to join him in the hit.  Neither man is excited about the prospect, as Ryan's Slater is an avowed racist who doesn't want to work with a Black man & Belafonte's Ingram is trying to do right by his wife & daughter, but Slater's pride (he's supported by his girlfriend Lorry, played by Winters) and Ingram's gambling debts mean they can't turn down the job.  The heist goes wrong, and Burke is killed holding the keys to the getaway car.  There's a chance for Ingram & Slater to escape, but instead they turn on each other, having a shootout that burns them both alive.  The film ends a bit cheekily, with the police officer not being able to tell who is who with their charred corpses (indicating that underneath, we're all the same).

The film is solid.  The cast is really good.  Winters is maybe the best part as the scorned girlfriend, who can't understand why her man won't love her even though she gives him everything (Robert Ryan is having an affair with their neighbor, played by Gloria Grahame, who is also good as a titillated, bored housewife), but everyone is solid in this movie.  Belafonte is sexy as hell in the lead role, and they even find an excuse to have him sing some of the jazz score, original work by John Lewis that would be a hit for the Modern Jazz Quartet.

The film doesn't always work, though.  The ending is perhaps a bit too cute (particularly the "can't tell them apart" scene), given that it implies pretty heavily both of these men have committed the same crimes, even though Slater's bigotry is far worse (it's 1959, I know, but I'm still going to say it hurts the story).  I also think that the way that they handle the personal lives of Ryan & Belafonte in particular could've been stronger. We needed more scenes late in the film with Winters & Grahame, as well as Kim Hamilton's Ruth (who plays Belafonte's love interest).  And we sure as hell needed to get more of Richard Bright's delicious Coco, who is so queer-coded that honestly I think he's just meant to be openly gay, a small-time hood who is horny-as-hell for Belafonte, and flirts openly with him.  While film noir will frequently hint at queer characters, this is the closest I've ever gotten to seeing an openly gay one in a Classical Hollywood noir, and man I wish he'd been in more scenes.

1940's: Act of Violence, The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Blues in the Night, Brighton Rock, Criss Cross, Crossfire, Daisy Kenyon, Dead Reckoning, Detour, Fallen Angel, The Fallen Idol, Force of Evil, Gilda, High Sierra, I Walk Alone, I Wake Up Screaming, The Killers, The Lady from Shanghai, Leave Her to Heaven, Ministry of Fear, Moonrise, Murder My Sweet, Nightmare Alley, Out of the Past, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raw Deal, The Reckless Moment, Ride the Pink Horse, Scarlet Street, Sorry, Wrong Number, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, They Won't Believe Me, Too Late for Tears, The Woman in the Window, The Woman on the Beach

1950's: Ace in the Hole, Affair in Trinidad, The Asphalt Jungle, Beat the Devil, The Big Combo, The Big Heat, The Blue Gardenia, The Breaking Point, The Burglar, Cast a Dark Shadow, The Crimson Kimono, Elevator to the Gallows, Gun Crazy, The Hitch-Hiker, House of Bamboo, In a Lonely Place, The Killing, Kiss Me Deadly, Murder by Contract, Night and the City, On Dangerous Ground, Pickup on South Street, The Prowler, Slightly Scarlet, Sudden Fear, Sweet Smell of Success, They Live By Night, While the City Sleeps

Neo-Noir: Blade Runner, Body Heat, Farewell My Lovely, Fargo, From Afar, The Long Goodbye, Night Moves, Nightcrawler

OVP: Sudden Fear (1952)

Film: Sudden Fear (1952)

Stars: Joan Crawford, Jack Palance, Gloria Grahame

Director: David Miller

Oscar History: 4 nominations (Best Actress-Joan Crawford, Supporting Actor-Jack Palance, Cinematography, Costume Design)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

This week our reviews are going to continue to be a mix of films from 2020 (it's hard to imagine that we are still a few weeks away from the conclusion of this snail-paced awards season) and continuing to look into the past as we, well, clean out my DVR.  Today is one of those past-facing titles, as I decided that I wanted to watch a few acting nominees that I've never seen before.  Joan Crawford would only win three Oscar citations in her career, and the last of those would come in 1952, for her work in Sudden Fear.  This film has some iconic imagery, even if it's not the first film you might name-check Crawford for, but it is also noteworthy not just for Crawford, but for bringing another eventual Oscar winner to the Academy's attention: Jack Palance.  Palance was so well-liked in this role that he essentially launched a strange career where he would alternate between international star and nearly work-for-hire parts before finally getting his proper moment-in-the-sun in City Slickers.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses on Myra (Crawford), a brilliant & successful Broadway playwright who in the opening act of the film declines to give Lester Blaine (Palance) a part in her play because she feels he's wrong for the role.  They meet on a train, and seem to make up quickly, and that friendship blossoms into love.  Lester & Myra marry, but Myra (who is extremely wealthy) after the marriage dictates that most of her money will go to a foundation.  Thanks to a voice recorder in Myra's office, Myra (and the audience) discover after she says she'll leave some of her money to him in her will that Lester in fact planned on marrying Myra just for her money & humiliating her in the process, as he's in love instead with beautiful young Irene (Grahame), a former flame.  Myra also overhears on the recording that they are planning on killing her, knowing that if they do so before the will goes through that Lester will inherit her fortune.  After mistakenly breaking the recording, Myra must survive the weekend with both of these two plotting to kill her.  In the end, it is them who die, in a tragic case of mistaken identity, and Myra lives, much wiser from the experience.

The movie is noir, but it functions more as a melodrama.  I tend to enjoy melodramas, but I think the acting in them is hard to gage, and I'll be honest here-I don't get the love of Crawford in this role (and Crawford is generally one of my favorite actresses).  There's no depth to her Myra-Crawford plays her as a saint, but a saint so cloying you wonder how, precisely, she made it in the cutthroat world of theater.  There are also suspensions of belief (are we really intended to buy that beautiful, sexy Joan freaking Crawford has never been pursued by a man before Lester comes into the picture?) that make it harder to follow.  Crawford is a true movie star, and this is enjoyable to watch in parts, but is this good acting?  Probably not.

Palace is a bit better in a different part though again, so much of his character takes place offscreen that it's hard to gage (I get why he became a star after this, though, as he got to play a range of options with this duplicitous part).  Honestly, Gloria Grahame's side girl might be the best performance of the lot.  She is the one person who feels they exist outside the confines of a script that defies logic or convention.

The film won two additional Oscar nominations (and I suspect the score was probably close, though it mercifully was skipped as while the Elmer Bernstein music is sweeping, it impedes on the film at points, giving away key clues about the movie before they even occur).  The cinematography is sublime-great wide shots, and some clever uses of dream sequences.  The closet door ajar with the toy heading toward Crawford is ridiculously fun, and something Hitchcock would've been proud of.  And the costumes are intriguing.  I kind of like the iconic dual looks of both Crawford & Grahame in head scarfs...this would become one of Crawford's most recognizable screen moments (her firing a pearl-handled revolver into the dark dressed immaculately from head-to-toe), so they're doing something right.  Overall, though, I left Sudden Fear underwhelmed even though the actors, plot, and lensing all are things I would normally find irresistible.

The Big Heat (1953)

Film: The Big Heat (1953)
Stars: Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Lee Marvin, Jeanette Nolan, Alexander Scourby, Jocelyn Brando
Director: Fritz Lang
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Throughout the Month of June, as a birthday present to myself, we'll be profiling 15 famous film noir movies I've never seen (my favorite film genre).  Look at the bottom of this review for some of the other movies we've profiled.

The Big Heat is our second film from Fritz Lang this month, our first being the kickoff to the Film Noir series The Woman in the Window.  Lang had a fascinating life, having his political beliefs come into the crosshairs of both Joseph Goebbels & Joe McCarthy, he also made landmark pictures early on in his career like Metropolis and M, the latter of which served as a precursor to his future work as arguably the most important director in the film noir genre.  Today we go with what many would consider his most important Hollywood movie, The Big Heat.  The film, one of the more storied Columbia film noir productions, is a startling, violent film, and one of the darker film noir pictures we've come across so far in this series, anchored by a truly spellbinding performance from Gloria Grahame.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie starts with the suicide of a police officer, being investigated by Sergeant Dave Bannion (Ford), a tough-as-nails police officer who has a seemingly idyllic life at home with his wife Katie (Brando, and yes, she is the older sister of Marlon Brando-did you know he had a sister who was an actress?).  This all changes when he starts investigating the crime, and more importantly the connected crime of the death of the police officer's lover Lucy.  Soon he is the target of threats, and then in a shocking mid-film twist, his wife Katie dies after an assassination attempt mistakenly targets her rather than Bannion.  This causes Bannion to spiral, quitting the force after realizing that the Police Commissioner is essentially in bed with the mob boss Lagana (Scourby) who put the hit out on his wife, and begins to form a sort of vigilante justice against Lagana, and two of his hit men, one being Vince Stone, played by an early-in-his-career Lee Marvin.  The film shifts when Stone's girlfriend Debby (Grahame) starts to turn on him, giving Bannion information after realizing that Vince's abuse could hurt her some day (he attacks another woman at the bar).  Eventually this leads to  Bannion finding justice for his wife, but also with Debby's death during a shootout with her ex Vince, who is arrested & we see Bannion return to the force.

This is relatively standard film noir-fate, but what makes The Big Heat stand out in the years since is the shocking depictions of violence in the picture.  About two-thirds of the way through the picture, you realize that Lang is pushing the boundaries of what would have been acceptable in the 1950's at the time by having an offscreen fight between Vince and Debby end with Vince throwing scalding coffee at Debby's face, maiming her.  You'd think that, to spare the audience the trauma of seeing gorgeous Gloria Grahame with burn makeup or scarred, they would have also killed her off off-screen, but that isn't the case.  I'm struck that it was Gloria Grahame of all people who volunteered to do this (considering how famously vain she was in real life), but she then wears a mask for the remainder of the film, except during the shootout where she takes it off and has permanent scar makeup all across her porcelain face...and retaliates against Marvin by throwing coffee in HIS face, making him endure the same fate.

Grahame is superb in this role.  While I've never been super partial to Glenn Ford (he's good here, if we're judging on a curve, but he always feels too stoic and inward of an actor, never getting into the expressiveness I'd expect from such a well-scripted part), Grahame is marvelous.  She plays Debby as a little girl lost, one who has seen the world and knows more than she's saying, but plays dumb to keep out of trouble, only risking her neck when she realizes that her fate will eventually be at the hands of Vince (which she's right about, as we horribly learn later in the picture).  Grahame was coming off of an Oscar win at the time, and was about to see her career shallow in the coming years with plastic surgery mishaps and a scandalous personal life, but The Big Heat is a reminder of how she was truly one of the best actresses of her generation, one who worked in genre films and as a result never got the credit she was due.

Previous Films in the Series: Pickup on South Street, Gun Crazy, Night and the City, In a Lonely Place, They Live By Night, Nightmare Alley, Ride the Pink Horse, The Killers, The Woman in the Window, The Big Sleep

In a Lonely Place (1950)

Film: In a Lonely Place (1950)
Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, Frank Lovejoy, Carl Benton Reid, Martha Stewart
Director: Nicholas Ray
Oscar History: No nominations, though it's generally considered a classic of the genre and was given a spot in the National Film Registry
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

Throughout the Month of June, as a birthday present to myself, we'll be profiling 15 famous film noir movies I've never seen (my favorite film genre).  Look at the bottom of this review for some of the other movies we've profiled.

1950 is perhaps the most famous year for Hollywood giving itself a taste of its own medicine.  The year's Best Picture race pitted All About Eve and Sunset Blvd against each other, two of the finest films ever made and both were about show business.  Eve featured the sniping world of Broadway against Blvd's cruel look at how Hollywood spits out its stars and throws them away once they can't make a profit.  Both are grand pictures, ones you can't really call yourself a film fan without seeing, but apparently there was a third such movie in 1950 that I never knew existed.  In a Lonely Place is a look at a lonely screenwriter who may or may not have murdered a young fan, but it's also a look at how fame, love, and success are tied together, sometimes in heartbreaking ways.  It's also an amazing motion picture that surely should have competed alongside Eve and Blvd that year at the Oscars.

(Spoilers Ahead-And I Mean It If You Haven't Seen This Movie, Rent or Stream, and Then Come Back) The movie is about Dixon Steele (Bogart...I'd say this is his best moniker but no movie star really had a stronger list of character names), a Hollywood screenwriter who has been down-on-his-luck for years.  He used to be quite successful, but fame & ego have gotten in the way of that, and now he's desperately in need of a hit.  We also understand at the beginning of the film that he's a violent man, someone with a short temper when he nearly pitches a fight with a man in a car after the woman in the car starts chatting with him (she's an actress who was in one of his pictures).  Steele gets the chance to adapt a novel that appears to be trash, and rather than reading it he has a hatcheck girl Mildred (Stewart) describe it for him, possibly as a way to seduce her, which she's having none of since she has a boyfriend.  The next day, the girl is found murdered, and Dixon Steele is the prime suspect.  He gets an alibi of sorts from his beautiful new neighbor Laurel Gray (Grahame), who confesses that she finds him attractive while also saying she didn't see Mildred leave with Dixon.  The film follows their romance, with the two falling in love but with Laurel worried that Dixon may have actually murdered Mildred, as he shows frequent violent tendencies and an unusual knowledge for murders, as well as a callousness about Mildred's death.

This focus on violence is what makes In a Lonely Place so riveting, petrifying, and groundbreaking.  We've focused on violence throughout this month of noir, but few films have shown it to the same degree as this picture (there will be an exception in a few days when we get to a different Gloria Grahame picture, but I won't give that away just yet).  Other than Casablanca, I don't think that Bogart has ever given a better performance that I've seen, and that's because he's allowed to really get into the violence of this character.  Dixon Steele may be a theoretical murderer, but he's an affirmed abuser.  He has a violent temper, beating people up at the drop of a hat, and is clearly obsessively controlling Laurel, driven insane by wanting to "make her his."  Whether or not he's the killer, he's still a dangerous man and one that can't possibly be good for his girlfriend, whom he berates into being his fiancé.

This all comes to a head in the movie's famous ending (which, thankfully I didn't have spoiled for me, and hopefully you've quit reading this review if you are ever going to see this movie so you won't have it spoiled for you).  Laurel decides, after Dixon nearly blinds his film agent in rage, that she's going to leave Dixon but is afraid of his reaction so she secretly packs to flee on a flight to New York.  Dixon catches her, though, and violently starts attacking her, with her screaming that she'll do anything he wants.  At this point, it almost seems like both of them aren't sure if he killed Mildred, and then a phone call comes through, stopping Dixon from potentially murdering Laurel.  We find out that Mildred's boyfriend was the killer, and that Dixon is innocent (this is the first time we've gotten proper confirmation of this-the film does nothing to assuage audience members that Dixon isn't the murderer until that point, and certainly Laurel has no way of knowing).  The movie ends on a sour note, as Laurel sees the kind of man that Dixon is, and he walks out of her life forever, his potential guilt and tangible rage already having poisoned the relationship.  It's a mesmerizing, shocking ending to a really brilliant film.  Grahame & Bogart are spectacular-both are two of the greatest actors of this era, but there's a chemistry on display here that's impossible to deny, even as it becomes toxic.  It says something that even in one of the strongest Best Actress fields ever assembled, I'd still have found room for Grahame.  The direction is assured (from Nicholas Ray, who directed They Live By Night which we saw earlier this month, as well as his most known masterpiece Rebel Without a Cause), and frequently quite inventive.  If the movie is known for anything other than the ending, it's known for the crazy fast car chase where Dixon nearly kills Laurel after discovering she spoke with the police (not of her own volition), and it's daringly directed & genuinely scary.  The script is also a stunner, with lines like "there's no sacrifice too great for a chance at immortality" and "I lived a few weeks while you loved me"...I mean, how can you not obsess over such a movie?  In a Lonely Place is a classic that has been lower case for far too long-this movie is too good to be discovered on a late night showing on TCM.


Previous Films in the Series: They Live By Night, Nightmare Alley, Ride the Pink Horse, The Killers, The Woman in the Window, The Big Sleep

Top 10 Favorite Femme Fatales

There is literally no film character trope I love more than the femme fatale.  Thankfully the "femme fatale" trope is not always literal as many of the women that are considered "femme fatales" don't exactly end up being the killers, just leading our heroes to dangerous situations, so I feel like I can do this list without having to worry too much about revealing spoilers.  As a way to kick off my vacation (I'm on vacation if you're reading this within a week of it being published!), I wanted to countdown my ten favorite femme fatales of cinema, in order (though not necessarily in order of best performance, but instead within the confines of this...you know what, just enjoy the list and provide your own, and recommendations of underrated femme fatales as I am always looking for recommendations!).

10. Ann Blyth in Mildred Pierce

9. Kim Novak in Vertigo

8. Gloria Grahame in Crossfire

7. Rita Hayworth in The Lady from Shanghai

6. Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard

5. Rita Hayworth in Gilda

4. Jane Greer in Out of the Past

3. Faye Dunaway in Chinatown

2. Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity

1. Gene Tierney in Laura

OVP: Crossfire (1947)

Film: Crossfire (1947)
Stars: Robert Young, Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan, Gloria Grahame, Jacqueline White
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Oscar History: 5 nominations (Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Supporting Actor-Robert Ryan, and Supporting Actress-Gloria Grahame)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

On occasion Oscar decides to go with a film that doesn't seem extremely typical of his tastes.  It's not necessarily that he always ignores a specific genre or filmmaker (though occasionally he does), it's just that when he goes there, it seems to be at an odd time or in a big way.  Think of someone like Darren Aronofsky finally getting his moment with a horror film like Black Swan.  Or, in this case Edward Dmytryk, who made some of the best film noir films of the 1940's, getting randomly assigned a quintet of very big nominations for Crossfire, a film that is excellent but all of his films usually were, so I don't know why this particular film caught their fancy.

(Spoilers Ahead) I'm glad it did, though, as otherwise it would have just been another film that I need to get around to on Dmytryk's filmography rather than one that I'm reviewing right now.  The film is your classic detective drama: we open with a man named Joseph Samuels having died, with the likely killer being amongst a troupe of demobilized soldiers.  We see an investigator named Keeley (Young) who is determined to find the killer, though apparently only by staying behind his desk (was Robert Young pregnant or something during this movie-he seems like he's behind a desk 80% of the movie and he's the lead!).  Initially he's led to believe that a cowardly corporal named Mitchell is the killer, but slowly (and with a bit of help from Robert Mitchum, playing the always-honest but inevitably tough soldier-without-a-cause) figures out that it is of course one of the headliners, in this case Robert Ryan in the role that would win him an Oscar nomination and leading man status.

The film is a conundrum for me in terms of whether to love it or not.  For some reason (perhaps it's his weird blandness), but Robert Young is one of those leading men of Classical Hollywood whose appeal I just don't get (Dick Powell is also on this list).  He's easily the most boring character in every film that he ever makes, and I just feel underwhelmed with him when someone like, say, Paul Henreid would have been a more compelling leading man.  Still, the dialogue and plotting of this movie is brisk and wildly entertaining-you can see the killer coming a mile away, but you don't actually know how many people are going to die before he's caught, or even if they will find justice for him (noir being one of those rare genres where Hollywood cliche can occasionally get thrown to the wolves).  And I loved the way that the film took its time with certain scenes-one of the things you can enjoy when you watch old films, and something that newer directors should take note of, is that you build so much from characters if you let them sit and talk for a bit, rather than edit everything down to the absolute essentials of a scene.  Your actors get to stretch out their characters a bit, let us know their facial expressions and not just cliched cues of facial expressions.

The film's acting is easily the best part of it, particularly the Oscar-nominated supporting players.  Robert Ryan as an anti-Semitic soldier could so easily have drifted into cliche, and occasionally his dialogue does (1947 was the year of the Academy taking a stand against anti-Semitism, with both Crossfire and Gentleman's Agreement gaining nominations in the Best Picture race), but his performance feels very modern.  There is genuine fear felt against him onscreen, and there's a reason-he uses his massive frame and dark, penetrating eyes to great effect, and frequently talks in sentences that could be threats, but might be just normal chatter.  It's something that great screen villains are made of, and it was definitely something that left me wanting more.

The same could be said for Gloria Grahame, getting her first Oscar nomination as a taxi dancer (though you get the impression she's also a prostitute) with little going for her, but a lot of weariness.  So often films of this era would make the "hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold" style characters, but Grahame (best known to modern audiences as Violet in It's a Wonderful Life) doesn't go that route-she's not here to change the course of a hero, she's simply a random stranger that was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  I loved the complicated relationship she has with the man in her apartment, first claiming to be her husband and then we learn that he's clearly something darker, possibly a pimp or even a stalker.  There's so much gritty truth in this side character and her performance in what could have been a throwaway role.  I have to say that both Ryan and Grahame wholly deserved their Oscar nominations for this movie.

Those are my thoughts on Crossfire, a great little film that hopefully you catch late at night on a Saturday sometime (it plays better, like most movies, when you're watching it in the dark).  If you've seen it, what are your thoughts on the movie, and on Ryan and Grahame in particular?  Does anyone really love Robert Young (am I going to have to investigate his TV work to finally get the joke)?  And why do you think this film, of all of the movies that he made, got Dmytryk his sole Oscar nod for directing?  Share in the comments!