Truly Dreadful Film

Simply Perfect

From my favorite movies..

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Of course we have all seen this type of story line a few times, especially if you enjoy the film 'noire of the 1940s and 1950s era. What sets this crime/film 'noire/romance apart from others is the first class performances of the four main characters. The gorgeous gams of professional dancer Cyd Charisse are on full display in her role as Vicki Gaye and she is the love interest of the smartest criminal defence attorney Thomas Farrell played to perfection by Robert Taylor who unfortunately died in the prime of his life and in his career as a first rate Hollywood star.Thomas Farrel is the lead counsel for mob boss Rico Angelo played by Academy Award best actor nominee Lee J. Cobb who rules his crime empire and the streets below him by fear of death or serious injury to anyone who would even consider double crossing him. Now lawyer Thomas Farrell does have a close working relationship with the mob boss Rico Angelo who pays him top dollar for keeping him and his cronies out of jail even when they are up on murder charges. Such is the case with Louis Canetto played by John Ireland who is charged with murder but gets off due to the masterful defence strategy used by his lawyer, Thomas Farrel. Louis Canetto has his eyes set on the pretty party girl Vicki Gaye but so does defence lead counsel Thomas Farrel. It does not take the gorgeous Cyd Charisse who plays Vicki Gaye long to assess that she will have a much more loving relationship with lawyer Thomas Farrel than she would with the mob underling Louis Canetto.So you can see that this film 'noire has the typical seedy criminal element who require a smart lawyer to continuously defend them, and it has the party girl turned love interest of the brilliant lawyer who is used by the mob boss to get what he wants out of his top notch lawyer Thomas Farrell. Where I see this film excels and where other similar pictures of the era falter is with the high caliber acting of these four main characters such that the film has ended when the audience wants to see more.I give the film a pretty good 7 out of 10 rating.

Nice to see that David Opatoshu and Lee J. Cobb were in this film. 2 years later they would star as brothers on a different path in the wonderful "Exodus."Eleven years before, Kent Smith and John Ireland both gave wonderful support in the winning "All the King's Men." In this one, Ireland is a hard-nosed gangster under Cobb's thumb and Smith is a prosecuting attorney, very much different from his usual bland roles.The film stars Robert Taylor and Syd Charisse as two people caught up with gangster Rico, Cobb. Taylor is his mouth piece and Charisse, the dancer with whom Taylor links up and they eventually try to rid themselves of Rico, but are caught up by threats, intimidation and general violence, conducive for the 1930s Chicago setting.It's basically the old story of trying to reform and start anew, and it is done quite well.

I was watching some films classed as "noirs" recently and I had become accustom to any drama from a certain period being called a "noir" whether it is or not; but when I started Party Girl I assumed someone had got it really wrong as the bright colors and opening musical number clearly suggested it was anything but a noir or a tough drama. When the plot settles in though we find that mob lawyer Thomas Farrell is falling for showgirl Vicki Gaye to the point that he starts changing his life and ultimately looks to step back from his work with the mob. That decision though, is not one that mobster Rico Angelo can support.Although it is a tougher film than it looks, I won't say that I ever totally got over the light, the color and the sense of hope that some of the characters had – these things are not really noir qualities but of course it can still have these things and work as a film, which this one does. The plot builds nicely with the central relationship not moving too quickly but going well. The sense of hope that the pair have does draw the viewer in but at the same time I felt like the scale and reach of their hope (holidaying across Europe for example) was too much and I would have preferred a more low-key aspiration to do the job narratively without rising too far from the violent reality of their situation. That said the threat is always there and the menace is kept simmering in the background and starts being clearer in the final third. The film lets the violence and consequences show and the sense of threat is well portrayed by the very specific items used (eg the acid). The dance numbers looked like filler but, although tame by modern standards, they do add spice and heat with their sexual nature, which again helps the atmosphere of the film.The cast are generally good. Taylor is solid and reliable in the lead role, providing a good dramatic presence that isn't ever too soft to do the job. Charisse is better as she adds sexuality but is more than an equal for Taylor's character – to describe her as a showgirl is a disservice to the character she ultimately delivers. Cobb, Ireland, Allen and others add menace to their villains – Cobb in particular is a tough presence. Generally the cast do well with the material to add toughness and grit that perhaps the cinematography does not.The color, light etc may put you off the film if you come expecting an atypical gritty noir, but it is worth staying because this is essentially a tough crime drama with some solidly violent suggestions and a good atmosphere of threat and menace underlying the story of two people in a relationship.

This film was made at a time when the classic "studio" system was in collapse, and journeyman genius Nicholas Ray -- who had previously made masterpieces like "In a Lonely Place" for Bogart's Santana Productions, "Johnny Guitar" for Republic Pictures, and a whole slew of top notch film noirs for RKO -- found himself highly employable but somewhat unable to get his own productions off the ground. As such, I think it's fair to describe the film less as a labor of love than a labor of discovering love, and you can almost see the process of Ray finding the secret of various scenes with his actors. It's a better film than any of his subsequent "epic" efforts that I've seen, and perhaps you could even say that in its rather simple story of a disabled mafia lawyer (Robert Taylor) who meets the love of his life (Cyd Charisse) at a tacky mob party the director found an opportunity to comment on the dissolute state of his life and career.The story follow's Taylor's character's attempts to extricate himself from his deep involvement with mafia kingpin Rico Angelo (Lee J. Cobb), who relies on his legal skills to keep him and his buddies -- including the opportunistic Louis (John Ireland) and sadistic, unstable Cookie La Motte (Corey Allen) -- out of prison. One of the things about the film that really interested me was that the DA (Kent Smith) is perhaps more unscrupulous and ambitious than any of the mafia figures. In one of the film's best dialog sequences and one that is most charged with Ray's signature style, we see the DA Stewart trying to convince Tommy (Taylor) to become a "fink." It's as if the two are back in the courtroom, where we first saw Stewart, but with only the audience as judge. Tommy acquits himself well in his own defense: "my expertise is in defending the guilty man, and you've made it your business to make the innocent man seem guilty." Stewart remonstrates him: "when are you going to get smart and play along?" Tommy has an answer for that too: "when are they going to start making you a Senator?" Stewart: "As soon as you start talking." What's fascinating about this scene, and also the scenes between Cobb's character and Taylor's, is the awareness of how a conversation can be like a battle, and in all cases between equal and respectful opponents.Tommy plays on his sincerity, even to the audience, while holding forth with the most insincere of ruses like his continual appeals to the sentiment associated with his "father's watch", which he actually orders in bulk to use as a courtroom prop. It kind of reminded me of Chris Nolan's "Dark Knight" in the way that each time he tells the story of the watch he gives a different version specific to whatever situation he's in at that point, but always involving his father and this idea of a "hardscrabble" upbringing in Chicago. There's a strong thread of nostalgia running through the film, which is itself set in the 1930s Chicago of director Ray's childhood. One of the most remarkable scenes in the film is when Tommy tells Vicki (Charisse) about the injury that made him lame, all while they stand next to the very bridge where it occurred.The film features exceptional performances by Taylor, Cobb and Ireland and the very best performance I've seen by Cyd Charisse. I was able to see it at the Castro Theater in SF as a commemoration of the passing of Ms. Charisse a few months ago, on a double bill with Minnelli's "The Band Wagon." Unfortunately a direct comparison such as that makes her musical sequences in "Party Girl" seem pretty half-baked. The songs and dances are not very imaginative, and are not integrated into the film in any interesting way. Nick Ray seems to be able to get more kinetic power and more of a musical sort of excitement out of the violent montage of mob killings that plays like a color operatic version of the meltdown in Hawks' "Scar Face." "Party Girl" deserves a better fate than its had so far -- it should be released on video so that movie fans can assess its unique contributions to the gangster genre that place it firmly between "Scar Face" and "The Godfather", and yet infused with the "noir" atmosphere that was Ray's expertise. For the director Ray, this was perhaps the last film in which he was able to tell a story based around small and intimate moments as opposed to the huge European productions he would soon become just a small part of himself.