best movie i've ever seen.

The acting in this movie is really good.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Douglas Sirk and Sam Fuller. Not a likely pairing in any producer's shortlist, the legendary director and iconic screenwriter came together one time to show maybe why conventional wisdom has a point now and then.It's the story of Griff Marat (Cornel Wilde) and Jenny Marsh (Patricia Knight), a parole officer and parolee who crime brings together, first as a matter of bureaucracy and later as outlaw lovers. It doesn't sound like a bad idea, but neither Sirk nor Fuller are at their best here.We open on a shot of Jenny going into a dress store to purchase a new outfit. If you were expecting a car chase or a scene of Jenny's arrest, forget it. This is a Douglas Sirk film; just be glad we don't spend the next 15 minutes watching Jenny make her face.After that, Fuller takes over with his on-the-nose dialogue. Jenny's not bad, Griff keeps insisting in his salt-of-the-earth Fuller way, she just needs a new direction. "I'm counting on her meeting some normal, decent people," which is too bad because they live in L. A.The basic idea of the film is that love conquers all, or at least keeps one from looking both ways before crossing into traffic. This is the only rationale for Griff transforming from tough parole officer, not even looking up to greet Jenny when she first steps into his office, to cheerful chipmunk who can't wait to take the convicted killer with a chip on her shoulder to meet his blind mother and tagalong kid brother.The performances are actually pretty good, given the dicey material. Wilde has a smooth delivery that almost sells his character despite a glaring absence of professionalism, while Knight's brittle beauty draws us in and makes us wonder about her motives. Sirk works the scenes around her, and Knight delivers when the "I'm-no-good" dialogue isn't choking her.The best work is John Baragrey as Harry Wesson, the guy Jenny took the rap for five years ago and who still wants her, in his jaded but determined way. Baragrey delivers prime Fuller wisecracks in such a cool, off-handed manner, I kept begging for him to show up while Jenny read love poems to Marat's mom. Baragrey's smugitude is off the charts, and delightful."Excuse me while I push Humpty Dumpty off his wall."No, you'll break his heart."That's the idea. You catch on quick, Jenny."It's a shame Baragrey didn't get more film work. He'd be my Doe Avedon candidate for best performance in a bad film, 1949, if only for the fact "Shockproof," dull and silly as it often is, never sinks quite so low as to be called "bad." It has an energy, moving at a quick pace. The scenes of Griff and Jenny slinking through the shadows, wondering if their story made the local papers, are marvelously acted and well-shot. The problem is they come too late and don't get much time for development before everything's wrapped up in a bizarre ending.It's the one part of the movie even supporters agree doesn't work. Here's the thing: I liked it. No, it doesn't make sense, but it breaks the formula the rest of the film so doggedly follows. Most important, it gives my man Baragrey a chance to deliver the final line, and it's a beaut.OK, if you enjoy Sirk and Fuller, you will see things here to engage and interest you. It's not a well-made film, but it's an interesting effort, and there are scenes, lines, and moments that show you why both men would make screen history – so long as they listened to the parole board and kept a healthy distance from one another.

Remember in "Caged" when Eleanor Parker gets probation but is obviously going to be heading back to prison? That "after prison" story is pretty much what befalls parolee Patricia Knight in this engrossing film noir about a paroled murderess who falls in love with her parole officer (Cornel Wilde) and unintentionally leads him down the path towards his possible own doom. At first, it is business only, but as nature takes its course, sparks fly and Wilde falls under her spell. It is obvious that she longs to reform, but circumstances and the shady characters from her past cause situations to explode beyond her control, and leads to violence which sends Knight and Wilde on the run into hiding.There's a slight bit of family drama concerning Wilde's blind mother (Esther Minicotti, best remembered as the manipulative mother in "Marty") who is totally sympathetic here. The glamorous Knight has an uncanny resemblance to such film noir vets as Lauren Bacall, Veronica Lake, Lizabeth Scott, and in particularly the more obscure K.T. Stevens. See the same year's "Port of New York" to see what I mean in referring to Ms. Stevens. Ironically, even though I'd never heard of Ms. Knight, I found her to be quite good. The last reel was pretty much re-done by Warner Brothers two years later for a film noir called "Tomorrow is Another Day". This is probably the only non-soap opera of director Douglas Sirk's career, and one of his few away from Universal. If you can get past the implausibility of parole officer Wilde risking his career (which includes political ambitions) for a murderess like Knight, then you will actually find yourself enjoying this movie as much as I did.

Shockproof (1949)Sam Fuller, the writer of this film, is admired for breaking rules and being a little bit edgy. Douglas Sirk, the director, is known for sumptuous, no compromise melodramas with gorgeous dreamy sets and an arch and affecting artificiality. They make an odd mix, and something doesn't quite click here. The plot is standard fare but good--a parole officer falls for a reluctant parole, who still has a thing for a thug up to no good. The officer is terrific, Cornell Wilde at his regular guy best, a kind of echo of Dana Andrews with a little more warmth. But the main woman, Patricia Wright, is a bit wooden. You can feel her trying too hard too often, and it's just one of those things that cuts the rest of the effort down to size. Not surprisingly, she was only in five feature films, and was the lead in only one other.But setting aside her presence and its deadening effect, there are some things to really enjoy here. You might find the movie ordinary for awhile, with some nice clichés and a steady development. But then, halfway, there's a huge and really sudden twist. And a believable one, a great scene. Suddenly there is a whole new plot. We aren't quite involved enough with the two leads to get swept away in their love affair (as we certainly do in "Gun Crazy" two years later, or in "They Live by Night" the same year), but it's exciting anyway. There are some scenes at an oil rig and the worker's cabins (I assume it's a set) that are gorgeous.And then there's a sixty second surprise ending that doesn't do the movie justice and is very unlike Fuller. It's almost like someone took the script from Fuller and said, no Sam, that won't do. And rewrote it. And in fact that's what happened. One of the Columbia producers, Helen Deutsch, stepped in to remove Fuller's violent first intention. In fact, that final scene wasn't even directed by Sirk, who quit Columbia and left the country in anger (only to return and start a string of his famous 1950s masterpieces). A detailed account of all this is at www.tcm.com/this-month/article/208688%7C0/Shockproof.html.What else? The photography by Charles Lawton Jr. is great (he had just done Welles's vigorous "Lady from Shanghai"), and a lot of the side actors are really good, especially the gambler boyfriend played by John Baragrey. This is one of those films to enjoy in pieces, or to enjoy for how it fits into the chronologies of some of the people who made it. Wilde and Knight, by the way, were still married during the filming (Wilde insisted Knight get the part) but they split up in 1951.

If the movie were an airplane, then it wobbled a lot before finally crashing and burning with an utterly illogical ending. Up to that point, this crime drama is mediocre at best. The best part follows the couple (Wilde and Knight) as they flee the cops after running out on Knight's parole and in the process sinking into society's lower depths. That 20 minute sequence is done with both flair and zip. Director Douglas Sirk is known for artistic soap opera, so it's not surprising that this film emphasizes the love story over the crime element. The trouble is that Wilde is woodenly uninvolving, while Knight's character remains muddled, to say the least. A key part of the plot lies in tracking her evolving emotions. But that's hard to do since these developments are confusingly portrayed, helped neither by the turgid script nor by Knight's thespic limitations. Apparently cult movie-maker Sam Fuller co-authored some of the screenplay, which, on the face of it, seems hard to believe. Nonetheless, I'm sure he had nothing to do with the ridiculous climax that instead smacks of outside interference of the most thoughtless kind.Calling this a noir film is, I think, a stretch. It's certainly not filmed as noir, with none of the usual trademark light and shadow. True, the plot contains a number of noirish elements, but Sirk's style doesn't bring these out in recognizably noir fashion. Even so, the many SoCal location shots are both entertaining and appropriate for crime drama. (Too bad we don't get more of the dingy oil field setting, which has definite and exotic noir potential.) But noir or not, this is a rather poorly done crime drama, having neither the force nor the panache of the better examples of the period. With better casting, a more cogent screenplay, and more attention to the oil field, this could have been a memorable film.