Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

it is his film. not only the first but a film who survives to clichés and classic crime recipes for his acting. because the script use a Hemingway short story as start point for a common crime. and that is really a sin because the original gem is massacred by a story like too many others. the presence of Ava Gardner is, in same measure, one of the good points . for her art to give a special mixture of vulnerability and force to a character who seams be convict to be the same"femme fatale" of genre. short, a film full of virtues against the poor script . first - invitation to discover the short story of Hemingway. second - to admire Burt Lancaster at his first role . not the least to compare Ava Garda's performance with the others for the same type of character.

After out of town killers come into a small community to kill a garage mechanic/former boxer nicknamed "the Swede", an insurance investigator pieces together the crime--and the victim's reluctance to run when warned of his impending death. Gripping film noir, expanded from Ernest Hemingway's short story, is often misrepresented as the first of its kind when the genre (and these stylized characters) had been kicking around cinema for at least 10 years. Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner turn in star-making performances, though the seasoned character actors in the lesser roles are often just as good or better. Screenplay credited to Anthony Veiller, however both John Huston and Richard Brooks worked extensively on it. The melodramatic music by Miklós Rózsa and the striking cinematography by Woody Bredell both compliment the film tremendously. Remade in 1964 with Lee Marvin and Angie Dickinson, in what was meant as a TV feature but instead was released to theaters. **1/2 from ****

A superb crime-drama. Clever, original, complex (but not overly so) plot, based on an Ernest Hemingway short story. Well directed by Robert Siodmak.Performances are top-notch. Burt Lancaster, in his debut role, plays the easily-lead dumb boxer, Swede, to a T. Edmond O'Brien is solid as Reardon, the insurance investigator. The performance that stands out, however, is that of Ava Gardner. Surely one of the most beautiful women to ever grace the silver screen, she does not disappoint here. The fact that the movie is in black and white doesn't understate her beauty, and she plays the femme fatale perfectly. An absolute classic, and no doubt a movie that inspired people like Scorsese and Tarantino.

It's an almost perfect film noir, starting out near the end and flashbacks its broody way through a labyrinth of stories from the various participants of the drama. Along with Double indemnity, The Big Sleep, Build My Gallows High and a few others it's textbook stuff, high entertainment and almost high Art.Two burly thugs with strange senses of humour show up in a small town intent on killing someone they didn't know as part of their job. Burt Lancaster is the guy with the murky past who puzzlingly and philosophically resigns himself to his impending doom, but ends up being shot to bits and pretty cut up about it along with his insurance company who send investigator Edmund O'Brien to unravel the mystery. And it takes some unravelling during the series of short flashbacks as he gets to the truth, from a fine collection of character actors expertly directed by Robert Siodmak to a typically stirring and inventive score by Miklos Rozsa. The production values were also skyhigh, the photography brilliant and atmospherically monochrome. I thought Jeff Corey was perfect as usual in his supporting role, but everyone was very good – Ava Gardner could maybe have done with a little longer screen time during the picture so as to underline the denouement for the femme fatale - but nothing matters much as everything works so well anyway.Favourite bits from so many: the tense opening scenes that hook you in so easily; the ballet-like scene in the restaurant where Lancaster takes the rap for stealing Gardner's jewel; Vince Barnett and Lancaster discussing the heavens; the big payroll heist – made to feel like a voice-over newsreel showing how easy it is (sometimes!) to rob a candy store; the killers violent but brief re-appearance in the bar – don't blink! It's a film which although obviously made a couple of generations ago still feels if not looks modern to me, and if you can jettison any prejudices and preconceptions it's still a must-see.