Purely Joyful Movie!

Did you people see the same film I saw?

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Fell into this by accident and couldn't turn it off even though it was 1am ... great story if melodramatic but that's why we love Noir, right? Ruth Roman is wonderful as always and it was fun to watch how easily she turned that platinum blond helmet into brunette (in the motel bathroom) as well as her tough dance-hall girl demeanor into the kind hearted maternal woman! The ingenious ways in which they seemingly easily made their way from NYC to Northern California were fabulous ... Steve Cochran is sure easy on the eyes ... great story but the ending was such that all I could do was laugh! Everyone got what they wanted - including the turncoat!

A man is released after 18 years for killing his father, and falls right into hot water again when he meets a dodgy dancehall dame. Starts out strong and fizzles out. In the early stages, it's classic noir, with an intriguing femme fatale, appealing stylization, a rough edge and some good on-the-lam scenes. Then Ruth Roman's character takes a rather unbelievable turn and the film becomes a pretty dull melodrama. Once in a while an interesting facet will surface, but it's a big dropoff from the movie's early promise. Other films have pulled off this kind of shift quite nicely: ON DANGEROUS GROUND and ONE WAY STREET come to mind. But here it feels like the air being drained from a tire. Steve Cochran is pretty good throughout, and Roman is excellent up until the change (when she goes from blonde to brunette). While the movie never gets bad, it does get disappointing. The ending is a little too convenient as well.

The first 45 minutes of this Warners programmer is an impressive, surprisingly frank and cynical noir, as an ex-con's attempts to readjust to a bewildering outside world just lead him into more hot water. Ruth Roman is particularly effective (and affecting) as a sassy, worldly-wise platinum-blonde dance hall girl. Once the two of them take it on the lam and she reverts to her natural hair colour, the movie descends into sentimental clichéd melodrama, with Steve Cochran as the protagonist showing off his pecs at every turn, and Roman cloyingly playing at the nurturing wife with the terrible secret -- there are more clinches than in a latter day Muhammad Ali fight. To his credit, director Felix Feist does like to emphasize the key points visually, and the first glimpse of Roman in her tight outfit at the seedy clip joint is striking. But unfortunately, it all amounts to another one of those paint-by-numbers working class Warner Brothers jobs instead of the tour-de-force it starts out to be.

Yeah, I know, Scarlett O'Hara's favorite maxim. If by some weird set of circumstances this thoughtful little gem shows up on your TV after the latest infomercial, tape it, go to bed, and sometime when you're in the mood for some reflective film watching, shove it in the VCR maw. Steve Cochran plays a really dumb guy who gets entwined with Ruth Roman's cynical, smart loser dame through a series of preposterous events. If J. D. Salinger had written a crime film, it would have probably turned out like this. Why are films like this so hard to find? Other '50's obscurities worth checking out: Eight Iron Men; Kiss Me Deadly; Rogue River; Violent Saturday; Blood And Steel; Paratroop Command; Convicts Four (actually '62, but a great prison film.) I give up, nobody seems to remember anything about movies since 1980 anyway.