Note: September 21, 1957 was the date of the first episode of the classic Perry Mason TV series. So this week we celebrate Raymond Burr’s performances in film noir to demonstrate that Burr didn't come out of nowheresville. Burr built up a fearsome reputation playing villains in the late 1940s and 1950s. For instance, in They Were So Young (1955) he plays a felon who is involved in a human trafficking ring in which young women are tricked into traveling to Rio de Janeiro to join an elite modeling agency, only to find out it's a front for sexual slavery in brothels. An easily shocked moralist and prude, I’m not into exploitation movies so not even the yen to view Brother Ray’s film noir outings would induce me to watch a movie whose alternative titles are Violated and Party Girls for Sale.
1948 / 1:18
Tagline: “She Was Sweet...and DEADLY AS POISON!”
Tolstoy said the elemental story begins with a stranger coming to town. In this noir western, Dick Powell is that stranger hitting town where the Chorus of the movie, hotel man Burl Ives, is singing a ditty about the short life spans of strangers in town. Powell plays an underground federal agent whose mission is to break up a ring that is robbing stagecoaches of gold, killing the soldiers guarding the consignment, and disrupting transportation and the smooth functioning of the economy.
The black and white cinematography is beautifully shot, especially an epic fist fight that a movie-goer can’t believe any fighter would walk away from. With stirring orchestral music, any western has a travel log aspect, with its views of big nature, open skies, and weird landscapes. But there are noir touches as well, such as cool shadows, light on faces in darkness, and warehouses burning down in the night. Noir influences the dialogue. Jane Greer: I think he secretly likes you. Powell: Well, he keeps it a secret. Powell also assures us, “Trouble and I are old enemies. We understand each other.”
Directed by Sidney Lanfield, the movie is considered a unique hybrid of Western and film noir, with a complex narrative and atmospheric tension. The screenplay, in fact, won the award Best Written American Western from the Writers Guild of America in 1949. It was based on a novel by Luke Short, a well-respected author I remember fondly from when I read westerns long ago.
Dick Powell could do anything, musicals, comedy, or noir. His chemistry with Jane Greer works as Hollywood works in the inevitable love interest. In fact, the exquisite Greer is so attractive even a tight-lipped noir hero would fall in love with her. Besides, she’s the richest woman in town, even wealthier than Agnes Moorehead who has a thing going with the local Army General. The three plug-uglies look the part, especially one that looks like George Atzerodt, one of the conspirators in the Lincoln assassination.
Raymond Burr plays Bristow, a cowardly and crooked lawyer in the town. He has a poker jones. Jane Greer, who inherited the saloon-casino-bordello from her father, uses Burr’s IOU’s to make lily-livered Burr fold like a card table. In his four scenes, duplicitous Burr has a skittish manner, jumpy voice, and spine of macaroni, thinking it terribly unfair that the bad guys would kill him when they had no use for him. He’s persuasive when we see him realize how exposed he is as he crosses the street between the casino and his office. Maybe he wanted to put in an excellent performance because he was so happy not to be playing the heavy for once.
As for the connection with the original Perry Mason TV series, a familiar face in noir movies, Steve Brodie was a young officer in one scene in this movie. Brodie was the perp in TCOT Garrulous Gambler and a PR man in TCOT Angry Astronaut. His best part was as a political fixer in TCOT Witless Witness, probably in my Top Three Favorite Episodes.Please Murder Me (1956) [internet archive]
[my
review]
I Love Trouble (1948) [internet archive] [my
review]
Sleep My Love (1948) [internet archive] [my
review]
Ruthless (1948) [internet archive] [my
review]
Pitfall (1948) [internet archive] [my
review]
Walk a Crooked Mile (1948) [internet archive]
[my
review]
Raw Deal (1948) [internet archive] [my
review]
Station West (1948) [my
review]
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