Post by london777 on Oct 29, 2018 3:17:05 GMT
Just watched The Pretender (1947) dir: W. Lee Wilder (Billy Wilder's elder brother, not that Billy would have anything to do with him or his career). This is maybe his best picture. If so, I would hate to have to watch his worst. I did make it through to the end, and it has some good points, though its rating of 6.7 on IMDb is wildly generous.
Firstly, it has a neat plot, a variation on the theme of someone who commissions a hit, but is then unable to cancel it when he (or she) has a change of heart. Secondly the story moves along briskly and logically for its 69 mins with no obvious plot-holes that I noticed. Thirdly, the lead is Albert Dekker, and although a bit hammy he is always watchable (especially when he shaves off his moustache). The female lead is Catherine Craig, a B-list actress who eventually gave up movies to support her husband Robert Preston in his career on stage and screen.
The plot is genuine film noir, a man caught in his own web, but the camera skills of John Alton are only intermittently obvious, such as Dekker's huge shadow looming over the heroine in her room, and the brilliant shots of the survivors at the very end. At other times the montage is banal and I suspect Alton was not involved.
The score is inept. Wilder Snr directed a lot of sci-fi and horror movies and the theramin is used so excessively here that I half expected a flying saucer to land on the lawn or for Dekker to unscrew his head to reveal he is a reptilian alien, as Julian Glover once so thrillingly did in Dr Who. But no, as I have said, the plot scuttled along logically.
By 1947 crime films had not all out-grown the tedious '30s practice of inserting little comic vignettes to lighten things up, often at the expense of superstitious black servants or dumb Irish cops. Here the light relief is provided by a hoodlum who has succeeded to his somewhat more competent boss' position and mimics his late chief's speech. One saying he inherited is "tinknuttinovit" and his frequent use of it reminded me of a more recent film where the wise guys repeatedly say "fuhgeddaboudit ". Was it "Goodfellas"? Did the later movie get the idea from the earlier one, or is this sort of parlance frequently found in mob movies?
Here are the dying boss, his female assassin, and his loyal sidekick (a curious poster, as it shows none of the three principals - the third being Charles Drake):
So let us show them in this less interesting image:
So my question to you more knowledgeable film-buffs is - what films can you name that contain the trope of someone unable to cancel a hit they had previously commissioned?
Firstly, it has a neat plot, a variation on the theme of someone who commissions a hit, but is then unable to cancel it when he (or she) has a change of heart. Secondly the story moves along briskly and logically for its 69 mins with no obvious plot-holes that I noticed. Thirdly, the lead is Albert Dekker, and although a bit hammy he is always watchable (especially when he shaves off his moustache). The female lead is Catherine Craig, a B-list actress who eventually gave up movies to support her husband Robert Preston in his career on stage and screen.
The plot is genuine film noir, a man caught in his own web, but the camera skills of John Alton are only intermittently obvious, such as Dekker's huge shadow looming over the heroine in her room, and the brilliant shots of the survivors at the very end. At other times the montage is banal and I suspect Alton was not involved.
The score is inept. Wilder Snr directed a lot of sci-fi and horror movies and the theramin is used so excessively here that I half expected a flying saucer to land on the lawn or for Dekker to unscrew his head to reveal he is a reptilian alien, as Julian Glover once so thrillingly did in Dr Who. But no, as I have said, the plot scuttled along logically.
By 1947 crime films had not all out-grown the tedious '30s practice of inserting little comic vignettes to lighten things up, often at the expense of superstitious black servants or dumb Irish cops. Here the light relief is provided by a hoodlum who has succeeded to his somewhat more competent boss' position and mimics his late chief's speech. One saying he inherited is "tinknuttinovit" and his frequent use of it reminded me of a more recent film where the wise guys repeatedly say "fuhgeddaboudit ". Was it "Goodfellas"? Did the later movie get the idea from the earlier one, or is this sort of parlance frequently found in mob movies?
Here are the dying boss, his female assassin, and his loyal sidekick (a curious poster, as it shows none of the three principals - the third being Charles Drake):
So let us show them in this less interesting image:
So my question to you more knowledgeable film-buffs is - what films can you name that contain the trope of someone unable to cancel a hit they had previously commissioned?
