Post by petrolino on Jan 13, 2018 0:15:38 GMT
'The File On Thelma Jordon' is a toxic crime drama based on an original story by Marty Holland and scripted by Ketti Frings, the Pulitzer Prize winning author from Columbus, Ohio. Thelma Jordon (Barbara Stanwyck) enters the office of Chief Investigator Miles Scott (Paul Kelly) to seek advice over a difficult situation. Instead, she becomes involved with married Assistant District Attorney Cleve Marshall (Wendell Corey) who needs all his guile when a murder is committed.
The convoluted mystery 'The File On Thelma Jordon' is a mature film noir with mean dialogue that's characterised by its adult situations and twisted mindset. The relationships are seriously messed up, be it the Chief Investigator trying to reel in his creepy D.A., Cleve and Thelma engaged in mutual pursuit, or Cleve's conflicted marriage to child doll Pamela (Joan Tetzel) whose "daddy" issues have been intruding upon their love life. Barbara Stanwyck generates calm and radiates authority as Thelma Jordon but her keen wit and unforgiving manner keep Cleve off balance. Wendell Corey portrays Cleve as a real oddball, kind of like a cross between Joseph Cotten and Pee Wee Herman.
Robert Siodmak stepped in to direct 'The File On Thelma Jordon' when Otto Preminger opted out, a similar circumstance to when he'd stepped in to replace Fritz Lang who passed on 'The Spiral Staircase' (1946). A seasoned noir specialist himself, Siodmak doesn't disappoint as he shades in another compelling portrait of domestic strife and societal decay. Here, Siodmak opts for a restrained atmosphere that suits his characters' delicate dispositions, encouraging shadow and light to perform intricate dances within dark interior worlds. There's also a knockout set-piece centred around Gertrude Hoffman as Aunt Vera. Victor Young's subtle, persuasive musical backing employs every part of his orchestra to colourise the emotions of a distant world that feels strangely familiar in this fiendishly frightful crime picture with a heart of stone.
"Miss Jordan, there are two types of criminals, the conscious and the unconscious. The latter we sometimes call split-personalities. Schizophrenia, that's when the left hand never lets the right hand know what it's doing."
Barbara Stanwyck & Wendell Corey
'She's A Heartbreaker' - Gene Pitney
The convoluted mystery 'The File On Thelma Jordon' is a mature film noir with mean dialogue that's characterised by its adult situations and twisted mindset. The relationships are seriously messed up, be it the Chief Investigator trying to reel in his creepy D.A., Cleve and Thelma engaged in mutual pursuit, or Cleve's conflicted marriage to child doll Pamela (Joan Tetzel) whose "daddy" issues have been intruding upon their love life. Barbara Stanwyck generates calm and radiates authority as Thelma Jordon but her keen wit and unforgiving manner keep Cleve off balance. Wendell Corey portrays Cleve as a real oddball, kind of like a cross between Joseph Cotten and Pee Wee Herman.
“Most men have known at least one Thelma Jordon”, purred the original poster for Robert Siodmak’s 1950 Paramount noir The File on Thelma Jordon, but, in truth, the majority will feel like they’ve known at least two that looked like Barbara Stanwyck alone. While it would be unfair to say that Siodmak’s excellent murder drama is simply a rehash of Billy Wilder’s celebrated Double Indemnity (1944) — which gave Stanwyck her greatest role as Phyllis Dietrichson, the femme fatale housewife who amuses herself by drawing a hapless insurance salesman into a plot to murder her husband — the similarities are glaringly apparent. In Thelma Jordon, Stanwyck again seduces a troubled good guy, again inveigles him into a homicidal conspiracy and again betrays the poor sap when the deed is done. However, there’s a great deal more in The File on Thelma Jordon than that, a testament to its star and the cool expertise of her director. Siodmak’s story came from an unpublished treatment by the mysterious Marty Holland, a studio typist who wrote the novel Otto Preminger’s Fallen Angel (1945) was based on and who had a brief career as a pulp writer before dying in obscurity in 1971. Truly a dame as shady and unfathomable as one of her heroines."
- Joe Sommerlad, Medium
- Joe Sommerlad, Medium
"When the young German film director Robert Siodmak and his friends were “schlepping” a camera round Berlin, making their film People on Sunday (1930), none of them could have envisaged how little time they had left in Germany. Siodmak, whose career is celebrated this spring with a season at BFI Southbank, his brother Curt, his flatmate Billy Wilder, Edgar Ulmer and Fred Zinnemann were unknowns in their early twenties, beginning to make their way in the German film industry. The film itself, shot over several months of Sundays, is a paean to a carefree, youthful hedonism. How do its good-looking and very modern-seeming Berliner protagonists spend their Sundays? They head south to the lake and forests of Nikolassee; drink, picnic, swim, listen to music, flirt and have sex in the woods. There are no particular worries in their lives beyond the threat of boredom, mild hangovers, jealousy over lovers and the normal restrictions of the working week. Flash forward a few years and the lives of the young film-makers, who were all Jewish, had been thrown into upheaval. None remained in Germany. Siodmak fled the country in 1933, just after the premiere of his film Burning Secret, an adaptation of a Stefan Zweig novel which Nazi propaganda boss Joseph Goebbels had recommended banning on the grounds of its “sick sultriness and airless muddle-headedness”. Following the familiar route of émigré German film-makers, Siodmak headed first to Paris, where he continued to direct with moderate success, and then, in 1939, he went to Hollywood. Once there, he was absorbed by the studio system, signing a two-year contract with Paramount and then a seven-year one with Universal."
- Geoffrey Macnab, The Independent
- Geoffrey Macnab, The Independent
"The biggest criticism of Robert Siodmak’s career is that his talents blossomed in only one genre. If he had directed a masterful film in at least one or two other genres, like, for example, his contemporary Fred Zinnemann, whose talents shone in the Western High Noon (1952), the film noir Act of Violence (1948), and the romantic drama From Here to Eternity (1953), no argument would exist against Siodmak’s place in cinematic history. But this is not the case. Siodmak’s career shines during a brief ten-year span, from 1943 to 1953, and it is not a coincidence that this span also marks the zenith of the noir cycle. Certainly, his career during this span was prolific, but his failure to extend beyond the parameters of film noir has forced many to question his talents. Conversely, full mastery of a style can only develop when one fully immerses themselves in their art. So, using critic J. Greco’s clever title {in his analysis of Siodmak’s noir cycle - The File on Robert Siodmak in Hollywood: 1941–1951}, what is the file on Robert Siodmak? If there is one characteristic of a Siodmak film, it lies in the richness of his cinematic vision. Like all great directors, he was a master at weaving many parts into a whole. Siodmak was never content to use a film as a vehicle for a singular cinematic motif or technique. His films reveal a plexus of converging directorial styles that creates a powerful feeling of mise-en-scène. Siodmak’s holistic vision often enabled him to manage several aesthetic impulses simultaneously. Like all classic films that serve as the high-water mark of a particular style, The Killers, for example, tackles virtually every major theme in the noir cycle, unlike many other noirs, which only focus on a particular subset of motifs. The Killers includes a haunting femme fatale in Ava Gardner as Kitty Collins, a seminal heist scene, psychiatric profiles of a network of professional gangsters, a devastating double cross, the spirit of heavy fatalism, and a hard-boiled protagonist doomed by existential fate in Burt Lancaster as Ole Andersen. Each motif is developed with precision and style. Secondly, Siodmak was also brilliant in inspiring stellar performances from minor characters. Reviews of his films often include references to these outstanding performances. Elisha Cook in Phantom Lady, Ethel Barrymore in The Spiral Staircase and Richard Long in The Dark Mirror are excellent examples. But while the whole is always the sum of its parts in a Siodmak film, those parts were always brilliant."
- Chris Justice, Senses Of Cinema
William Holden visits Barbara Stanwyck on the set of 'The File On Thelma Jordon'
George Barnes takes Joan Blondell camping in the Great Outdoors
Robert Siodmak stepped in to direct 'The File On Thelma Jordon' when Otto Preminger opted out, a similar circumstance to when he'd stepped in to replace Fritz Lang who passed on 'The Spiral Staircase' (1946). A seasoned noir specialist himself, Siodmak doesn't disappoint as he shades in another compelling portrait of domestic strife and societal decay. Here, Siodmak opts for a restrained atmosphere that suits his characters' delicate dispositions, encouraging shadow and light to perform intricate dances within dark interior worlds. There's also a knockout set-piece centred around Gertrude Hoffman as Aunt Vera. Victor Young's subtle, persuasive musical backing employs every part of his orchestra to colourise the emotions of a distant world that feels strangely familiar in this fiendishly frightful crime picture with a heart of stone.
