Post by petrolino on Mar 29, 2018 20:50:48 GMT
The crime picture 'The Glass Key' is based on the novel 'The Glass Key' (1931) by Dashiell Hammett. When lawbreaking political boss Paul Madvig (Brian Donlevy) becomes infatuated with freelance spin doctor Janet Henry (Veronica Lake), he decides to lend his backing to her father Ralph Henry (Moroni Olsen), a reform candidate running for Governor. Janet develops a fractious relationship with Paul's freelance fixer Ed Beaumont (Alan Ladd) who's about to enter into a deadly game of "who blinks first" with members of the criminal underworld. The calculating Beaumont warns his impulsive boss Paul not to covet a "glass key" that could break at any moment.
At the beginning of 'The Glass Key', political bigshot Paul Madvig introduces his iron fist by throwing some poor chump through a sheet of glass, creating a shatter surprise worthy of future glass master Walter Hill. Later, Ed Beaumont show how a real man "flies" through glass and somehow survives to tell the tale. One film that owes a debt to 'The Glass Key' is Akira Kurosawa's 'Yojimbo' (1961) which birthed the sequel 'Sanjuro' (1962) and provided its own cinematic template for Sergio Leone's landmark western 'A Fistful Of Dollars' (1964) which spawned its own wave of imitators. Walter Hill etched his own signature into this template with 'Last Man Standing' (1996) which also drew from the work of early mentor Sam Peckinpah's 'Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia' (1974), a work that was itself indebted to Stuart Heisler's combustible action picture 'The Glass Key'.
Alan Ladd is electric as cold breeze Ed Beaumont who feels his talents are largely wasted backing up desultory dingbat Madvig. Beaumont meets his match in Veronica Lake's tricky politician Janet Henry who may just be the intellectual muscle behind daddy's bone machine. Joseph Calleia dials up some tension as gangster Nick Varna, Dane Clark dials it down again as secret observer Sloss and Bonita Granville whips up a whole heap of trouble as gambling teenager Snip Madvig. William Bendix and Eddie Marr are sickening in 'The Glass Key' as brutish enforcer Jeff and his subservient thug Rusty, but it's the scintillating chemistry generated by Ladd and Lake that's off the scale, a sparkle fusion that big dope Paul fails to see even when it's lighting up his sorry behind.
'EVERGREEN'
'Into The Light' - Siouxsie & The Banshees
'Into The Light' - Siouxsie & The Banshees
At the beginning of 'The Glass Key', political bigshot Paul Madvig introduces his iron fist by throwing some poor chump through a sheet of glass, creating a shatter surprise worthy of future glass master Walter Hill. Later, Ed Beaumont show how a real man "flies" through glass and somehow survives to tell the tale. One film that owes a debt to 'The Glass Key' is Akira Kurosawa's 'Yojimbo' (1961) which birthed the sequel 'Sanjuro' (1962) and provided its own cinematic template for Sergio Leone's landmark western 'A Fistful Of Dollars' (1964) which spawned its own wave of imitators. Walter Hill etched his own signature into this template with 'Last Man Standing' (1996) which also drew from the work of early mentor Sam Peckinpah's 'Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia' (1974), a work that was itself indebted to Stuart Heisler's combustible action picture 'The Glass Key'.
"Raymond Chandler once said: “(Dashiell) Hammett is all right. I give him everything. There were a lot of things he could not do, but what he did, he did superbly.” He added, in a summary that helps define Hammett’s achievement: “He was spare, frugal, hard-boiled, but he did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do at all. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before.” He also gave his characters a distinctive language and convincing motivations in a genre that had grown stereotyped, flaccid and uninvolving.
The Maltese Falcon is the Hammett novel that jumps from the pages of its genre and into literature. It’s the book that introduces Sam Spade, the private detective who seduced a generation of readers, leading directly to Philip Marlowe. Dorothy Parker, never a pushover, confessed herself “in a daze of love” such as she had not known in literature “since I encountered Sir Lancelot” and claimed to have read the novel some 30 or 40 times.
What is Hammett’s appeal? The hard-boiled detective was not really his invention, but he made him a character readers could identify with: the beady-eyed loner who coolly puts himself in harm’s way out of a fierce determination to redress wrong and achieve justice. That’s a winning insight into the character of any great protagonist. Spade’s involvement in the world is not cynical but passionate, and yet his successes are always shadowed by hints of loss and failure. This has filtered down into the work of countless genre writers from Chandler to John Le Carré, to Sara Paretsky. Moreover, like Hammett himself, Spade is vivid, physical, and highly sexed. He also shares many elements of Hammett’s career and character. Strangely, from a writer with a keen eye on the market, Spade makes only this one appearance in a full-length fiction."
- Robert McCrum, The Guardian
"In the First World War, in camp, influenza led to tuberculosis and Hammett was to spend years after in army hospitals. He came out of the Second World War with emphysema, but how he ever got into the Second World War, at the age of forty-eight, still bewilders me. He telephoned me the day the army accepted him to say it was the happiest day of his life and before I could finish saying it wasn’t the happiest day of mine and what about the old scars on his lungs, he laughed and hung up."
- Lillian Hellman, 'Dashiell Hammett : A Memoir'
The Maltese Falcon is the Hammett novel that jumps from the pages of its genre and into literature. It’s the book that introduces Sam Spade, the private detective who seduced a generation of readers, leading directly to Philip Marlowe. Dorothy Parker, never a pushover, confessed herself “in a daze of love” such as she had not known in literature “since I encountered Sir Lancelot” and claimed to have read the novel some 30 or 40 times.
What is Hammett’s appeal? The hard-boiled detective was not really his invention, but he made him a character readers could identify with: the beady-eyed loner who coolly puts himself in harm’s way out of a fierce determination to redress wrong and achieve justice. That’s a winning insight into the character of any great protagonist. Spade’s involvement in the world is not cynical but passionate, and yet his successes are always shadowed by hints of loss and failure. This has filtered down into the work of countless genre writers from Chandler to John Le Carré, to Sara Paretsky. Moreover, like Hammett himself, Spade is vivid, physical, and highly sexed. He also shares many elements of Hammett’s career and character. Strangely, from a writer with a keen eye on the market, Spade makes only this one appearance in a full-length fiction."
- Robert McCrum, The Guardian
"In the First World War, in camp, influenza led to tuberculosis and Hammett was to spend years after in army hospitals. He came out of the Second World War with emphysema, but how he ever got into the Second World War, at the age of forty-eight, still bewilders me. He telephoned me the day the army accepted him to say it was the happiest day of his life and before I could finish saying it wasn’t the happiest day of mine and what about the old scars on his lungs, he laughed and hung up."
- Lillian Hellman, 'Dashiell Hammett : A Memoir'
"Akira Kurosawa cited a 1942 film adaptation of Hammett’s novel The Glass Key as an inspiration on Yojimbo as well, but it’s a curious thing to cite (apart from one torture scene that very clearly mirrors samurai Sanjuro’s ordeals). The Glass Key’s plot doesn’t mirror Yojimbo’s in the slightest, while the plot of another Hammett novel, Red Harvest, is nearly the exact same story. Equally curiously, Red Harvest was only ever adapted loosely, into the 1930 film Roadhouse Nights."
- Kenneth Lowe, 'Nobody’s Son : The Legacy Of Dashiell Hammett'
Alan Ladd & Veronica Lake
'Legionnaire' - Altered Images
Stuart Heisler submerges dramatic set-pieces in 'The Glass Key' within a murky underworld that feels like it exists outside of the social functions being frequented by politicians. Cinematographer Theodor Sparkuhl had conducted numerous experiments with light for European filmmakers like Ernst Lubitsch, Alexander Korda and Jean Renoir; working in Hollywood, Sparkuhl became transfixed by the idea of exposing hidden depths visible within low-key lighting models. Sparkuhl's fluid camerawork is aligned to a mischievous sense of framing, allowing Heisler to reveal the inner-workings of every crooked action that unfolds on screen. Composer Victor Young supplies the requisite romance through some dainty string work but his music is used sparingly throughout. This is hard-nosed, hard knuckle crime cinema with no winners.- Kenneth Lowe, 'Nobody’s Son : The Legacy Of Dashiell Hammett'
Alan Ladd & Veronica Lake
'Legionnaire' - Altered Images
“He had the capacity to pick and train people; he could tell very quickly whether a person really had it or not.”
- Stuart Heisler recalls mentor Mack Sennett, 'Mack Sennett, King Of Comedy'
- Stuart Heisler recalls mentor Mack Sennett, 'Mack Sennett, King Of Comedy'
"Sometimes I fear that all the violence we see on our screens today began in this era, the early 1940s, because things got nasty in certain places. It was not the norm in its day to see such callous cruelty on screen, and if the psychopathic Raven (Alan Ladd) had a precursor, it was in the horror films of the previous decade, and more likely still, those from Europe. The psychopath, who is common on our screens today, was not such a well-known personage in the 1940s, and if there is any outstanding oddity to his appearance in This Gun For Hire, it is the example of his being drawn to the felines. It’s strange but true — Alan Ladd as Raven is the killer, yes, but he is the killer with the cat.
There is little to say about Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd that hasn’t been said elsewhere, but they are simply incredible in This Gun For Hire — they make one of these cinematic pairings that are truly immortal, and will be worth watching for all time. Whereas the story and the setting, the themes and the dialogue will all go out of date, Veronica Lake’s beauty and style will be unlikely to fade, and then there is the chemistry — the fatal chemistry — which you can only enjoy when you see a couple like Lake and Alan Ladd perform. In one sense you are watching something outdated and old — and yet their acting is fresh, and stands the test of time, as the cliché has it."
- Peter Burnett, 'This Gun For Hire : A Superlative Film Noir'
Alan Ladd & Veronica Lake
'Peek-A'Boo' - Siouxsie & The Banshees
There is little to say about Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd that hasn’t been said elsewhere, but they are simply incredible in This Gun For Hire — they make one of these cinematic pairings that are truly immortal, and will be worth watching for all time. Whereas the story and the setting, the themes and the dialogue will all go out of date, Veronica Lake’s beauty and style will be unlikely to fade, and then there is the chemistry — the fatal chemistry — which you can only enjoy when you see a couple like Lake and Alan Ladd perform. In one sense you are watching something outdated and old — and yet their acting is fresh, and stands the test of time, as the cliché has it."
- Peter Burnett, 'This Gun For Hire : A Superlative Film Noir'
Alan Ladd & Veronica Lake
'Peek-A'Boo' - Siouxsie & The Banshees
Alan Ladd is electric as cold breeze Ed Beaumont who feels his talents are largely wasted backing up desultory dingbat Madvig. Beaumont meets his match in Veronica Lake's tricky politician Janet Henry who may just be the intellectual muscle behind daddy's bone machine. Joseph Calleia dials up some tension as gangster Nick Varna, Dane Clark dials it down again as secret observer Sloss and Bonita Granville whips up a whole heap of trouble as gambling teenager Snip Madvig. William Bendix and Eddie Marr are sickening in 'The Glass Key' as brutish enforcer Jeff and his subservient thug Rusty, but it's the scintillating chemistry generated by Ladd and Lake that's off the scale, a sparkle fusion that big dope Paul fails to see even when it's lighting up his sorry behind.
