Audio / Video Hobby-ism since 1993

Forget the Quality, Feel the Width

12 Apr 2009

Film Noir a Day Fortnight - Johnny O'Clock

The Noir of the Day was 'Johnny O'Clock' (1947). Dick Powell's suave professional gambler gets involved in the murder of a crooked cop. Little menace but a gutbucket of puns and jive talk, good women/bad women, bad men / worse men.

Johnny O'Clock: 'She don't know whether she's coming or going'
Blayden: 'Take a message to her, she's going'.


Ellen Drew is white hot as the casino owner's pitying moll:
'Give me a kiss, It'll make you look good, in front of people'.

Powell is better in the peerless 'Murder My Sweet', working with a far superior script, but carries his white tux off with inevitable aplomb. New Yorker, Robert Rossen writes and directs. Rossen also wrote screenplays for the Noirs 'Blues in the Night' (1941),  'The Strange Love of Martha Ivers' (1946). In the same year as Johnny O'Clock he directed (the superior) ace boxing movie, 'Body & Soul' (1947) before going on to helm the excellent Noir-ish political satire 'All the King's Men' (1949) and Paul Newman vehicle, 'The Hustler' (1961).


Video of 'posters and lobby card images'

No comments: