Dark City (1950)
Country: US
Technical: bw 98m
Director: William Dieterle
Cast: Charlton Heston, Lizabeth Scott, Viveca Lindfors, Dean Jagger, Henry Morgan
Synopsis:
An ex-serviceman with a chequered past has sunk to shaking down salesmen in back room poker games, and the psycho brother of one of his victims starts offing his associates. Self-preservation makes him leave town, but when he meets the widow he develops a conscience.
Review:
Heston at his most oleaginous makes his Hollywood début in this overwrought low-budget crime thriller. The wheeze of having Mike Mazurki play an unseen strangling assailant almost puts us into Sherlock Holmes territory, but the film is on safer ground in the earlier hustling scenes. Scott's character, who sings her way dewy-eyed through at least four lacklustre torch song performances as his nightclub girlfriend, is simply there to act as midwife to Heston's burgeoning impulse to perform a good deed, and the ending is a cop-out: there was far more chemistry with the widow Lindfors. Old master Dieterle, like Jagger's cop, has precious little to go on here, but his tight compositions and chiaroscuro effects combine with Waxman's stentorian score to provide at least a semblance of flair.
Country: US
Technical: bw 98m
Director: William Dieterle
Cast: Charlton Heston, Lizabeth Scott, Viveca Lindfors, Dean Jagger, Henry Morgan
Synopsis:
An ex-serviceman with a chequered past has sunk to shaking down salesmen in back room poker games, and the psycho brother of one of his victims starts offing his associates. Self-preservation makes him leave town, but when he meets the widow he develops a conscience.
Review:
Heston at his most oleaginous makes his Hollywood début in this overwrought low-budget crime thriller. The wheeze of having Mike Mazurki play an unseen strangling assailant almost puts us into Sherlock Holmes territory, but the film is on safer ground in the earlier hustling scenes. Scott's character, who sings her way dewy-eyed through at least four lacklustre torch song performances as his nightclub girlfriend, is simply there to act as midwife to Heston's burgeoning impulse to perform a good deed, and the ending is a cop-out: there was far more chemistry with the widow Lindfors. Old master Dieterle, like Jagger's cop, has precious little to go on here, but his tight compositions and chiaroscuro effects combine with Waxman's stentorian score to provide at least a semblance of flair.
Country: US
Technical: bw 98m
Director: William Dieterle
Cast: Charlton Heston, Lizabeth Scott, Viveca Lindfors, Dean Jagger, Henry Morgan
Synopsis:
An ex-serviceman with a chequered past has sunk to shaking down salesmen in back room poker games, and the psycho brother of one of his victims starts offing his associates. Self-preservation makes him leave town, but when he meets the widow he develops a conscience.
Review:
Heston at his most oleaginous makes his Hollywood début in this overwrought low-budget crime thriller. The wheeze of having Mike Mazurki play an unseen strangling assailant almost puts us into Sherlock Holmes territory, but the film is on safer ground in the earlier hustling scenes. Scott's character, who sings her way dewy-eyed through at least four lacklustre torch song performances as his nightclub girlfriend, is simply there to act as midwife to Heston's burgeoning impulse to perform a good deed, and the ending is a cop-out: there was far more chemistry with the widow Lindfors. Old master Dieterle, like Jagger's cop, has precious little to go on here, but his tight compositions and chiaroscuro effects combine with Waxman's stentorian score to provide at least a semblance of flair.