Desperate 1947

Desperate 1947
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Policeman with Lt. Ferrari

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News Vendor on Train

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Policeman at Warehouse

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SILENT SUNDAY NIGHTS

NOIR ALLEY

1h 13m

1947

An innocent trucker takes it on the lam when he's accused of robbery.

Noir Alley: Eddie Muller on Desperate (1947)
Desperate (1947) -- (Movie Clip) It's An Easy Job
Desperate (1947) -- (Movie Clip) That New Bride Of Yours
Desperate (1947) -- (Movie Clip) We Were Gonna Celebrate
Here is a set of Lobby Cards from Desperate (1947), starring Steve Brodie and Audrey Long and directed by Anthony Mann. Lobby Cards were 11" x 14" posters that came in sets of 8. As the name implies, they were most often displayed in movie theater lobbies, to advertise current or coming attractions.
Intro Aired:
Oct 2018
It's hard to determine just what is the greatest scene in Anthony Mann's brilliant film noir Desperate (1947). Is it the scene where Raymond Burr slices himself a piece of turkey while he roughs up a pair of elderly country folk, or the brutal fight scene that occurs off screen while a swaying overhead light illuminates the sadistic faces of the killers in alternating black and white? Perhaps it's the superbly crafted montage which escalates with close-ups centered on an alarm clock as it counts down to an execution, or it could very well be the death of Pete, a slimy extortionist who sits down for a left-over meal but finds himself rubbed out in lightning fashion. There are other fantastic scenes too numerous to mention in this creatively directed, RKO B-picture which hasn't quite received its due as one of the best of its kind.
Desperate was the first in director Mann's important series of noir films which included Border Incident (1949), He Walked By Night (1948, uncredited), Railroaded (1947), Side Street (1950), Raw Deal (1948), and T-Men (1947). Other films such as Strange Impersonation (1946) (recently released to video by Kino Intl.), The Tall Target (1951), and Reign of Terror (1949) (alternate title The Black Book) were dramas and period pieces, but still clearly dripping in the film noir style.
Desperate begins with a mysterious title sequence of two shadows cast against a gray wall. The film moves at a swift speed exploring a slew of dualities (a predominant theme in Mann's later Westerns), culminating in the villain's violent death at the exact same moment his weakling brother is executed for a botched crime and the death of a cop. Mann often takes great pains to contrast the bucolic happiness of Steve Brodie and Audrey Long's country life and unconditional love with the dark and dirty existence of Burr's rat hole and henchmen. But you can't help feeling some sort of twisted sympathy for Burr's Walt Radak (a villainous character generating the same sort of sympathy one finds in Burr's performance as Lars Thornwall in Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954)). He's driven by a blind love for his brother, and this sort of love is like an overpowering force when it comes to the milquetoast pleasantries of Brodie and Long. Mann, as is often the case in fine directors of film noir, is drawn to the darker side of love.
Anthony Mann was born Emil Anton Bundesmann in 1906. The son of philosophy teachers, Mann grew up in California acting in theater and working hard at odd jobs where he was paid as little as $10 a week. He moved to Greenwich Village to work for the Triangle Theater and swiftly moved into theater management and stage direction. In 1933, he directed his first Broadway production (The Squall) and formed his own production company. He continued to produce and direct a number of successful Broadway plays which led to recognition by producer David Selznick. Mann was soon hired as a talent scout and casting director. Among other notable Hollywood chores, he directed the screen tests for Gone With the Wind (1939), Rebecca (1940), and Intermezzo (1939) (almost all preserved). Mann moved to Paramount where he found himself as an assistant director to the great Preston Sturges - a director who would demonstrate to Mann two important filmic ideas - the itinerant story, and the thematic use of on-location photography. Mann's first film was soon handed to him: Dr. Broadway (1942), a low budget Paramount picture set-up through a connection with his former stock company.
Mann soon found himself at Republic Pictures in the early 40's where he churned out B movies such as Nobody's Darling (1943), Strangers In the Night (1944), and The Great Flamarion (1945). He briefly moved to the B unit at RKO before returning to Republic, where he made his final film for that studio, a femme-oriented melodrama called Strange Impersonation (1946). This film is another excellent example of the B movie extraordinaire - a woman's picture (written by Mildred Lord) with an unusually subtle feminist undertone, and evocative narrative. It began to explore the numerous stylistic devices the director would realize in his later films, especially the director's uncommon use of violence.
But it was with a return to RKO that Mann made great strides in his technique and style. After making a poor comedy thriller called The Bamboo Blonde (1946), the director's next project was Desperate. He recognized publicly that Desperate was his first 'real' film, a title which allowed him for the first time some artistic control, including a collaboration and credit on the screenplay with the screenwriter Harry Essex. Mann worked exceptionally well with cinematographer George Diskant (a still woefully unrecognized master of film noir photography; Desperate was only his third film) to create chilling atmosphere and innovative storytelling techniques through the use of contrast and deep focus photography. Desperate began what is now considered Mann's seven film noir cycle between the years of 1947 to 1949, some of the finest produced in the history of the genre.
Producer: Michael Kraike
Director: Anthony Mann
Screenplay: Dorothy Atlas (story), Harry Essex, Anthony Mann (story), Martin Rackin (additional dialogue)
Cinematography: George E. Diskant
Film Editing: Marston Fay
Original Music: Paul Sawtell
Principal Cast: Steve Brodie (Steve Randall), Audrey Long (Anne Randall), Raymond Burr (Walt Radak), Douglas Fowley (Pete Lavitch), William Challee (Reynolds).
BW-74m. Closed captioning.
by Richard Steiner

As the Warners Noir collections climb into the higher volume numbers, the films offered just seem to grow more interesting. This Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 5 spans the style's middle years to its finish in titles from Warner Bros., RKO, MGM and Allied Artists, featuring controversial titles as well as good work from some of noir's most interesting actors -- Charles McGraw, Edmond O'Brien, Richard Kiley. We see Dick Powell consolidating his screen image change and witness the arrival of the beat-era hoodlum represented by John Cassavetes. Some of the most notable blacklisted writers, producers and directors are here, along with up-and-coming hot directors like Anthony Mann, Richard Fleischer and Don Siegel.

The changing DVD market takes the blame for the absence of the lavish extras that graced earlier Warners noir volumes, and I'll miss listening to the illuminating commentaries by committed experts like Alain Silver, James Ursini and Eddie Muller. But I have to say that some of the featurettes were beginning to get stale anyway -- how many times can we watch yet another earnest face tell us about dark corners and the influence of German Expressionism? Viewers intrigued by the Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 5 won't have to search the bookstore racks very long to learn more about these exotic crime and mystery pictures.

1945's Cornered followed closely on the heels of Dick Powell's second career breakthrough Murder, My Sweet, his impressive transformation from rosy-cheeked Busby Berkeley crooner to one of noir's most conflicted tough guys. This time around Powell is Canadian Laurence Gerard, an RCAF flyer seeking vengeance against the murderer of his French wife of only twenty days. Gerard tracks the Vichy collaborator Marcel Jarnac all the way to Argentina, only to find himself surrounded by shady French expatriates and characters like Melchior Incza, a sleazy agent for hire who dodges questions about his national origin. Dispensing cynical asides, Gerard hounds Jarnac's widow (Micheline Cheirel) and encounters a group of agents also dedicated to catching the war criminal Jarnac. The villains almost trick Laurence into killing an innocent man. Gerard's inner rage shows itself in brief episodes of psychic stress, an instability that aligns him firmly to the noir sensibility, immediately post-war.

Cornered is the kind of film that would be used as evidence of disloyalty, when the HUAC witch hunters went after writers John Paxton and John Wexley and director Edward Dmytryk. Producer Adrian Scott would later be imprisoned as one of the Hollywood Ten, never again to work on a feature film. After producing plenty of anti-Fascist, pro-Soviet movies during the war, Hollywood's agenda abruptly reversed polarity. The filmic suggestion that Axis war criminals were slipping through the fingers of post-war justice was regarded as subversive propaganda. Various heroes would of course continue to confront escaped Nazis, etc., but rarely would the political emphasis be as pronounced as in this picture, which suggests that escaped, unregenerate Fascists are everywhere.

Director Dmytryk did his best work in this period. The show also benefits from top RKO production values and a house style that shows the influence of Val Lewton's mysterioso lighting, especially in the Buenos Aires night exteriors. Much of the cast is unfamiliar. Micheline Cheirel (of Jacques Feyder's Carnival in Flanders) is a black widow with a complicated story to tell. The obscure actress Nina Vale (disc cover, top left) makes a convincingly imperious femme fatale. She fails to seduce the wary Gerard, who regards her with a contemptuous exit line: "Tell your husband I dropped around but I couldn't wait. I got bored".

Favorite Walter Slezak has the most colorful role as an unwelcome partner who might sell out Gerard at any moment. Classic noir villain Luther Adler makes a brief but impressive appearance, and is awarded with a credit card of his own.

If Cornered has a fault, it's a plot that quickly gets murky if one doesn't pay close attention. The biggest reward comes from Gerard's unending string of cynical cracks. Señora Camargo: "Shall I be honest?" Gerard: "Don't strain yourself". As the traumatized Gerard is at any moment liable to explode into violence, his remarks aren't casual asides. A Belgian asks Gerard if he's visited his country, and Gerard answers, "No, but I flew over it. It looked pretty shot up."

Warner's print of Cornered is in good shape but some of the audio is a bit distorted, mostly at the beginning. It's very likely that prime transfer sources no longer exist for this nitrate-era RKO picture, as it was popular enough to enjoy more than one reissue.

Art rears its fuzzy head in 1946's Deadline at Dawn, a one-time film directing fling for the lofty New York stage director and critic Harold Clurman, who brings to RKO both the spirit and key personnel from The Group Theater. Another production effort by Adrian Scott, Deadline at Dawn reunites Clurman with playwright Clifford Odets, who had written and directed his own RKO picture, 1944's None But the Lonely Heart. Even after ejecting Orson Welles and declaring that they would emphasize "Showmanship in Place of Genius", RKO continued to distribute non-commercial 'art' pictures, like the Dudley Nichols/Eugene O'Neill Mourning Becomes Electra.

Deadline at Dawn is an exceedingly well-directed noir infused with the proletarian spirit of progressive 30's theater. Some may consider its stylized dialogue a literary conceit, and conclude that its author is patronizing the working class. Taking place entirely between 2 and 6 a.m. on a hot New York night, Odets adapts Cornell Woolrich's original story to take in a cross section of Manhattanites embroiled in a strange search for a mystery murderer.

The narrative gathers characters like a snowball. Naíve sailor Alex Winkley (Bill Williams) passes out in the apartment of Edna Bartelli (Lola Lane) and later discovers that she's been murdered. Alex is so vulnerable and guileless that he charms June Goth (Susan Hayward), a tough dance hall girl, into helping him clear his name so he can rejoin his ship at dawn. Joining their investigation is Gus Hoffman (Paul Lukas), a sympathetic, philosophical cabbie. The trio encounters a host of nocturnal wanderers. Edna's brother Val (Joseph Calleia) is a dangerous gangster. Mystery blonde Helen Robinson (Osa Massen of Rocketship X-M) seems unconnected to the murdered woman. Alex chases down a "nervous" man running with a large box (Roman Bohnen). Lester Brady (Jerome Cowan) is a stage producer connected to the murder victim by a bounced check. June is harassed by an odd little man who won't take his gloves off (Steven Geray). An alcoholic baseball star (Joe Sawyer) shouts at Edna's apartment window, begging her to give him a bottle.

This parade of interesting personalities becomes more interesting through Clifford Odet's odd, poetic approach to dialogue -- Odets would later write The Big Knife and have a hand in the even more stylized Sweet Smell of Success. Gus continually spills nuggets of philosophy. Alex speaks a mix of bad grammar and $10 syntax whoppers like, "... a girl of whom I cared a great deal." June says rather ornate lines: "It's all right to live in a cocoon if you hope to be a butterfly someday." "Time is on the wing, Gus. Don't waste it." A random cabbie comes up with the observation, "I work. I'm just a parasite on parasites." The tough Val shoves a woman to the floor with the words, "That's all the love I
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