A crime drama with Dick Powell, Lizabeth Scott, Burr (who got billed 4th, but plays the 2nd lead as a psychotic detective), and directed by Toth, and the foremost highlight is the style in which the leading character is played, an acting style which very much grounds the events and balances the story; the character's initial sloth doesn't involve despair and hopelessness, so that the two types of characters, the settled bourgeois and the feverish oddballs (the mistress and the detective) don't reach each other _innerly. But this isn't inadvertent and also suits the plot's realism, as the nascent liaison is crippled, disrupted, repressed, almost like stillborn. Burr provides an astonishing performance (that makes Mitchum's otherwise deservedly celebrated pair of kindred roles seem childish and harmless by comparison).
Acknowledging the awesomeness of Toth's crime movie, the decisiveness of Burr's input has to be championed as well; his performance earns him a special merit. He makes this movie what it is. His handsomeness benefited of intelligence, burliness and glamour. He takes part in making this movie a masterpiece from the standpoint of enjoyment.
The movie has a small cast, and the characters define each other: how Burr and Powell are defined by the woman, how she's defined by the detective. The characters are defined mutually: the weird detective, by the woman; the leading character, also by her. And she's defined by the detective. The actors' interplay has been as challenging as it's enthralling.
Powell reminded me of B. Willis, with his playful, amused, lightly ironic behavior, as in the family breakfast scene, or the evening reading; he brings his ease so that the character seems good-_natured rather than bored, he makes an almost cheerful bourgeois, more impassible than resigned (his avowal that he lacks ease would of suited more a character played by Stewart or G. Peck or someone abler of gloom). The acting styles are highly contrasting: Powell's initial calm and temperate sloth, then his indecisiveness, irresoluteness after wishing to confess that he has a family, and Lizabeth Scott and Burr's feverishness, his with that sharp artistic intelligence that made meaningful each role he has ever got. Here, his role is quite large.
The direction is masterly, and gives the movie its timelessness; Toth was one of the masters of the B cinema, revered by some, and his movies are the reward of the true movie buffs. The highlight scene to me is the lovers' meeting after he has recovered from the blows and she has found out that he has a family, that scene is so reasonably treated.
The cast choice proved refreshing, mainly by the unconventional lead. The romance seems a whim rather than a doomed liaison. The plot may seem a bourgeois misadventure, like in 'Cape Fear', with a bourgeois confronting the underworld, meeting and facing the disinherited, and indeed the romance remains crippled in a nascent phase, begins and is stifled, gets crippled, crushed, repressed, and perhaps this makes the emotional drive so true and effective.
Acknowledging the awesomeness of Toth's crime movie, the decisiveness of Burr's input has to be championed as well; his performance earns him a special merit. He makes this movie what it is. His handsomeness benefited of intelligence, burliness and glamour. He takes part in making this movie a masterpiece from the standpoint of enjoyment.
The movie has a small cast, and the characters define each other: how Burr and Powell are defined by the woman, how she's defined by the detective. The characters are defined mutually: the weird detective, by the woman; the leading character, also by her. And she's defined by the detective. The actors' interplay has been as challenging as it's enthralling.
Powell reminded me of B. Willis, with his playful, amused, lightly ironic behavior, as in the family breakfast scene, or the evening reading; he brings his ease so that the character seems good-_natured rather than bored, he makes an almost cheerful bourgeois, more impassible than resigned (his avowal that he lacks ease would of suited more a character played by Stewart or G. Peck or someone abler of gloom). The acting styles are highly contrasting: Powell's initial calm and temperate sloth, then his indecisiveness, irresoluteness after wishing to confess that he has a family, and Lizabeth Scott and Burr's feverishness, his with that sharp artistic intelligence that made meaningful each role he has ever got. Here, his role is quite large.
The direction is masterly, and gives the movie its timelessness; Toth was one of the masters of the B cinema, revered by some, and his movies are the reward of the true movie buffs. The highlight scene to me is the lovers' meeting after he has recovered from the blows and she has found out that he has a family, that scene is so reasonably treated.
The cast choice proved refreshing, mainly by the unconventional lead. The romance seems a whim rather than a doomed liaison. The plot may seem a bourgeois misadventure, like in 'Cape Fear', with a bourgeois confronting the underworld, meeting and facing the disinherited, and indeed the romance remains crippled in a nascent phase, begins and is stifled, gets crippled, crushed, repressed, and perhaps this makes the emotional drive so true and effective.