Anthony Mann

Desperate

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Anne and Steve look at each other

Anthony Mann called Desperate his first proper movie, the one where he got to do what he wanted to do. Mann, now so famous for his westerns, had previously proved himself a master of film noir, as Desperate proves. This was the first of seven he’d crank out in 1947 and 1948. It’s a good work rate, but then these were made hot and fast. If it was me I’d have put director George Diskant’s name on the movie as its star. His cinematography is majestic. He was known for deep focus and his mastery of contrast – plenty of both here. But things being how they are it’s Steve Brodie’s name at … Read more

Railroaded!

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Duke meets cop Sgt Ferguson on the stairs

There are two decent films based on the Majczek and Marcinkiewicz case, Railroaded! and the better known Call Northside 777. The real-life case revolved around a miscarriage of justice resulting in two young men being sentenced to 99 years in jail for the murder of a cop. The Majczek and Marcinkiewicz case scandalised the mid-1940s and shook the public’s faith in the justice system. But the fact that the two men got 99 years rather than the electric chair – the normal tariff for cop killers – suggests the trial judge knew something wasn’t right about the men’s conviction. It took 11 years, a lot of digging by a Chicago Times reporter and a … Read more

Border Incident

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Ricardo Montalban as Pablo

Evidence that borders aren’t just a 21st-century hot button, 1949’s Border Incident is about the contentious human back and forth between Mexico and the USA. Every year workers cross the border to harvest the crops in California, an authoritative and majestic introductory shot of the All-American Canal tells us, all part of the Bracero Program to import a workforce to do the jobs Americans don’t want to do. Braceros – from the Spanish for arms, because they’re manual workers – are a good thing, director Anthony Mann’s picture is at pains to point out. They only become a problem when they arrive in the USA illegally. Here, the picture is at even more … Read more

Devil’s Doorway

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Orrie and Lance in a clinch

The revisionist western par excellence, Devil’s Doorway is the story of the despicable white man stealing the land off the noble American Indian and then getting nasty when the Indian objects. It stars Robert Taylor as Broken Lance, a Shoshone Indian known as Lance Powell while serving in the US Army, where he won a Congressional Medal of Honor for bravery in the Civil War. Now the war is over Lane is back in the Medicine Bow area where he grew up, to raise cattle on land that’s been in his family for generations. In an early speech in the local saloon Lance expresses the hope that, now the hostilities are over, everyone … Read more

The Furies

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TC Jeffords, daughter Vance and Rip Darrow

There’s not a likeable person in 1950’s The Furies, with the possible exception of a character who winds up at the end of a rope. It’s possibly why it’s so hard to get stuck into this complex and thematically rich film, though bad storytelling might be another reason. Since it’s called The Furies, you might expect a Greek tragic element, and you get it, in an Oedipal tale with a gender-flip, of an old patriarch and his two children: the son he can barely look at and the daughter he’s looking at a bit too much. She’s lavishing too much attention on him too, back rubs and whatnot, but for the most part … Read more

Men in War

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James Edwards and Robert Ryan

A “lost patrol” war movie, 1957’s Men in War shows that director Anthony Mann was as expert in this genre as he had already proved himself to be in film noir (Raw Deal), the western (Winchester ’73) and the epic (Quo Vadis). Made without any buy-in from the US military, it’s a pared-back affair and Mann uses the lack of budget to good effect, relying on key performances from his two leads to deliver the goods. There are two different types of human endeavour on display in Men in War – the social and the individual. Robert Ryan plays the fiercely egalitarian lieutenant in charge of a platoon trying to make its way … Read more

A Dandy in Aspic

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Caroline and Eberlin

The film that killed the great director Anthony Mann, A Dandy in Aspic didn’t get killer reviews when it debuted in 1968. “Completely devoid of suspense” and “bland,” said the New York Times. Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide declared it “wooden”. Mann died of a heart attack towards the end of shooting and the movie’s star, Laurence Harvey, took over directing, which isn’t the reason the film bombed. Harvey actually takes some pains to ape the claustrophobic, slick style of Mann. There just isn’t a whole lot going on in Derek Marlowe’s original story (which he adapted for the screen). But what looked like a failure back then looks more like a calculation all … Read more

T-Men

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Alfred Ryder and Dennis O'Keefe in character as gang members

The T in the T-Men stands for Treasury. As if to bolt cinema doors to stop people escaping, this 1947 crime drama opens with an urgent voiceover informing us that T-Men are actually really exciting and not boring at all. Think of them more like secret agents, it insists in footage that’s all cloak and dagger and maximum stakes. The voiceover goes on to tell us that the T-Men serve a crucial role in society and are a vital tool of the US government, protecting all citizens from the depradations of mobsters, smugglers, counterfeiters and the like. To reinforce the point, an earnest, to-screen homily follows, spoken by Elmer Lincoln Irey, real-life chief … Read more

Side Street

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Joe finds the money

An overwrought civics lesson done as film noir, Side Street sees Farley Granger’s humble postman making one tiny mistake and finding himself in deep trouble. One minute he’s trading small talk with a cop in the bright daylight, the next he’s mixing with murderers, femmes fatales and other unsavoury sorts and has become a creature of the night. In Side Street, when you fall, you fall. No wonder it flopped – it’s overcooked. And it did flop, badly. So much so that its director, Anthony Mann, abandoned film noir for good and headed off into the hills where a career making highly regarded westerns beckoned. But all that was in the future. First … Read more

Raw Deal

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Joe with gun, and Ann and Pat on a staircase

Everyone gets a raw deal in Raw Deal, a taut and dark film noir from 1948, directed by Anthony Mann, lit by the great John Alton and so often overlooked when Greatest Noir lists are being compiled. Its characters all come with a tragic flaw which writers John Higgins and Leopold Atlas are eventually going to prise wide open but it’s the additional wallop of sheer bad luck that makes this unusual – that and the voiceover by one of its female characters, Pat Regan, played by Claire Trevor. Pat is in love with Joe (Dennis O’Keefe) but Joe is in prison doing a stretch as the fall guy for bigshot criminal Rick Coyle … Read more