Arthur Kennedy

The Window

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Tommy, wide-eyed, witnesses the murder

If you like Rear Window you might like The Window, a thriller from 1949 running on the same fuel – impotent voyeurism. Both films are based on short stories by Cornell Woolrich. This one from a “boy who cried wolf” tale called The Boy Who Cried Murder, about a doughty kid who, on a hot summer’s night goes out onto the fire escape of his parents’ New York apartment to sleep, and while out there sees his neighbours killing someone. Tommy (Bobby Driscoll) is a bit of a loner who makes up stories to fill the gaps where friends should be, so when he tells his parents (Barbara Hale, Arthur Kennedy) what he … Read more

Champion

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Kirk Douglas in boxing pose

So here I am coincidentally writing about Champion on the day the death of the remarkable George Foreman is announced. A gent and a plugger, who came back after 20 years away to win the world boxing title for the second time, Foreman was everything the focus of Champion is not. The film made a star of Kirk Douglas, and was his eighth film in three years. In many ways the typical boxing drama – scrappy kid, rags to riches, it all goes to his head, a fight to be thrown, the against-the-odds finale etc – it’s also a portrait of a psychopath, or at least a sociopath, who has no use for … Read more

High Sierra

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Roy and a bruised Marie eye each other

1941’s High Sierra was the last time Humphrey Bogart took second billing to anybody. It’s clearly his film yet Ida Lupino got top billing, playing a gangster’s moll. Neither the star nor the moll has very much to do and it’s pretty clear that Lupino’s part has been pumped up a bit to justify her position on the credits. As said, Bogart’s film, and it’s his character’s story too, the noirish, fatalistic tale of a life-serving criminal who is pardoned in the film’s opening moments. Which seems remarkable until we learn that a very big Mr Big in the criminal underworld wants Roy Earle (Bogart) on the outside so he can supervise a … Read more