Brian Donlevy

Hangmen Also Die!

by
Dr Franticek Svoboda

The screamer hanging off the end of Hangmen Also Die! kind of says it all. As if “hangmen” and “die” in the same sentence weren’t enough, the title of Fritz Lang’s 1943 film adds extra emphasis, just in case we hadn’t got it. The scrolling opening prologue continues in much the same vein, informing us that the “thousand year flaming tradition” burning in the hearts of the people of Czechoslovakia was in danger of being extinguished by the Nazis. Czechoslovakia was in fact about 25 years old at the time, having been cobbled together at the end of the First World War (it is now two separate countries again). This insistence is all … Read more

The Glass Key

by
Brian Donlevy, Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake

Watching The Glass Key you wouldn’t think it was the inspiration behind Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, which itself inspired Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars. But they’re in there if you peel back the 1942 fashions and noirish looks and swap out Alan Ladd for Toshirô Mifune or Clint Eastwood. Ladd plays the cool, smart, tough loner caught between various interacting groups of crooks, politicians, the police and the media, all in various ways in cahoots but falling out as an election swings into view and existing power dynamics are threatened. Ed Beaumont (Ladd) is a fixer for Paul Madvig (Brian Donlevy), a man who is himself a fixer, a shady operator trying to swing the … Read more

The Big Combo

by
Brown (left) tortures Diamond (right) with a hearing aid

The Big Combo has a big reputation. A regular on the “best film noir” lists, it can’t quite match its rep and is more a solid crime thriller that’s been polished to a stygian gleam by excellent technicians, well chosen actors and some careful snaffles from other sources. The most obvious lift is from 1944’s Laura and its strange plot device of a cop falling in love with the image of a woman rather than the woman herself. That’s also what happens in The Big Combo, when upright and driven Lieutenant Leonard Diamond (Cornel Wilde) becomes infatuated with a mobster’s gal, Susan Lowell (Jean Wallace), even though he’s never met her. Susan is … Read more