Claire Trevor

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

The Velvet Touch

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Rosalind Russell and Leo Genn

In The Velvet Touch, a Broadway star accidentally kills the impresario who made her, in an argument about whether she should abandon frothy comedy (and him) and pursue a more noble career in the serious theatre. That’s the opening scene dealt with. The rest of the film concerns itself with the fate of the actress. Will she get caught, confess the crime or get away with it? Whether it’s to indicate her character’s superior opinion of herself or to mask her own incipient double chin, Rosalind Russell plays Valerie as a head-held-high kind of gal, an actress who fancied herself in an upcoming production of Hedda Gabler. But the impresario who made her, … Read more