John Alton

Devil’s Doorway

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Orrie and Lance in a clinch

The revisionist western par excellence, Devilā€™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 thatā€™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

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

The Big Combo

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

The Big Combo has a big reputation. A regular on the ā€œbest film noirā€ 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 1944ā€™s Laura and its strange plot device of a cop falling in love with the image of a woman rather than the woman herself. Thatā€™s also what happens in The Big Combo, when upright and driven Lieutenant Leonard Diamond (Cornel Wilde) becomes infatuated with a mobsterā€™s gal, Susan Lowell (Jean Wallace), even though heā€™s never met her. Susan is … 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 itā€™s the additional wallop of sheer bad luck that makes this unusual ā€“ that and the voiceover by one of its female characters, Pat Regan, played by Claire Trevor. Pat is in love with Joe (Dennis Oā€™Keefe) but Joe is in prison doing a stretch as the fall guy for bigshot criminal Rick Coyle … Read more