John Farrow

Where Danger Lives

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Close-up of Robert Mitchum

The film equivalent of being sent to sit on the naughty step, Where Danger Lives is where Robert Mitchum was put to cool off after a marijuana bust put him in the newspapers for all the wrong reasons. It is low-level, cheese-paring noir well below his pay grade and with not really enough plot to get it to the finish line. But the finish is spectacularly good and Mitchum puts his back into the role of the decent humanitarian doctor who falls for a bad girl and ends up on the run with her after her husband dies. Dr Jeff Cameron (Mitchum) is introduced reading a bedtime story to a girl in an … Read more

Alias Nick Beal

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Nick Beal close-up

Also known as The Contact Man, Alias Nick Beal is the much better title of this unusual political allegory meets supernatural drama. The Nick is Old Nick and the Beal is short for Beelzebub. Got it? A retelling of the Faust story is the idea, with Ray Milland as the Mephistopheles stand-in and Thomas Mitchell as Joseph Foster (Foster/Faust, see?), a principled and upstanding district attorney determined to nail a career criminal who has been outsmarting him for years. I’d give my soul to get that guy, says Foster in so many words at one point. And that’s it – unbeknown even to himself the deal is done. So when he meets the … Read more

Night Has a Thousand Eyes

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Edward G Robinson, John Lund and Gail Russell publicity shot

If it’s a really good Edward G Robinson performance you’re looking for, can I suggest Night Has a Thousand Eyes, a knotty little potboiler elevated by Robinson. Out of gangster mode he was a versatile actor who could bring home the goods in all sorts of roles. Here he’s a stage magician who gets spooked when the phoney predictions he offers audiences start coming true. So spooked that he gives it all up and flees, away from the woman he loves – a premonition has told him she’ll die if he stays – and away from the best friend who will become stinking rich by investing in oil, another fulfilment of John Triton’s … Read more

The Big Clock

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Ray Milland and Charles Laughton

The IMDb description of The Big Clock succinctly tells the story of what happens – “A magazine tycoon commits a murder and pins it on an innocent man, who then tries to solve the murder himself” – while remaining silent about the massive irony at the centre of the story. The further the man advances with his investigation, the more he’s going to incriminate himself. It’s also about the fact that the entire story is seen through the eyes of the innocent man. It’s dependable Ray Milland as the “man”. George Stroud is a journalist at the top of his game, who’s made his name on a true crime magazine bringing in the villains … Read more