Konterr Brilliant and touching

SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Edwin The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

calvinnme Carol Ohmart and Tom Tryon are having a little rendezvous on a deserted road, when they overhear three guys plotting to knock over a house and steal $350,000 worth of jewelry. Since Ohmart is trying to ditch her husband (James Gregory), she eventually concocts a plan to rob the burglars, and suckers Tryon into it. The plan almost comes off … except that Gregory suspects the two are getting it on, and follows them. Tryon holds up the burglars, but as he makes his escape, the two burglars fire at him. Meanwhile, as Ohmart waits for Tryon in the getaway car, Gregory confronts her. Ohmart shoots him, and lets Tryon think the burglars hit him by accident. Of course, things slowly unravel from there, and there is also a neat twist involving the owner of the jewels.There is some talent involved – Michael Curtiz directed, and keeps the pace moving fairly well. The supporting cast is good, and features Elaine Stritch as Ohmart's friend, and E. G. Marshall and Edward Binns as a couple of detectives. Richard Deacon has a bit as a jeweler. David Lewis (who played Edward Quartermaine for so many years on "General Hospital") makes his film debut. As a bonus, Nat King Cole appears and sings "Never Let Me Go." Tryon is acceptable in his role, but that's about it. Ohmart, who was wonderfully treacherous as Vincent Price's wife in House on Haunted Hill, looks great, but her voice is a little too monotone to suit me.One of the screenwriters is billed as Rip Van Ronkel. Apparently he didn't want to use his real name, Rupert Stiltskin.

mark.waltz She's a tramp married to a violent older man, He's an employee of that very jealous husband who knows she's a tramp but can't prove it. They are desperate to escape her miserable existence, but she's reluctant to leave the financial support she gets behind. So while they are hiding out in lover's lane, they overhear the plot to rob a house while the owners are out of town. So she suggests that they rob the robbers and go on the run, and he becomes the total sap and agrees. But things don't always go as planned, and gunshots go off, turning their plot upside down and leaving somebody presumably dead.Carol Ohmart is the seductive young wife with James Gregory ("The Manchurian Candidate") as her husband who is determined to help employee Tom Tryon move ahead in his real estate business, unaware that he's helped himself to Gregory's hearth and home already. The heat between the two lovers is undeniable, and Ohmart isn't without some heart. Of course, Tryon is totally suckered into her schemes, and witnessing the violence that Gregory inflicts on his wife, it's difficult not to blame Ohmart for plotting against him. Jody Lawrence displays vulnerability as Gregory's secretary, giving her all in a scene where Tryon walks into hear her taking dictation from a tape-recorder of the dead man. Later, Tryon finds out that his boss was onto him, and now he must really figure out how he's going to get out of this mess.The wonderful Elaine Stritch is an instant scene-stealer as Ohmart's old burlesque girlfriend, singing a bit of "When I take my sugar to tea". Fresh from success on Broadway, this was Stritch's film debut, and even though her part has no bearing on the plot, she does get to provide not only an alibi to Ohmart but good insight into her fun-loving character as well. "General Hospital's" very first Edward Quartermain (David Lewis) is present as the mastermind behind the home break-in, while E.G. Marshall is the law enforcement officer put in charge of the investigation. "This is one for T.V.", Marshall comments, realizing that the case he's on (which appears to be suicide since Gregory was killed by his own gun) is more convoluted than anything on "Perry Mason" or "Dragnet".A nice little sleeper of a film noir (late in the genre), this isn't anything we haven't seen before ("Double Indemnity", "Decoy", "Out of the Past" cover pretty much the same territory), but it is extremely well crafted. This shows how people who get involved in these types of situations crack under the pressure of not knowing what's going on in the minds of everybody else around them and how they pretty much do themselves in through just the emotion of guilt and paranoia. Director Michael Curtiz makes this speed along like a cross-country train where the only thing waiting at the end of the line is retribution and justice.

robert-temple-1 This is a superb film noir directed by Michael Curtiz, which has never been officially reissued in video or DVD format. The film introduces three new lead players, Carol Ohmart, Ton Tryon, and Elaine Stritch, who here all appear in their first feature film. This was clearly a conscious decision by Paramount to try and create new stars. They took an excellent script and entrusted the project to the capable hands of Oscar-winner Michael Curtiz, who is of course most famous for directing CASABLANCA (1942). Carol Ohmart is the femme fatale. She has a low dusky voice and moves, speaks and acts like Barbara Stanwyck. Stanwyck was twenty years older than Ohmart, and perhaps it seemed time to try and reinvent her. Ohmart does an excellent job and there is nothing to complain of about her performance except for one thing, and that is that she did not possess the natural magic of a true star. In this film she is highly effective, but we are not entranced. What is there that makes one woman spellbinding and another not? We will never know the answer. Young Tom Tryon as the earnest, love-crazed male lead is very good, though at that age he looked a bit weird, and he was much more effective and better looking when he was older and had developed a bit of gravitas, as for instance in THE CARDINAL (1963). Elaine Stritch is given a substantial supporting role, and she makes the most of it, stealing plenty of scenes (though apparently without meaning to do so) and showing what stuff she is made of, as the decades which followed have proved. Michael Curtiz does his usual excellent job of directing, and the story really does have some surprises and twists. This is no B picture, it is the real thing. Ohmart is a gold-digger who has married a rich older man (played by James Gregory) for whom she has no affection whatever. But then, her affection is reserved for herself. She does however have a mad passion for Tryon, and must have him. 'I want you,' she says to him repeatedly, like a Roman Empress deciding to conquer Cilicia before the week is out. They can't keep their hands off each other, and their mouths are glued together and they simply can't tell whose arms are which. A slight problem! Tryon works for the husband. Also, the boss's secretary, played with doe-eyed devotion by Jody Lawrance (who retired from acting only 12 years later at the age of 38, and died aged only 55 in 1986), is hopelessly in love with Tryon, who does not notice. This film is notable for an appearance by the singer Nat King Cole, who sings an entire song, 'Never Let Me Go' (composed specially for this film), standing and smiling in a nightclub into which Ohmart briefly goes before slipping out on one of her sinister errands of passion. The film begins with Ohmart and Tryon sitting in an open convertible on a warm summer night on the hills overlooking the lights of Los Angeles. They have been necking passionately and suddenly two other cars drive up nearby, which do not see them. Men get out of each car and a rendezvous takes place, in which a jewel robbery is planned, and the couple overhear all the details. Who is the mysterious and genteel man who is organising it? Later in the film we get a real shock when we find out who he is. (No, it is not Ohmart's husband. Try again. Give up, you could never guess.) Ohmart wants to run away with Tryon, who 'has no money' (at least not enough for her), so she browbeats him into robbing the robbers and taking the $350,000 worth of jewels from them as 'running away money'. When Tryon protests, Ohmart ruthlessly scorns his comparative poverty, and says 'I've been poor before.' But of course, this being a film noir, things go terribly wrong. And go on going wrong. And go on going even more wrong. And everything becomes impossibly tense, so that sweat practically breaks out upon the celluloid itself. And then more surprises come, and yet more tension. The screenwriter has no mercy on us. And Ohmart is relentless, as greedy and passionate as Stanwyck in DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944), a role on which she clearly modelled her own performance. This really is a good one. I would say don't miss it, but first you have to find it, and that is even more difficult than solving the plot. Type it into Google with the word 'buy'.

GUENOT PHILIPPE I really don't understand why this Michael Curtiz film is so hard to find. And since so many years. A rather good film noir, in the Warner Bors tradition, except that this time it was produced by Paramount Pictures. And like some other late Curtiz's films, there are no really great stars in this movie. Actors as we could have seen in B pictures. But this is definitely not a B picture.The usual topic of the triangle: Wife, husband and lover. The gal wants to get rid of her husband with the help of her lover. Characterization, music score, sets by night, everything is very interesting in this authentic and - I repeat - rare gem. Don't miss Nat King Cole singing "Never Let Me Go". A charming movie which reminds me my childhood. But it is not a masterpiece although.