Movie Review: China Doll (1958)

Genre: Wartime Dramatic Romance  

Director: Frank Borzage  

Starring: Victor Mature, Li Li Hua, Ward Bond, Stuart Whitman  

Running Time: 99 minutes  

Synopsis: The setting is western China in 1943, during World War Two. Captain Cliff Brandon (Victor Mature) leads a US air cargo crew resupplying Allied forces. Cynical and gruff, Cliff inadvertently buys the housekeeping services of Shu-Jen (Li Li Hua), a local young woman from a poor but proud family. Father Cairns (Ward Bond) runs the local mission and helps Cliff understand his obligations, while errand boy Ellington provides translation. Initially dismissive and not interested in having Shu-Jen around, Cliff gradually starts to appreciate her commitment to servitude, and falls in love.

What Works Well: Director Frank Borzage steers the unlikely cross-cultural romance towards a few poignant moments with obvious affection for his subjects. Cliff's weariness reflects the rigours of war, and he crew's interactions with ambulance service nurses contain crass commentary about wartime romance as a short term contract with financial benefits.

What Does Not Work As Well: Victor Mature's performance is often boorishly superficial, and apart from Ward Bond, most of the secondary acting is theatrically wooden. The Chinese characters are treated as submissive and differential, and Cliff falls in love with a woman because she is fully dedicated to his domestic comfort although he cannot actually communicate with her. The action scenes (mostly in the third act) are a mishmash of archival footage and clumsy set-bound antics. 

Key Quote:

Cliff (talking to Father Cairns about Shu-Jen): With her it's different...all she wants to do is give.

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Movie Review: Cry Of The City (1948)

Genre: Noir Crime Drama  

Director: Robert Siodmak  

Starring: Victor Mature, Richard Conte, Shelley Winters, Debra Paget  

Running Time: 95 minutes  

Synopsis: Criminal Martin Rome (Richard Conte) is badly wounded and in police custody after killing a cop in a botched robbery. Police Lieutenant Vittorio Candella (Victor Mature) was Martin's childhood friend, and now questions him about another heist involving precious jewelry. Slimy lawyer Niles (Berry Kroeger) wants Martin to confess to the jewelry theft, which would implicate Martin's lover Teena Ricante (Debra Paget). She becomes the target of a police hunt, and Martin plots an escape to reveal the truth. 

What Works Well: A textured script (by Richard Murphy and Ben Hecht) is full of ambiguous motivation layers supplementing director Robert Siodmak's investment in doomed noir fundamentals. Martin Rome is identified early as a cop killer destined for the electric chair, but emerges as a complex protagonist driven by an unlikely love and willing to do the dirty work for others. Shady characters lurk in every corner, including Niles the lawyer, Brenda (Shelley Winters) the midnight lady, a shifty prison trusty (Walter Baldwin), a foreign doctor (Konstantin Shayne) providing questionable services, and Martin's impressionable younger brother Tony (Tommy Cook). Towering over them all is a giant masseuse (Hope Emerson) who redefines "handful". Emotional ties are woven through a friendship-from-childhood between Lieutenant Candella and Martin's family, adding nuance to some gorgeously filmed New York nighttime streetscapes.

What Does Not Work As Well: The characters just keep on coming - late into the third act, Siodmak is still finding new people and new places to introduce. And in a packed agenda, the editing and pacing demonstrate a tendency to overemphasize minor points.

Conclusion: The city's cry echoes with dazzling desperation.



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Movie Review: Violent Saturday (1955)

Genre: Small Town Crime Drama

Director: Richard Fleisher

Starring: Victor Mature, Richard Egan, Stephen McNally, Ernest Borgnine,Virginia Leith

Running Time: 90 minutes

Synopsis: Suave bank robber Harper (Stephen McNally) arrives in the small Arizona desert town of Bradenville with two associates, the brutal Dill (Lee Marvin) and bookish Chapman (J. Carrol Naish). They case the town in preparation for robbing the bank. Notable residents include copper mine manager Shelley (Victor Mature) and his young family, alcoholic mine owner Fairchild (Richard Egan) and his straying wife (Margaret Hayes), nerdy bank manager Reeves (Tommy Noonan), new-in-town nurse Linda (Virginia Leith), an indebted and desperate librarian (Sylvia Sidney), and Amish farmer Stadt (Ernest Borgnine). On the day of the robbery, a seemingly simple job turns violent.

What Works Well: A surprisingly effective combination of life-in-a-small-town with deadly serious caper thrills. Writer Sydney Boehm adapts William L. Heath's book and makes every scene count, packing a remarkable amount of content into 90 minutes. Director Richard Fleisher maintains admirable control, alternating the town's rhythms with heist planning dynamics. Fleischer also leverages the CinemaScope format and a colourful palette by ensuring something interesting - and relevant - is always occupying the background. The third act elegantly ties together the plot threads, and the violence builds to a well-executed exclamation point.

What Does Not Work As Well: Some of the domestic scenes flirt with corny territory.

Conclusion: The quiet-behind-the-storm achieves genre-fusing success.



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Movie Review: Dangerous Mission (1954)

A stiff crime drama, Dangerous Mission features a decent cast and scenic locations but also a stolid script and inane action.

After witnessing a gangland hit Louise Graham (Piper Laurie) flees to Montana's Glacier National Park and a job as a hotel gift shop clerk. The bad guys uncover her new location and dispatch a hit-man. Ex-Marine Matt Hallett (Victor Mature) arrives at the park and checks into the hotel, where his handgun attracts the attention of Chief Ranger Joe Parker (William Bendix). 

Matt locates Louise but finds tourist Paul Adams (Vincent Price) already trying to win her attention. To mingle with the locals Matt befriends Louise's colleague Mary (Betta St. John), whose father Katoonai (Steve Darrell) is a fugitive wanted for murder. Louise has to sort out friend from foe and her life is soon in danger.

An RKO production filmed in Technicolor and 3D, Dangerous Mission is a mismatch of technology, locations, tone and budget. Producer Irwin Allen cuts his teeth on some non-sequitur disaster scenes, somehow throwing in a rock avalanche, a crackling electric cable, a forest fire and a glacier hazard course into what started as a Hitchcockian-noir combo. The natural catastrophes don't add relevance to the plot but allow director Louis King to burn a few of the already sparse 75 minutes of running time. 

The core plot is an unconvincing hodgepodge of woman-in-danger, a bland romantic triangle, attempted villainy, and a stupifyingly extraneous indigenous-fugitive-on-the-run sub-plot. The script by Charles Bennett, W. R. Burnett and Horace McCoy works overtime to trip itself up, and runs out of tricks as soon as the predictable switch between the presumed assassin and protector characters plays out with knowing inelegance.

The principal cast members are all better than this material, but are drawn down to the level of arthritic dialogue, plastic acting and ridiculous character decisions. And so after various tepid encounters a cop drags his star witness (complete in heels and a dressy outfit) into a dangerous pursuit across rugged terrain and exposes her to gunfire and deadly ice crevices. And of course they kiss triumphantly despite an accumulation of dead bodies strewn across the landscape.

The Glacier National Park scenery is appealing and King does a reasonable job combining on-location with studio shots, but Dangerous Mission remains dangerously bad.



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Movie Review: Easy Living (1949)

A sports drama, Easy Living is a grim story about the thin line between glamour and obscurity on and off the field.

Pete Wilson (Victor Mature) is the star quarterback of the Chiefs professional football team. Marketed as "King Football", he is the league's MVP and the face of the franchise. Pete is married to the ambitious Liza (Lizabeth Scott), who wants to capitalize on her status to launch an interior design business. She cozies up to wealthy businessman Howard Vollmer (Art Baker) as a potential client.

After feeling unwell, Pete is privately diagnosed with a heart condition. Fearful this could spell the end of his career, he keeps his ailment a secret from both Liza and the team's ruthless owner Lenahan (Lloyd Nolan). Meanwhile Lenahan's secretary and widowed daughter-in-law Anne (Lucille Ball) harbours a secret crush on Pete. After being passed-up for a coaching role and with his on-field performances in decline, Pete is confronted with the real possibility of losing everything.

One of the earliest movies set in the world of professional football, Easy Living features a complex, multi-faceted narrative. A relatively low-budget production from RKO Pictures clocking in at just 77 minutes, the adaptation of Irwin Shaw's Education Of The Heart overachieves with a story about the lure of social status, the fragile careers of elite athletes, and the difficult trade-offs between health and glory.

Easy Living offers a rare peek into the early era of high-stakes professional sports. Train and bus rides for the players, finances dominating decisions, slipshod medical oversight, and repeated assertions this is a bushiness like any other, players pumped into stars or dumped onto the scrapheap as best befits the bottom line. As a star attraction Pete thrives in this milieu; Liza is much less interested, preferring to spend her evenings at posh parties schmoozing with the literati.

Director Jacques Tourneur, working from Charles Schnee's compact script, packs in people and incidents around the central couple. The film buzzes with secondary characters, including Pete's best friend and teammate Tim (Sonny Tufts) and his grounded wife Penny (Miss Jeff Donnell), as well as reporters, marketing agents, coaches, old timers, and a whole ecosystem of social climbers gathered around affluent sleazeball Vollmer. 

Most poignant is the subplot featuring Holloran (Gordon Jones), an aging lineman now past his best-by date and about to be unceremoniously dumped by the team, providing Pete with an unwanted preview of his potential fate. Meanwhile, up-and-coming model Billy Duane (June Bright) decorates Liza's glitzy social circle, but she too will wave an unexpected caution flag. 

The intertwined threads of risk and ambition reside at the heart of the film, Pete and Liza mostly in love with the idea of who they are but unable to imagine what their union means if the fundamentals change. Pete is an on-field icon but off the field he is unsure how to handle failing health and a showcase marriage. Liza is undoubtedly heartless in her exploitation of only one acceptable image of Pete, but her ambition is conjoined with villainy, her pursuit of Vollmer the personification of greed's outer limits. 

While Liza earns any pot-holes created by her single-purposed exploitive agenda, her arc ends with exceptionally crude treatment. Despite that foul, Easy Living scores an unlikely touchdown.

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Movie Review: Kiss Of Death (1947)

A character profile focusing on the dilemma of an informer, Kiss Of Death is an intense crime drama heightened by an unforgettable Richard Widmark performance. 

It's Christmas time in New York City. Ex-convict Nick Bianco (Victor Mature) joins three hoodlums to rob a jewelry story at the Empire State Building, but he is the only one caught. Assistant District Attorney Louis D'Angelo (Brian Donlevy) offers leniency in return for the names of the other gang members, but Nick refuses to squeal and is sentenced to a long stint behind bars.

Three years later, Nick learns his wife has committed suicide, and his two daughters are in an orphanage. His ex-neighbour Nettie (Coleen Gray) visits him in prison and reveals that Rizzo, one of Nick's former associates, may have mistreated his wife before her death. Nick now strikes a deal with D'Angelo, naming names to earn visits with his daughters. Soon Nick is released on parole and settles down with Nettie, but D'Angelo wants his help to nab the dangerous Tommy Udo (Widmark), a psychotic killer.

In one of the more memorable big screen debuts, Richard Widmark announces his arrival with an incendiary performance. When he is on screen as the cackling, unhinged Udo, nothing else matters. He commands his scenes with a murderous edge of barely contained psychosis, creating one of the screen's most noteworthy villains.

When Widmark is not dominating, the screenplay by Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer is primarily interested in Nick's soul searching as he struggles to decide whether the criminal code of silence is worth the impact on his family. Despite a robust and heartfelt Victor Mature central performance, the narrative is sometimes bogged down wondering if Nick can be a good man at heart. 

But director Henry Hathaway also punctuates Kiss Of Death with short and sharp moments of extreme violence, including allowing Udo to earn his place in cinematic infamy in a scene involving a wheelchair and a staircase.

Some elements proved too troublesome for the censors and audiences of the day, leaving Nick's story somewhat muddled. His wife's death, and the role of the criminal Rizzo, were truncated to the edge of incomprehension. The romance between Nick and Nettie proceeds at jarring speed, and the climactic showdown is too far fetched, even for the standards of hardboiled men.

But Hathaway also produces some moments of noir-infused brilliance to compensate for the rough spots. In a couple of sequences, time slows down to a crawl to build unbearable tension. The endlessly long elevator descent from the opening scene of the crime to the lobby of the Empire State Building allows Nick plenty of time to reflect on his life's downward trajectory. And later, Udo's emergence from behind a curtain at an Italian restaurant is prolonged to an epic noir moment.

On either side of the prison walls, Kiss Of Death offers only dark paths to redemption.

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The Movies Of Victor Mature

All movies starring Victor Mature and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

My Darling Clementine (1946)

Kiss Of Death (1947)

Cry Of The City (1948)

Easy Living (1949)

Affair With A Stranger (1953)

The Robe (1953)

Dangerous Mission (1954)

Violent Saturday (1955)

China Doll (1958)

Firepower (1979)

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Movie Review: Affair With A Stranger (1953)

A romantic drama with some touches of humour, Affair With A Stranger is an uneven film, with adequate performances and decent construction but some strange choices and mainly predictable twists and turns.

In Philadelphia, stage star Janet Boothe (Monica Lewis) throws herself all over celebrated playwright Bill Blakeley (Victor Mature), and then she spreads rumours that his marriage to Carolyn (Jean Simmons), who is back home in New York, is in big trouble. As the gossip spreads that they may be divorcing, the story of Bill and Carolyn's romance is recalled by their friends.

Several years prior, Bill was a struggling writer with a gambling addiction and grand dreams of making it big. He meets model Carolyn in Times Square on New Year's Eve, and romance gradually blossoms. They eventually get married and she supports him even as his hopes for success appear to fade and he fritters away any small amounts of cash. One of his plays finally makes it to the stage, but it bombs. When Carolyn gets pregnant Bill is forced into a humiliating job as a waiter, but the couple's fortunes are about to change, with both triumph and tragedy around the corner.

Directed by Roy Rowland, Affair With A Stranger tries hard to be interesting. Bill and Carolyn occasionally threaten to become an engaging couple, the motley crew of friends, neighbours and acquaintances who recall the story in flashback create an animated backdrop, and the struggle for success in the theatre milieu offers possibilities.

But any sense of intriguing drama is let down by a ho-hum narrative. Most of the story's potential is wasted on a romance that labours to offer anything new or unique, leaving the film floundering in search of a purpose and feeling quite a bit longer than the brief 87 minutes. The central relationship features a fundamental disconnect never reconciled by the Richard Flournoy script: Bill is a largely wretched character, and what compels Janet to stick with him is not convincing. He is a liar from their first meeting, a gambling addict and living a life based more on hope than conviction. She holds their couplehood together as he remains a stranger, and it's questionable whether he is worth the effort.

Victor Mature and Jean Simmons deliver reasonable performances given what they have to work with, but they are sometimes betrayed by mismatched moments that fall between the cracks of clunky romantic comedy and ineffective societal drama. A prime example is a scene involving Bill helplessly munching on fried chicken on his first visit to Carolyn's apartment. Rowland seems to go for inelegant laughs while portraying a desperately starving man callously targeting a woman as his literal meal ticket. Elsewhere, the ups and downs of their relationship offer little that is imaginative: she worries, he squanders, they stumble, rinse and repeat.

The spirited supporting cast includes Jane Darwell as a restaurant owner, while a taxi driver (Wally Vernon), a newspaper kiosk merchant (George Cleveland), a big-time theatre producer and his wife (Nicholas Joy and Olive Carey) also take turns recounting parts of Bill and Carolyn's romance in flashback. The result is episodic, but keeps the film reasonably nimble.

Affair With A Stranger hints at a better film that is unfortunately intercepted by an absence of composed crispness.

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Movie Review: My Darling Clementine (1946)

A loose retelling of events leading up to the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, My Darling Clementine is a gorgeously filmed but curiously paced Western. The black and white images are stylish and evocative, but the story gets bogged down in lengthy nothingness for surprisingly long stretches.

Former lawman and now cattleman Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda) and his brothers tangle with Newman "Old Man" Clanton (Walter Brennan) and his sons on the outskirts of Tombstone. When Wyatt's brother James is killed and his cattle stolen, Wyatt accepts the offer to serve as Marshal of Tombstone. He imposes law and order, including reigning in the coarse behaviour of resident gambler and local legend "Doc" Holliday (Victor Mature).

Doc's former love Clementine Carter (Cathy Downs) unexpectedly shows up in town having traveled all the way from Boston, much to the disgust of Doc's current girl Chihuahua (Linda Darnell). Wyatt takes a romantic interest in Clementine, but his attention turns back to the Claytons when proof emerges that they were involved in James' death.

Directed by John Ford, My Darling Clementine is a feast for the eyes but a strain on the concentration. Ford invests heavily in look and feel, and captures a lyrical, poetic vision of the west, with carefully constructed framing and astute use of lighting. The scenes unfold at a leisurely pace and linger long enough to luxuriate in saturated beauty.

Less impressive is the narrative thrust and character definitions. Despite the shortish 97 minutes of running time, Ford struggles to find a focus. The Clantons effectively disappear almost entirely from the heart of the film, leaving Wyatt Earp to tangle off and on with Doc Holliday, and it's never clear if the men settle down to being friends, rivals or something vague in-between.

Clementine plays a big role in the title but barely contributes to the actual events of the film. She and Chihuahua represent two versions of the west, Clementine a more civilized future and Chihuahua a more earthy present, but they are more catalysts than well-defined characters, standing to the side as the men sort out their conflicts. Little is known about any of Earp's brothers, and the Clantons remain faceless bad guys with no objective except to cause harm.

Henry Fonda makes for a serious, respectful Wyatt Earp, Fonda's screen persona as the stand-up guy in the group ensuring that Wyatt is all good and fully on the side of due process and the law. As usual Doc Holliday is the more nuanced and interesting character, and Victor Mature is fine in interpreting the once-doctor (he was actually a dentist) and now hard-drinking, harder-coughing gambler with appropriate complexity.

The final showdown, once it arrives, jerks the film back into its center of gravity, and the gunfight at the O.K. Corral is well handled, if far removed from historical outcomes. Clementine may be a darling, but the film works better when the good guys get down to the business of tangling with the bad guys in the west's most famous horse enclosure.

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Movie Review: The Robe (1953)

A Biblical epic, The Robe packs the power of belief into a movie experience, but also suffers from taking itself too seriously.

In Roman times, military tribune Marcellus Gallio (Richard Burton), the son of an idealistic Senator (Torin Thatcher), antagonizes future emperor Caligula (Jay Robinson) by outbidding him for the slave Demetrius (Victor Mature). Marcellus also wins the heart of Diana (Jean Simmons), who reverses her decision to marry Caligula. In retaliation, Caligula arranges for Marcellus to be deployed to Palestine, considered a destitute and crime-infested corner of the Roman Empire.

Marcellus follows orders and as a seemingly routine assignment commands the soldiers who carry out the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, despite Demetrius having fallen under the influence of Jesus, like many other locals. Marcellus then wins Jesus' robe in a game of dice with other soldiers. But as soon as he puts on the robe, he is struck by an inexplicable illness that renders him unable to function. Demetrius disappears with the robe.

After recuperating in Capri with Diana, Marcellus is allowed to return to Palestine on a mission to look for Demetrius, find the robe, and understand its powers. Instead he meets the growing number of Jesus followers, preaching a life of love and forgiveness. Local leader Justus (Dean Jagger) takes Marcellus under his wing, eventually introducing him to Peter (Michael Rennie). Marcellus is tempted to join the Christianity movement, putting him at odds with Caligula, who is now Emperor.

Rich in incident and built on the sturdy foundations of faith, The Robe is undoubtedly engrossing and does achieve moments of pure drama and eerie transformations. The first CinemaScope production, The Robe matches screen size with narrative ambition. The Crucifixion is stunningly recreated, director Henry Coster finding his best character dynamics in the shadow of the crosses. The set designs are lavish, Coster giving his actors seemingly massive locales to explore in Rome, Capri and throughout Palestine. The numerous costumes and hundreds of extras add to the film's outstanding depth.

Based on the 1942 Lloyd C. Douglas best-selling book of the same name, the film features Marcellus as a microcosm of his Empire, his journey from dismissively crucifying Jesus to wholeheartedly accepting his message foreshadowing Europe's fate. The appeal of the story is easy to grasp, and while the film captures the enormity of the change about to sweep across the land, it does so with unrelenting studiousness.

Everything about The Robe is thoroughly earnest. The story of Marcellus resembles a solemn religious service, with no room for any levity or humour. All dialogue exchanges and incidents are shrouded in austere sombreness, and even the love story between Marcellus and Diana takes on the holy airs of a divine union. For a film that goes on for 135 minutes, the unyielding solemnity is ultimately aggravating, and culminates in an unfortunately ridiculous climax as Marcellus and Diana meet their fate with a childish flourish.

Despite the film's single tone, Richard Burton is memorable as Marcellus, as he crosses the line into theatrical over-acting early on and stays there, delivering most of his lines in a harsh, commanding staccato. Given the subject matter and the film's righteous attitude, his performance is surprisingly fitting. Jean Simmons is given little to work with, and her Diana fades out of the story for long stretches. When she is on screen, Simmons tends to be swallowed by all the drama and adds little to the movie. More prominent is Jay Robinson as Caligula, going the full hammy route into grandiose theatrics, a display of scenery chewing that almost succeeds in adding unintentional comic relief. Dean Jagger and Michael Rennie stay within themselves as dignified early Jesus believers.

The Robe delivers its message on impressively robust tablets. A few human-scaled distractions from all the lofty exhortations would have been welcome.

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