Film Review
Today, the director Anthony Mann is best remembered for a string of
classic westerns, notably those starring James Stewart (
Winchester '73,
The Far Country,
The Man from Laramie) and his
subsequent historical epics
El Cid (1961) and
The Fall of the Roman Empire
(1964). Before all of this, however, Mann cut his directorial
teeth with a series of low budget but generally well-regarded film noir
thrillers, the best of which include
T-Men
(1947),
Raw Deal (1948) and
Side Street (1950).
Railroaded! was one of Mann's first
forays into the murky world of film noir, made on a shoestring for the
Poverty Row studio Producers Releasing Corporation, with absolutely no
expense spared.
Even by the standards of the 1940s American B-movie,
Railroaded! looks cheap, with sets
so flimsy you wonder if they will last to the end of a scene and
back-projection so poorly executed that you could mistake this for the
cruellest of parodies. The hopelessly formulaic script contains
just about every B-movie cliché, archetype and plot contrivance
known to man and the acting (with one notable exception) is just as
lacking in inspiration. It says something about Mann's potential
that he was able to rise above all this and somehow pull out of this
tank of mediocrity a film which, whilst not perfect, manages to hold
the attention and provides a reasonably entertaining viewing
experience.
Railroaded!
may look ropey compared with Mann's later, fully-fledged films noirs,
but it does have some saving graces.
The extreme high-contrast photography gives the film the
cordite-scented atmosphere it badly needs to sustain its humdrum and
generally implausible plot, as well as helping to hide the shoddy
production values and even shoddier acting contributions (from a
clearly unmotivated supporting cast). In some ways, the paucity
of the budget and lack of gloss prove to be somethimg of an asset,
giving the film a grittiness and crudeness that are well-matched to its
hardboiled content, and nothing helps the mood of a film noir more than
a set heavily draped in shadows. The film's one killer weakness
is its lack of interesting or believable characters (both the poor
script and even poorer acting are to blame for this), but John
Ireland's deliciously vile villain makes up for this - with a
vengeance.
Ireland obviously relishes playing the bad guy and has no difficulty
stealing every scene like a duvet-hogging thug as the über-smooth
gangster whose hobbies include beating up his girlfriends and scenting his
bullets with their perfume. If only the other characters were
half as interesting as Ireland's dastardly Duke
Railroaded! could easily have been
a classic, but the best that co-stars Sheila Ryan and Hugh Beaumont can
manage is to say their lines without inducing the audience to slip into
a deep coma. Anthony Mann would go on to far better things than
this in due course, but you can only admire the dedication he shows in
trying to prevent
Railroaded!
from ending up as the disaster it could so easily have been.
© James Travers 2013
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
With the help of his girlfriend, Clara Calhoun, smalltime hoodlum Duke
Martin raids an illegal bookmaking joint masquerading as a beauty
parlour. As he makes his getaway in a stolen laundry van, Duke
shoots dead a police officer, but his accomplice Kowalski is wounded
and captured. The obvious suspect for the cop's killer is
the van's owner Steve Ryan, and fake eyewitness testimony from Clara
and Kowalski gives the police what looks like an open and shut
case. Detective Mickey Ferguson is sceptical of Steve's
guilt, however, and sets out to find the real culprit. Meanwhile
Steve's sister, Rosie, takes a shine to Duke and enlists his help in
trying to clear her brother's name...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.