Oh, Olive Films… If I remember correctly, they’re not as ambitious with restorations like, say, Cohen Films or Criterion…
Well, this looks nice — there are scratches and dust, but it’s been stabilised and colour corrected. I mean — normalised.
This is very noir.
The director here is Robert Siodmak, which is a very familiar name, of course. But! Looking at his list of movies, I find that I’ve probably seen none of his movies? Except People on Sunday?
That has to be wrong, but… Oh, he only worked in the US for about a decade before returning to Germany. And he seems to have done mostly noirs while he was in the US, and mostly B movies?
Uhm uhm uhm
I don’t quite understand this movie. All that’s happened so far is that these two people (both married) have started an affair… but… we haven’t really been told anything about them, or given a reason to care.
Except that it’s Barbara Stanwyck, so we should care automatically.
I guess they’re slowly working their way towards the actual plot — is she going to con him into killing her husband or something?
OK, I didn’t quite guess what the plot was, but … almost!
The problem with her plan is that it turns out that the guy is a complete moron who totally fucked things up.
Or… is that the plot? That he did all that to set her up? And he’s the killer!? He certainly seems like an asshole.
The guy’s name is “Cleve”… which surely is the least attractive name ever in a Hollywood movie.
No… this movie just doesn’t quite work. It takes so long to get started… and then Cleve (trying to help) is the only one who creates the case against Barbara, really. So he’s a dumbass. And a drunk. So it’s like… hard to care about the shenanigans (which turn out to be less interesting than you’d think).
Much of the problem the film has is that Wendell Corey plays the guy, and he’s just not very interesting on the screen. Stanwyck tries to act really hard to make up for his deficiencies, and almost succeeds.
The File on Thelma Jordon. Robert Siodmak. 1949. ⚂
