Sombras de Nueva York

I caught The Saint In New York late one night on TV. It is actually - violence and all - a very faithful translation of Charteris' novel of the same name. Simon Templar's roguish audacity is very well conveyed by Hayward and the film is a lot of fun.

With crime rife in New York due to gangs and a small group of men in particular, Inspector Fernack makes the decision to bring in Simon Templar aka "The Saint" to help. The Saint is known as someone able to bring down criminal organisations but has gained notoriety due to the criminal methods he uses to do so. Dispatching one of the men with a clinical kill very early on, Templar quickly uncovers the existence of a character known as the "Big Fellow" – clearly a top man behind the gangs. Moving steadily into more and more danger he tries to reach and remove the Big Fellow to cut the head off the snake.

I'm not sure why this film was apparently banned in Sweden on its release but I would hazard a guess that it had something to do with the marvellous anti-hero qualities that Templar is given in this film. The plot could have been straight out of any crime b-movie as it essentially involves bringing "justice" to New York by taking down a major crime syndicate; however in many other films from the 1930's the hero would have been a cop trying to get a conviction and, if he killed anyone it would have been by necessity rather than choice. However with this film we have a character who kills by choice and is as much a killer as he is a bringer of justice. This dark edge makes the film more interesting than the standard plot suggests it should be and I was quite taken in by it even if the quest for the "Big Fellow" wasn't really delivered with any tension or mystery (which was a bit of a shame, although it did enough to keep me guessing and watching).

The real feather in the cap is Louis Hayward who plays it with the perfect mix of the suave and the psychotic. He is convincing as a bit of a smooth character but, more importantly, he convinced me as a cold-blooded killer and I enjoyed the dark feel he brought to the film. Outside of his though the performances are either just OK or wooden but nothing better; they more or less do the job but I could help feel that Hayward deserved more than the very basic caricatures of cops and criminals.

Overall though this is a tough and enjoyable b-movie that features an enjoyably dark anti-hero. Later films in the series (well, the next one in fact) would quickly lose touch with this dark, cruel character and tone it down to be nonexistent but here it is in full effect and it makes a standard (if engaging) plot much better than it deserved to be.

This by my lights is a splendid and very good story about Leslie Charteris's enigmatic character, Simon Templar, "the Saint"; it was the first of a series of films which starred several actors inn the role. Louis Hayward is fascinating inn the part, occasionally a bit stodgy but intelligent, and compelling. The film was directed by Ben Holmes, and also stars Kay Sutton as an enigmatic bad girl, Sig Ruman, Jonathan Hale, Jack Carson and many others in small but effective parts. The storyline is what set\s this ethical masterpiece apart. Templar is tracked down in foreign parts by an honest man representing a group in New York who want to bring down the mysterious crime boss who is poisoning the city with his influence. Templar, for his own reasons--the challenge, the chance to accomplish something worthwhile--agrees to risk his life; not for altruism but for his own code of values, his own desire to use his talents to the full. He starts pushing, commits some questionable break-ins and more,, all the time making himself more dangerous and getting closer to finding out who the big fella" is. I will not reveal the climax or the ending, except to say Templar has fallen in love with Kay--but she can never be his after what happens. Roy Webb wrote the music; the production values of this B/W gem are subtle and a little above average. But what drives it is the script, written from Charteris's novel,; it is the best of an interesting series because it is fast-paced, original, clever in dialogue and clear in its contexted ethical purposiveness; the group who hired him and the viewers finally come to know that they picked the right man, whatever doubts they may originally have had about the famous and notorious Simon Templar. Sutton is very good; Carson and several others are very competent also. Highly recommended.

Hayward does cut a dashing figure with an easy smile, a penchant for poetical one-liners, and a snap-brim fedora. His version of the Saint is also more interesting than the standard sleuth of the period since he's not above breaking the law when it serves justice or following his own code of integrity. Too bad this kind of character complexity didn't survive the many sequels.

The story itself is pretty routine: cleaning up the city by getting the mysterious Big Fellow. Not much excitement or suspense as the one-man-army sort of bounces back and forth between bad guys, snapping off occasional nifty one-liners. Then there's the sexy Kay Sutton to ease the eyes after all the ugly bad guys. And though her delivery sometimes sounds a flat note, she and Hayward manage to make their boilerplate romance surprisingly wistful.

Anyway, I've got to say this about someone, and I think it's director Ben Holmes. How many of these programmers have you seen where somebody gets shot in one scene, yet turns up miraculously made whole in the next. Not here. The Saint gets wounded in one scene and, by golly, he favors that shoulder for the rest of the film. So an unofficial Oscar for Attention to Neglected Detail to Ben Holmes by default since such matters are usually the job of the director. Then too, on a slightly different note, I hope cable comes up with Holmes' intriguingly titled Cutie on Duty (1943) sometime real soon.

The first film in RKO's series (continued, successfully, with George Sanders, and unsuccessfully, with Hugh Sinclair), this features tiny, white-suited Louis Hayward, as the dangerous psychotic Simon Templar, law-enforcer of a kind (mainly by shooting people), on a mission to find the 'big fellow', head of a crime gang. Hayward is excellent in this, having just the right amount of repartee and daring (without making the role comedic as Sanders did or boring as Sinclair did), as is his love interest, Kay Sutton, who seemed to do very little in films despite her good looks and strong voice. One gripe about the film would be that the print currently available on video is poor as regards picture and sound - I understand this entry in the series was lost for a while and it really does cry out for restoration. Still, this aside it has many compensations. Hayward went on to be the man in the iron mask, the son of Monte Cristo, and the snipey son Oliver in My Son My Son. Jonathan Hale, introduced here as the Saint's cop foil, went on to other Saint entries and eventually committed suicide.