Whiplash

I never would have called myself a big fan of boxing or movies about boxing, but I've seen my fair share at this point. Whiplash is a movie that has boxing as a key plot element, but it's debatable how much this movie is focused on the sport. It's more like a mix of noir and romance in my mind. The problem is, I don't know how invested I was in the romance between the 2 leads. I certainly didn't want her getting together with the other guy, but I didn't feel many sparks between Dane Clark and Alexis Smith. One of my struggles with this film, and most plots of this type, is the fact that they rely on one of the romantic leads simply refusing to communicate properly. So many issues crop up because they don't talk about their history, or what might happen to the other person if they get involved. Nearly every story of love needs some type of conflict to make it interesting, but this method of creating a rift between two people just feels played out and a bit lazy. But even without that part of the plot there simply wasn't much that I found to latch onto in this film that was enjoyable or original. I'm about a week or two removed from when I watched Whiplash and I'm already starting to forget it. This is a film that won't stick with me, even though it's not a bad at all.

"Whiplash" was a routine offering from Warner Brothers in the late forties but routine in those days also meant efficient, entertaining and well worth seeing. It is only when you see films like this one which are sixty years old and in black and white to realise that the equivalent does not exist in cinema any more. Television has taken over this sort of story but still cannot do it as well or cover effectively scenes in boxing arenas or large scale venues in their stories. The Warner Brothers rep company was also a very good one: Davis, Crawford and co were, of course, the front runners at this time, but this cast shows how professional and talented the second string actors were in those days. Dane Clark was never a star but here he gives a highly efficient and convincing performance, carrying the film with ease and confidence. Alexis Smith (cruelly underestimated and underused until her later years) is excellent as the unhappy heroine, married to sadistic Zachary Scott but in love with Clark. She had a much wider range than most people gave her credit for (She was to win a "Tony" on Broadway for her performance in Sondheim's "Follies") and was always a welcome actress in anything she did. Scott plays one of his usual villains but always played them with style and panache. The divine Eve Arden has a few good scenes but is wasted - and Jeffrey Lynn, usually a somewhat pallid and passive actor, is here very good as Smith's drunken brother who finally resolves the story by his actions. Not a marvellous film, of course, but thoroughly watchable and carefully made.

Boxing film. But it takes a long time to get there. At the beginning, Mike (Dane Clark) tell the kids how he used to a fighter, and then we're in flashback. We see how he was an artist when he met Laurie (Alexis Smith). He gets in a brawl, and is talked into earning big money as a boxer. Fun co-stars... SZ Sakall Cuddles was in every single b&w film in the 1940s, along with Alan Hale Senior. Hale was Dad of The Skipper, on Gilligan's Island. Eve Arden and Zack Scott were both so awesome in Mildred Pierce. A couple of fun numbers done at the Pelican Club; a ballad "sung" by Laurie, and a fun bit by "a vocal group", according to imdb; it's a shame they aren't credited in the cast list or the Soundtrack page, as of today. It looks like they changed the lyrics from A Girl to The Guy when it's sung by a female group. The story is good enough, but it never really takes off. The first five minutes the film really jumps around, so i hope you don't get seasick. Directed by Lewis Seiler. Started in silents, making shorts. This one is okay. Not a lot of chemistry, but the story is sound.

Boring boxing melodrama. I don't want to call it a film noir because it doesn't have any film noir style, in my opinion. Dane Clark plays a moody painter who falls in love with a woman (Alexis Smith) who buys one of his paintings. She skips out on him so he follows her to New York, where he discovers she is married to evil cripple Zachary Scott. Then things get weird as Clark decides to become a boxer for Scott. His motivation for this was cloudy, to say the least. He decides to box under the name Mike Angelo (get it -- Michaelangelo -- because he's a painter, you see). From here, a movie with wobbly knees is knocked down for the count. The cast is unimpressive but not terrible. Clark is pretty unlikable in a role tailor-made for John Garfield. Smith is forgettable. Eve Arden is great when she's around, which isn't much. Pretty standard stuff. No surprises.

Good, tough noir with an excellent cast. Watching the film it becomes obvious that it was planned for Joan Crawford so closely does Alexis Smith's character follow the Crawford 40's blueprint. Dane Clark's tortured painter turned boxer was surely likewise designed with John Garfield in mind as it adheres to his screen persona as well. For whatever reason those A-listers either passed or were unavailable and the film moved over to the B unit and this cast. As good as the leads are they were considered up and comers at the time and definitely represented the second string at Warners.

Back to the film it is sharply shot with effective use of the shadowy black and white photography. Zachary Scott adds another hissable villain to his vast array, Eve Arden pops up from time to time, once in an outfit that looks like she took the cloth off her kitchen table and fashioned it into an ensemble, to add her special brand of spice to the proceedings and many of Warners stock company, Alan Hale, S.Z. Sakall etc. fill out the cast. While the direction is adequate someone who was more of a stylist, for example Michael Curtiz, could have sharpened some slack edges and made the film really cook. Still as is its certainly worth investing the ninety minutes that it runs.