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Franchot Tone and Jean Wallace in Crímenes políticos (1949)

Opiniones de usuarios

Crímenes políticos

35 opiniones
5/10

I found it a tedious disappointment

Film noir fans seem to be ready to watch just about anything that their favorite genre provides, very much including minor efforts of which few have heard. This particular one has been available from various public domain sources for years, but it will probably prove to be a tedious disappointment.

Franchot Tone plays a district attorney who begins an investigation into the suicide (?), which the audience knows from the opening scene is a murder, of a press printer for a hate group. Soon the D.A.'s reporter/buddy on the same case is also murdered.

This murky, confused, badly edited film's narrative is a challenge for anyone to follow. That's not particularly uncommon for film noirs, of course, but the film (especially with the various PD prints) also lacks any distinctive visual interest or directorial style, making for a pretty dull going that, for this viewer, at least, couldn't end soon enough. Prints of the film may vary. The one I saw was 74 minutes.

The most curious aspect of this low budget production are the various three to five second cameos made by a number of "A" list stars. There's Burgess Meredith as a bartender, Henry Fonda as a waiter, John Garfield as a newspaper reading street guy and Marlene Dietrich as a patron leaving a nightclub, that nightclub appropriately called "The Blue Angel." I also spotted Marsha Hunt and Everett Sloane.

Exactly why these stars briefly appear I'm not quite certain, though in the case of Garfield it was as a favor for pal Franchot Tone. It was probably much the same kind of thing with the others.

If you're a hardcore noir fan (there is one murder sequence done at a low camera angle that perks the interest a little), there are various prints of dubious quality available of this one on You Tube.
  • AlsExGal
  • 13 sep 2018
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5/10

I am crazy about film noir, but ....

... There has to be a limit. This movie is pretty much a mess. It doesn't feel like New York City, of which I am a native and almost-lifetime resident. It has too many plots going at once. They add up but only with force on the part of the writers.

It starts out as a sort of Northern "Storm Warning." (Now, there we have a superb, underrated movie!) I guess the racist posters that set off the plot are symbolic of the beginning of the McCarthy witch-hunts. If they aren't, they don't make any sense: OK, granted: According to my parents Manhattan at that time was not always friendly to people other than Caucasians. But were there actually plots and mobs? I can't believe it.

The casting gives it some noir cred. I'm not talking about the brief cameos by big stars. Nor,really, about Franchot Tone. He is OK but he isn't exactly a noir staple and he's maybe a bit old for the role.

But we have Jean Wallace. We have Marc Lawrence.

For me, the single best feature of the film is the presence in a fairly small but significant role of an actress I had never before tonight heard of: Winifred Lenihan.

I see that she was the first person to play the title role in Shaw's "St. Joan" on Broadway. She is in very different territory here. But whoever cast her did so with genius: She is absolutely perfect.

Also, I wonder about the character played by Hedley Rainnie. He's ambiguous in many ways. He wears a beard and maybe that's meant to signify his foreign origins. I wonder, though: Is he intended to be gay? The way the character is portrayed reminds me of the intentionally creepy go-between for the Senator and his ex lover in the better known and overrated "Advise and Consent" almost a decade later.

It isn't a good movie, in sum. And the print I saw was really bad. But watch it for Ms. Lenihan. In a very quiet way, she's brilliant!
  • Handlinghandel
  • 5 nov 2007
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7/10

Noir Mercury Theater

Many purists will find this film not a noir. A great deal of the cinematography,lighting and camera angles, however, is textbook noir and this alone makes the film worth watching. Jean Wallace plays herself but it's a great play. The main character is sufficiently morally ambiguous--he knows his promotion comes from dubious sources and when he defeats these sources we don't see him disavowing the new job. The political angle doesn't work today in the way it might have at the time; watching this 1949 film today it's worth recalling that this was a period, just before McCarthy and Korea, when everything seemed up for grabs in the U.S. Prosperity was still, for a lot of folks, 'just around the corner' and the film in some ways portrays the fear that Nazis, communists, whoever, had infiltrated social and political elites. The director and others involved were part of the Mercury Theater grouping, associated in various ways with Orson Welles. There's a remarkable sequence in the party scene in the middle of the film where the camera assumes first person position...a bit like the earlier Lady in the Lake by Robert Montgomery, for a few minutes. I found the use of voice-over and first person camera an interesting wrinkle on noir's interrogation if the 'inner subject.' Markle would go on to head the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and had earlier worked as an uncredited screenwriter for Orson Welles.
  • edgeplayer
  • 11 ene 2007
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A Bit Uneven, But Interesting

Combining elements of a political thriller with elements of a mystery story, "Jigsaw" ends up being somewhat uneven, but certainly interesting enough to make you keep watching. The mystery angle is the part that works the best, keeping you guessing much of the time. Most of the production is strictly B-quality, but the performance of Franchot Tone, some cameo appearances worth watching for, and some interesting plot ideas bring up the overall quality.

The initial story idea is a bit routine, with Tone as an Assistant DA who is concerned about the activities of an extremist political group. While not entirely predictable, this side of it is never all that interesting either. The group remains too vague to seem like more than a small-scale threat. What perks things up is when Tone begins meeting a series of interesting characters from an assortment of backgrounds, with each of them either a potential friend or a potential enemy.

The finale of all this intrigue sets up a very interesting showdown between a number of groups in an art museum. The low production values keep it from being as memorable as it could have been, but it is still a good idea. Likewise, the movie overall never quite comes together as well as it could have, but it does have a number of positive things to offer.
  • Snow Leopard
  • 4 jul 2005
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6/10

An Interesting Watch

  • Corr28
  • 7 may 2009
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6/10

Such a weak story but it has some good genre moments.

This movie is almost impossible to follow because of its very muddled story and story-telling. I can't even exactly tell you what this movie is really about. It's almost as if the movie is constantly abandoning its own main plot-line. The story-telling also really isn't helped by its wooden and extremely bad and at times even laughable dialog and second grade actors that deliver the lines.

It has some noir ingredients, especially with its visual style, so this movie should also be called a film-noir, even though I wouldn't regard this movie exactly as a full-blood film-noir. As this movie shows, having film-noir ingredients doesn't guarantee that the movie is always a good and intriguing one.

One thing the movie does handle well is its tension. It knows how to build up certain sequences, even though you don't always understand what is exactly happening. This is also due to the poor quality of the print. The movie is real dark and grainy in parts, so you really literally can't see what is happening at times. But because the movie features a couple of good and tense sequences doesn't mean that the movie as a whole is a very exciting one. On the other hand it however also not a complete bore, since the movie always maintains a good pace.

I am not surprised that this movie is not really a better known one. It's a forgettable film-noir attempt, with a weak story and perhaps even worse story-telling. No, not even the biggest film-noir fans shall enjoy this movie thoroughly.

5/10

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/
  • Boba_Fett1138
  • 12 feb 2008
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3/10

A Hollywood lecture, but it has nice acting jobs by Franchot Tone, Winifred Lenihan and Marc Lawrence

  • Terrell-4
  • 27 ene 2008
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7/10

Very good mystery

  • dbborroughs
  • 5 ene 2009
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4/10

Poorly written and confusing....but some very interesting cameos

I got this film from one of those public domain mega-packs on DVD. While this is not a bad film, I can see why the film makers didn't bother renewing the copyright--it just wasn't all that interesting. Most of the problem seems to be with the writing. The plot seems to bounce all over the place and where the film began seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with where it ended. Had all the dull moments and irrelevant plots been eliminated or polished, I really would have enjoyed the film a lot more than I did.

Franchot Tone plays a prosecutor with the DA's office who is initially looks into the case of a White supremacist who might have been murdered. Whether or not this is the case is uncertain, but when Tone's newspaper friend is killed when he tries investigating (again, it was made to look like a suicide), he knows that there is some sort of conspiracy afoot. However, instead of trying to bash heads and get to the bottom of it, he infiltrates an organization that might be behind all this--as well as buying and selling public officials.

As I said, the writing was pretty poor. However, for film nuts like myself, it's still worth seeing for all the strange and unexpected cameos, such as Henry Fonda and John Garfield (among others). Not a good movie but it has enough to it that it isn't a total waste of time seeing it--not exactly a glowing review, huh?!
  • planktonrules
  • 2 ago 2009
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7/10

"They're Just Harmless Lunatics"

  • davidcarniglia
  • 28 oct 2018
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3/10

Muddled plot

Jigsaw was an independently produced film based out of New York City that would have us believe there was an American Fascist movement operating out of New York. A kind of Ku Klux Klan for the northeast.

With New York City's polyglot population it does not exactly lend itself to being a good base for such organizations either now or back in 1949. The American public knew it and for that reason it did not buy what Jigsaw was trying to sell.

One of the gimmicks was to have a few big names in some small one or two line roles. Henry Fonda, on Broadway at the time with Mister Roberts is a nightclub waiter, Marlene Dietrich was an entertainer, and John Garfield as a local tough. Sort of like The List of Adrian Messenger later on, but without the makeup.

Jigsaw needed all the help it could get. The plot is muddled beyond belief and the premise is preposterous to begin with. Franchot Tone and the rest of the talented cast are sadly wasted here.
  • bkoganbing
  • 19 jul 2005
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8/10

Who's that guy reading the newspaper?

  • sol1218
  • 2 dic 2004
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7/10

The Subjective Camera

Newspaperman Myron McCormick is killed while investigating a complicated racket involving labor unions, so his buddy, ADA Franchot Tone, starts investigating. The governor wants to appoint a special prosecutor, and support for him comes from three sources: his boss, District Attorney Walter Vaughn; politically connected Winifred Lenihan, and Marc Lawrence, a strange character first spotted handing out a thousand dollars. He likes to help people. The thing is, they all know about the others and warn Tone about them.

The most interesting thing about the movie -- besides cameos and uncredited extras for Henry Fonda, Betty Blythe, Marlene Dietrich and John Garfield (it was shot in New York and Tone used his connections to get his stage and screen buddies in) -- is the sometimes absurdly subjective camerawork by Don Malkames. One of the roots of noir is the German expressionist camera, and after about a third of the way into the movie, I got the impression that it was all point-of-view shots, and the watcher was not the audience, but the actual murderer.

The movie is sometimes too free with the tough-hero tropes for someone like Tone, who was a fine actor, but who always gives me the impression he's not really thinking about what he's doing at the moment. Still, it's an impressive noir with a nicely murky plot and something a bit different in the camerawork. I was very pleased to have seen it.
  • boblipton
  • 24 dic 2018
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3/10

"You're a special something or other, aren't you?"

  • classicsoncall
  • 11 jul 2010
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Crudely directed and edited political curiosity

This little, low-budget noir mystery is marred by crude direction, cutting, and editing, reminiscent of and no more polished than most live television productions of the same period, and hampered by a heavy handed political script that leaves huge gaps in plot logic.

Its chief interest is as a rare curiosity. Its paranoid politics and style mirror the anti-Communist films of the period, but it was made by a group of primarily liberal and leftist New Yorkers (exemplified by the famous actors who contributed cameo appearances), who turned the usual premise on its head. Franchot Tone plays a liberal crusading "special prosecutor" who investigates a shadowy secret organization that is menacing and killing its own members, whom they think may expose them. But this organization isn't Communist or leftist; rather it's a vaguely racist group that is really just a financial scam, run only to collect membership dues and gather other profits. As a result, even the political statement turns out to be rather weak compared with films of the period that explicitly opposed discrimination, such as "Pinky," "Gentlemen's Agreement," "Crossfire," "Lost Boundaries," "No Way Out," and so on.
  • gimhoff
  • 5 jul 2004
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6/10

Effective Minor Noir

This is an effective minor film noir with some good acting and sharp dialog. Although the quality of the print (Classic Film Noir, Volume 2) and sound track is inferior, the cinematography is good with plenty of well-composed shots. The movie is flawed by clumsy direction and uneven editing but there are many scenes where everything comes together nicely and flows smoothly.

Franchot Tone's suave performance as a special prosecutor is convincing and is supported by a good cast. The rambling convoluted plot about his investigation of a commercial Neo-Nazi "hate-group" business is important social commentary that elevates the movie above the typical crime dramas of that era.

Not a great movie but one with redeeming features.
  • ZenVortex
  • 14 sep 2008
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6/10

Decent

  • arfdawg-1
  • 29 ene 2014
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5/10

strange and confusing

Franchot Tone stars with then-wife Jean Wallace in "Jigsaw" from 1949. It's a B movie with lots of cameos from stars, I guess who were friends of the director, Fletcher Markle, or friends with someone: John Garfield, Henry Fonda, Marlene Dietrich, Marsha Hunt, Burgess Meredith, Everett Sloan, and Brenda Frazier, in roles like a bartender, a waiter, a nightclub singer, etc.

This is a real mess of a movie despite the cast. The DA (Walter Vaughn) thinks the death of a print shop owner was suicide, but the ADA (Tone) believes it was murder, connected to an extremist group, "The Crusaders." I think they were supposed to be Communists.

Then a journalist who has attacked the group is killed, and Malloy becomes certain The Crusaders are behind it. Investigating, he meets a strange political boss and an attractive singer (Wallace). Either they can help him or are part of a cover up.

I really couldn't figure out if this group was really subversive or just a money-making scam; the script kind of waffled between the two. The only reason to see this is for the cameos and the cast, although in my opinion, Jean Wallace couldn't act her way out of a phone booth.

At the time of this film she was recently divorced from Tone and would later marry Cornell Wilde. Tone would go on to become involved with starlet Barbara Payton, whose boyfriend Tom Neal would put him in the hospital. In a way, these people's real-life stories are more interesting than this movie.
  • blanche-2
  • 6 ago 2016
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6/10

A little weak and outdated approach on radical and their influence

(1949) Jigsaw CRIME THRILLER

Co-written and directed by Fletcher Markle that opens with someone of a print shop is murdered, and it is concocted to make it look like a suicide. Howard Malloy (Franchot Tone) who works as an assistant DA office is then seen discussing the case with his superior, Frank Walker since his future brother in law, Charles Riggs (Myron McCormick) happens to be a columnist who claims on his column that the so-called suicide is actually cold blooded murder. At first, Howard does not do anything until something happened to Charlie with both him and Charlie's sister, Caroline Riggs (Betty Harper) that it has something to do with his reporting regarding a group called "The Crusaders".

Some of the inconsistencies is when Howard prevented the same kind of beating from the same guy who may have beat Charlie to death using brass knuckles, the obvious thing for him to do was bring those brass knuckles to have them analyzed for DNA, he did neither other than to bring them with him to show them to Angelo Agostini aka "The Angel". The political influence regarding right wing groups is nothing new, but it had an opportunity to go deeper than that and it doesn't. And yet the irony is that it is still better than many of movies coming out of Netflix as majority of their own films are inconsistent and nonsensical.
  • jordondave-28085
  • 29 dic 2024
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4/10

Deserves an 'A' for Effort

A melodrama about intrepid Assistant D.A. Franchot Tone breaking up a racist 'hate' group called 'The Crusaders'; 'Jigsaw' on paper resembles a rather bold US independent equivalent to Costa-Gavras's Oscar-winning political thriller 'Z' (1969). It also rather recalls Hitchcock's wartime anti-Nazi thriller 'Saboteur' (1942), even down to a memorably sinister cocktail party peopled with wealthy and well-connected reactionaries; plenty of the talk about racism and bigotry still sounds disturbingly topical today. Having made such a bold attack on the far right in their maiden production at the very moment that Hollywood's attention was turning full-time to The Red Menace, it's hardly surprising that the film's producers, the Danziger Brothers, relocated to Britain in 1952.

Unfortunately, even though plenty of people get shot, once the shock of the film's crusading politics wears off, the whole thing proves disappointingly diffuse and uninvolving. Don Malkames provides plenty of good noirish photography (concluding with a splendid nighttime shootout in a museum), but first-time director Fletcher Markle (whose best-known directing credit was to be the Disney adventure 'The Incredible Journey' in 1963) is too often plainly trying too hard.

A final credit at the end informs us that it "was filmed with the obvious good will of many famous stars", which explains the bewildering cameo appearances by several Hollywood liberals of the period (two of whom - John Garfield and Marsha Hunt - were later actually blacklisted); Marlene Dietrich, exits a scene set in a nightclub called - what else? - 'The Blue Angel' just as Henry Fonda walks into the same shot playing a waiter. These star cameos ironically vie for attention with a regular cast comprised almost entirely of then unknowns presumably recruited from radio and Broadway, including vivid contributions from Myron McCormick, Marc Lawrence, Doe Avedon (making a charming debut under the name 'Betty Harper), Winifred Lenihan, Walter Vaughan (Robert's father, playing the D.A.) and Robert Gist (later a TV director, including 'Star Trek').
  • richardchatten
  • 8 sep 2017
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3/10

Confusing storyline but worth watching for the uncredited cameos

Other reviews posted here have discussed this storyline in great detail. If you choose to watch this movie, you will say "Hey, wasn't that.....?" at least 4 times as some major stars from the period have ultra brief face time and speak only 1 liners. For me, the most confusing part of the storyline is when F. Tone tells his DA boss in the beginning of the movie that the bulldog reporter Charlie Riggs is about to become his brother-in-law. After Charlie dies , F. Tone is seen many times hugging and lip kissing Charlie's widow, Caroline Riggs,who by earlier script association is supposed to be his sister!!! Huh?? Also, some scenes are filmed way to dark, and combined with the age of the actual print, may be hard to see on your TV.
  • itsruss
  • 21 jul 2010
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8/10

reappraised

  • Cristi_Ciopron
  • 22 jun 2016
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2/10

Feels Like A Soap Opera

WOW! What a horrible film - now I understand the negative reviews on this one. Yes it's terrible and has a feeling of a bad soap opera instead of a decent film noir or mystery.

Cameos by Marlene Dietrich, Henry Fonda and Burgess Meredith - who cares, you only see them for 2 or 3 seconds! It's not worth your time to watch this terrible film just to see the 3 of them for a couple of seconds in the background. You are much better off watching one of their films instead of this soap opera garbage for cameos.

I'm sorry but this film is confusing and just overall dumb - no real direction or story. The cinematography and acting are that of a child instead of great or even slightly good.

This is one of the most boring and lamest films I've seen in awhile. It gets a big 2 out of 10 ONLY for the cameos.

2/10
  • Tera-Jones
  • 3 sep 2016
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Backing Away from Controversy

An odd little indie production. It's like the producers don't have the courage of their convictions, resulting in a muddled storyline, as others point out. The aim apparently is to warn viewers about the appeal of rightwing movements during the McCarthyite post-war period. The warning could be understood as a logical reaction to the anti- communist hysteria then gaining strength, particularly in Hollywood. The trouble is the message gets muddled by making the appeal ultimately a scam engineered by criminal elements. Thus the tricky political aspect is overshadowed by the less controversial element of criminality. I suspect a clearer message was expected by the cameo appearances of such principled liberals as Fonda and Hunt, plus a committed lefty like Garfield. So, my suspicion is the movie-makers backed off at the last minute with a hastily revised and ultimately muddled script, rather than risk going against popular currents of the day.

The movie itself is only mildly interesting. The elegant party scene with Tone's revealing voice-over is both novel and perhaps a highpoint. Director Markel shows some imagination with well- timed close-ups, while Tone delivers a nicely modulated performance, perhaps at times too modulated. Stealing the film, however, is unknown actress Winifred Lenihan as dowager schemer Mrs. Hartley, a premier mix of charm and menace. Overall, the movie remains something of an obscure curiosity, perhaps illustrative of the quandary liberals found themselves in during a vexed period in the nation's history.
  • dougdoepke
  • 6 dic 2015
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3/10

rather boring anti-commie suspenser

Franchot Tone is an up-and-coming prosecutor hot on the trail of a shadowy organization called the Crusaders. The acting is pretty good, but the relentless patriotic claptrap makes for a boring diatribe, especially since there's never really much clarity about what the Crusaders are doing and how or why they have political power. And the weird voice-overs and other occasional directorial clumsiness make for difficult viewing.

For those in doubt, this is not film noir. ***Spoiler*** The main character is not disaffected or an outsider in any way. He is never seduced by the shadowy "Crusader" organization that puts him in a position of power (for no apparent reason). He does gets seduced by the femme fatale, but it doesn't even cause him to lose his fiancée. We have a feeling things are going to go bad all along, but the hero isn't under constant pursuit. Those things all make it a suspenser, not a thriller and certainly not film noir.
  • djensen1
  • 12 mar 2005
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