Tu eres mi vida

Joe Miracle (Glenn Ford) is a World War 2 veteran who returns back home only to find out that his nightclub has been taken over by gangsters. So Joe decides he has no choice but to rob his own casino then run for the hills to avoid the gangsters coming after him. Joe may have had a plan to take the money and run until a pretty advocate of the down-trodden named Jenny Jones (Evelyn Keyes) arranges to spring Joe out of jail on the condition he stay at her halfway house with the other unfortunate souls.

It is Christmas time and very quickly Joe realizes that the plight of the families and single men living in the shelter are worse off than he ever envisioned. As it is the Christmas season, and Joe is quickly attracted to the shelters Manager, Miss Jenny Jones, Joe's plans for a quick getaway by himself changes and his conscience gets the better of him which is why he has been nicknamed Joe Miracle.

The movie title does not provide the audience any inkling that this is a Christmas themed film, but make no mistake it is a FEEL GOOD Christmas themed film that is worth watching more than once.

I give the film a decent 7 out of 10 IMDb rating.

The credentials for a superb Noir are all there: Glenn Ford has been one of the most convincing (and still strangely unsung) anti-heroes American cinema has produced. The wonderful opening sequence (in which Ford escapes both the police and the mob) is as minimalistic ally brilliant as the seemingly tight budget would have allowed. Yet after only a short while the film's tone changes radically: sweeter music, romantic comedy and a (however underplayed) Christmas tear-jerker emerge from what promised to be a crisp, economic little masterpiece.

I'm not saying the uneven pacing ruin the film completely but my suspicion is, looking at the credits (no, I don't mean the cast which features a wonderfully noir-ish array of characters: Evelyn Keyes, John Ireland, Ted de Corsia) there are TWO directors (one made good noirs with Ford, the other made Rat Pack flicks with Sinatra, Davis Jr, Martin et al), TWO directors of photography...

For what it's worth my guess is the producer got cold feet and hired a second director to save (a lame comedy? a routine noir?) a product he wasn't very happy with. He probably made a mistake...

Nightclub owner Joe returns from WWII only to learn gangsters have taken over his business and killed his partner. Being a tough guy himself, he gets the money back, but now needs to hightail out of the country. But before his ship sails, he's thrust into a neighborhood settlement house, whose winsome supervisor tempts him with a different kind of life.

Oddball Xmas film, sort of like gangster noir meets Xmas spirit. I'm surmising it's holiday fare since Santa and the spirit of giving amount to the subtext. Plus, "Miracle" is Joe's (Ford) last name— no guess work there. Nonetheless, the tough guy overlay is heavy and darkly photographed. And catch that ending—certainly not what I expected as noir triumphs. Then too, just count actor Ford's number of smiles, or leading lady Keyes'. It's more like dour Xmas than the merry kind. Still, I kind of enjoyed the overall result. Maybe because it manages to convey a spirit of giving without rubbing our nose in it. After all, Joe's more interested in keeping the hundred-grand than doling it out to the needy. Good thing the kids are there to ease his greed.

Still, the movie's pretty uneven. The gangster part sort of drops in and out. I get the feeling no one in production had a clear concept of the desired result. Overall, the parts may not fit well, but they are lively, never dragging. Still, it's an interesting little film, but don't expect it to show up for holiday celebration, except maybe for fans of 40's noir.

Here is a strange movie. Depending on what part you are tuned into, you may be watching a gangster movie with vintage Depression-era wise-guy chatter, or a heart-touching true-meaning-of-Christmas film, or a comic variation on a "Crazy House"-type theme, featuring scenes with eccentric characters pontificating weirdly. Then I saw that there were two directors, so maybe that is why the film shifts so much.

Not that it is bad. On the contrary, "Mr. Soft Touch" is quite an entertaining movie, with a fast-paced script that barely ever pauses to catch its breath. The reason this film works for me is that Glenn Ford so easily slides from film-noir to romance to comedy and back and forth again. A very interesting role for Glenn, perhaps inadvertently given a chance here to show how versatile he could be.

Evelyn Keyes plays an interesting character as well. It is unusual for a film made in what was still the 1940's to feature a character who so openly refers to, and sometimes uses manipulatively, a handicap such as deafness; the references to the hearing aid may make a modern viewer a little uncomfortable.

The only character who seems out of place is John Irelands's crusading reporter. He wears a pair of dark-framed, "please don't hit me" glasses, which don't seem right for some reason. His character is perhaps a good guy, perhaps not; we never really find out, and in the end, neither we nor the directors seemed to care. Just not sure how he really fits in.

From a social standpoint, "Mr. Soft Touch" presents an up-close and intimate look at private charity in the days before the government took over that role. We get a chance to spend quality time with those caring souls who fought tirelessly against an endless shortage of money and supplies, and who believed that it was worth helping people, even if it was only one person at a time. No one in this movie whines about getting a check from the government.

The bottom line, then, is that you have a film that is part "Little Caesar", part "Its a Wonderful Life", part "Bowery Boys", and part "You Can't Take it with You". If you accept the genre-changes that occur haphazardly throughout the film as all part of the fun, then you can have yourself an enjoyable hour and a half in the company of "Mr. Soft Touch".

"Mr. Soft Touch" is an odd sort of film. It's like merging a film noir movie with a schmaltzy family film--and the results are far from great. Now I am not saying it's a bad picture--but it could have easily been a lot better--mostly because of its saccharine script.

The film begins with Glenn Ford on the run. It seems he held up a nightclub and stole $100,000. But was it exactly stealing? It seems that the club had belonged to Ford but while he was off fighting in the war, it was stolen out from under him. So, the money is just payback for what was rightfully his--at least in his mind. The problem is that the mobsters who now run the place are not about to let him get away with it...and Ford needs to get out of the country ASAP.

Now here is where it gets bizarre. His boat doesn't leave for a day so Ford tries to get himself locked up for the night--as he figures at least he'll be safe. But a do-gooder social worker feels sorry for him and gets the police to agree to release him to her program--something Ford really doesn't want. And, after a while, Ford's tough-guy persona is slowly eroded as he starts to think of others and care about the people in this Salvation Army-like setting. What's next? Well, it is predictable but a bit ridiculous--so watch it if you are really, really curious. I wouldn't.

Ford's character is a bizarre enigma. He's supposed to be tough and nasty--and he's good at that. But later, he's supposed to be a softy--and this just never range true. Nor, for that matter, did the script.