La ruelle du péché

IT HAS LONG been said that there is no such thing as strict fiction. The premise being that all writers are influenced by actual happenings involving real people, either by choice or subconsciously. Having just recently screened GLORY ALLEY years after seeing on the nightly TV movie series, we must say that it flies in the face of that adage.

THE FILM APPEARS to have been assembled using bits and pieces of other genres from previous periods in Hollywood history. Director Raoul Walsh, himself being if not exactly a sort of living anachronism, was a sort of living, breathing history of the film industry. His own career had begun in the Silents, but before the cameras as actor. (He famously portrayed John Wilkes Booth in D.W. Griffith's BIRTH OF A NATION.)*

SO, CALLING ON his many experience as actor and director to bring us a story that was both similar and yet unlike anything else. The story exists both in a period of time (Post World War II New Orleans, Louisiana) and yet is timeless. Its reference and involvement with the Korean War could just as easily have been World War II. This leads us to believe that the story had been around, sitting on the shelves, gathering dust before it finally got made.

IN MANY RESPECTS the production looks like a comic strip or comic book display of "sequential art". The manner in which the characters, both main and supporting, are made to fit neatly into conformity of their particular pigeon holes. The Judge, Pig and Shadow Johnson (Louis Armstrong) are all prime examples.

AND IN SPEAKING of the cast, we found it to be both well constructed , if just a trifle far ranging. Leslie Caron finds her way into a most unusual portrayal of a potentially gifted ballerina's being forced to perform in dance halls. Louis Armstrong does a fine job of being general purpose good guy and servant. His duties range from boxing corner man, musician and valet to the Judge.

IT IS PERHAPS the one role, odd as it may seem, to showcase the talents of Ralph Meeker as main character, Socks Barbarossa. Being a very complex man with great wisdom and many other eclectic talents. Making the hero a denizen of the gutter (Glory Alley) just adds to the drama.

WE MUST MENTION the role of narrator, retiring newspaper man, Gabr Jordan (John McIntyre), who adds a touch of authenticity to this convoluted, meandering, hybrid of a story.

WE ALSO MUST posit the question: Did John McIntyre ever look young or portray a younger type? NOTE: * As director Raoul Walsh had compiled a tremendous number of very memorable pictures, largely at Warner Brothers. They include: WHITE HEAT, GENTLEMAN JIM, THED STRTAWBERRY BLONDE, HIGH SIERRA, THE ROARING 20's,.......................

While this is no great film, it isn't quite as awful as others have suggested here. To be so extreme as to presume to know what MGM executives thought of genre films at other studios is only total guesswork based on no evidence whatsoever. This is not strictly a "film noir" and really a mishmash of several Hollywood genres, but it does feature some fine actors and a well-played appearance by Louis Armstrong, who always maintained a positive attitude toward roles which were not the most flattering but still helped preserve his mighty presence for posterity.

This film starts out as Gabe Jordan, a New Orleans columnist, prepares to retire, and talks about all of the interesting people in New Orleans that he has written about over the years. But he settles on one person of interest that sticks out prominently in his mind - Socks Barbarosa (Ralph Meeker). Now the name is interesting enough as he neither wears socks differently from anybody else, nor does he have a red beard, but I digress.

So the story of Socks is the plot, and oh what a tangled mess it is. First, Socks is supposed to be heading for the championship in the ring, but one night he just runs away before the fight even starts. He says he is quitting, and will not say why. This is apparently enough for his blind backer, the Judge (Kurt Kasnar), to turn from friend to enemy. Every time he sees the guy he practically hisses and spits on him Come to think of it, I think he does spit on him. Socks is in love with Angie, the Judge's daughter (Leslie Caron), and she wisely postpones their wedding because married women can't work burlesque, which is what she has been doing and Socks is not trained to do anything but fight.

So Socks hits the skids for awhile, drinking his troubles away, and then joins the army and goes to Korea where he wins the Congressional medal of honor. He comes back, feted by military brass and the political elite of New Orleans, but after awhile he is forgotten again. So he picks up where he left off before Korea, whining endlessly about how bad he has it. I think he was going for the Frank Sinatra, "I'd-have-no-luck-if-it-wasn't-bad" vibe, but Meeker just plays this like a 20-something that never grew up. He lacks Sinatra's ability to project an interesting melancholy mystique.

I'll let you see how this film meanders to its confusing conclusion. It is probably worth a look for a few reasons that have nothing to do with the main character or the plot. For one you have musical interludes featuring the musical talent of the great Louis Armstrong and the dancing of Leslie Caron who does the best she can with a part in which she is completely miscast. Also, the film does have great atmosphere. You feel like you are on the gritty rain soaked streets of New Orleans back before it became riddled with crime and was just full of characters. You can almost hear Marlon Brando tear his tee shirt while crying "Stella!" somewhere out there in the French quarter.

Thus it's a 50/50 proposition as to whether it is worth your time.

Would-be 'hard-bitten' product from MGM suffers from too many disparate ingredients. A retiring newspaperman in New Orleans reflects on his best subject: a prize-fighter named Socks (!) who infamously deserted a boxing match at the eleventh hour; after stints as both a huckster and a soldier in the Korean War, he makes a celebrated comeback. This may be revered director Raoul Walsh's worst film--but really, no director could segue smoothly between these slabs of superficial melodrama (including a fighter with neuroses, his ballet-dancing girlfriend, her blind father the Judge, and a jazz-singing, trumpet-playing member of the troupe). As an early vehicle for Ralph Meeker and Leslie Caron, it's a wash-out; neither star is shown to a good advantage, although Caron's jerky choreography is an odd hoot and Meeker does look great in boxing gloves. Louis Armstrong's final musical number in a barroom is rousing--and his general good will is infectious--yet the music, the milieu, and the material never quite come together. * from ****

Rarely have I seen such uniformly bad reviews for a studio production with name stars as this one. No need to repeat many of the negative points already made. I am curious, nonetheless, how such a misfire not only got released but also how it got made in the first place. Director Raoul Walsh was one of Hollywood's most respected filmmakers, and deservedly so. Yet his direction of Meeker suggests that neither of them had a clear concept of the character of Socks who comes across like a grinning doofus instead of a tough-guy boxer (compare with Meeker's genuine tough guy in Kiss Me Deadly). In fact, Walsh's direction really comes alive only during the crowd scenes which do show some sparkle. My guess is he took one look at the screenplay and went for the payday. And who was it, I wonder, who gave final approval to a script (Art Cohn) that has all the coherence and plausibility of an Ed Wood creation. To me, the movie has too many earmarks of a rush-job that ended up doing nobody any favors. Cable should do viewers a favor and give this sorry concoction a belated burial, decent or otherwise.