L'ange de la haine

JIGSAW (1949)

** 1/2 (out of four)

After his reporter friend is murdered, a D.A. goes off looking for the killers. Once again, the 1940's delivered all sorts of gems within the noir genre. This film here has quite a good reputation but I personally found it to be quite slow and boring in spots. The performances are all good but the director isn't able to get much out of the story and in the end nothing makes too much sense. Seeing stars like John Garfield and Henry Fonda is always great but their cameos add very little to the film.

Available on DVD through various PD companies.

This 1949 film is interesting on several accounts. First off the movie appears to have been shot primarily on location in New York in the late 1940s. It appears to be the Brooklyn Museum where the finale of the movie takes place.

Franchot Tone plays the lead detective, and Jean Wallace plays a nightclub performer. Tone and Wallace were married at the time of this film, and would make other films together. This is still a few years away from the 1951 love triangle between Franchot Tone, Barbara Payton and Tom Neal, in which Tone was beaten to a pulp by Neal. In the aftermath of that event, Jean Wallace stabbed herself in an unsuccessful suicide attempt. Her and Tone had two children and the public humiliation of Tone and Paytons affair pushed her over the edge. Wallace herself was arrested numerous times in the 50s for drunken behavior.

This film appears to be a social commentary on communism. Though communists are never mentioned, the secret organization bears all the marks of a communist party. Several actors in the film, as well as some who simply had walk ons appear in the film, perhaps as a way of showing how they feel about communism. John Garfield, Marsha Hunt, Marc Lawrence all who were publicly involved in the witch hunts that occured in the late 40s and early 50s appear in this film. Other stars who have minor roles include Burgess Meredith, Marlene Dietrich and Henry Fonda. In the nightclub scene, look in the background for debutante Brenda Frazier, a kind of Paris Hilton of her day.

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/

This picture tries hard to recommend itself and tries hard to be a good Noir. It really does. And I tried hard to like it and recommend it and give it a good rating. Honest. But it won't let you. The plot is too muddled and the Director is not good enough to put it over.

Granted, he had some good actors in Franchot Tone and Myron McCormick. He also had a love interest who was a knockout in Jean Wallace, but she was a chore as an actress - in a climactic scene she flops badly - but what a knockout, to borrow a '40's phrase.

Well, that's about it. Confusing plot and a tepid, preachy story. I stuck with it because it was pouring outside. I gave it a rating of 5, but I gave Jean Wallace a 10...aesthetically speaking.

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?!