Sables mouvants

One of the lesser-known treasures of classic film noir, this tough little chronicle of a hapless boy taken on a criminal joy ride by his own uncontrollable lusts succeeds partly because of the brick-house design of Cornell Woolrich's original story, partly because of its ingeniously chosen cast. Pairing the still fresh-faced Mickey Rooney with the creepily worn-looking Jeanne Cagney instantly suggests corruption; the subtext that the boy is just a pawn in a weird game being played between this nasty dame and her lover (Peter Lorre, looking one drink over the line) makes the spine crawl.

Quicksand is immediately at pains to establish that auto-mechanic Dan Brady (Mickey Rooney) is a *very* average guy, there's no monotone narrator to say, "Be careful or this may happen to you" but there might as well be. The first fifteen minutes or so drag along interminably through a lunch-counter and a mechanic shot before Dan "borrows" a twenty from the register to take a blonde out dancing, thus beginning a brief but intense criminal career.

Rooney is surprisingly convincing as the dissatisfied, and really quite dishonest, mechanic. He doesn't try anything cute, playing this role as straight as any I've ever seen out of him (admittedly not much), though his "inner monologue" narration rapidly wears out its welcome. Despite his being set up as an everyman character, I found him pleasingly sneaky, cowardly, and unlikeable.

The afore-mentioned blonde is Vera Novak (Jeanne Cagney). Brady has already been provided with a self-sacrificing brunette good girl that he's trying to get rid of, so right away you know that the only question you've got to answer about the blonde Vera is whether she's a broad, a dame, a floozie, or a hussy (turns out she's two of the four, but I'll let you find out which). Cagney is really only passable as the manipulative, materialistic, femme fatale.

Peter Lorre shows up, barely, as Nick, the crooked owner of a penny arcade where Vera once worked. Lorre and Rooney engage in some minor fisticuffs over Cagney (who must have been thinking that her brother could take them both with one hand tied behind his back).

After the tepid opening Quicksand actually does build up a decent head of steam as Dan Brady sinks deeper and deeper into the eponymous morass. It's clearly a written-to-order morality play but it moves quickly, punches hard enough to get the job done, and isn't entirely unbelievable. In the end melodrama beats film noir by a nose, or is it a couple furlongs? I couldn't help thinking Quicksand zigged when it should have zagged.

Wow. Mickey Rooney and Peter Lorre. Together. And with Jimmie from the Mickey Mouse Club *and* Jack Elam! I didn't know what to expect. In case you were wondering, Rooney proves he can act in the opening scenes. He's a car mechanic looking to get in good with the new waitress at the diner, but he's flat broke until tomorrow. "Danny" starts down a slippery slope by copping a few bucks from the till at work, then lets Vera (Jeanne Cagney) steer him wrong by way of a game arcade owned by her former employer, Nick (Lorre). Nick makes the creepiest possible arcade owner, and Vera pines darkly for a mink coat in a store window. These are not good people to fall in with.

While the film starts out pretty cleverly, the coincidences start to pile up fast and furious. Danny's little white theft festers into a mugging, grand theft auto, a burglary, and worse. The wrong people keep finding out too much about Danny's activities, and soon the cops are crawling all over him.

The acting is quite good, and the direction and pacing are clean. But the wild improbabilities that have piled up threaten to topple the whole house of cards, from the convenient witnesses to the convenient cops to the convenient car trouble. Remember: Danny is an auto mechanic. He can't keep his own car in running condition? Still, it's a treat to see Rooney in such desperate straits. For those looking for Raymond Chandler, tho, this isn't noir; it's still just melodrama.

If you have then this film is for you. Mickey Rooney plays a mechanic who wants to take a waitress out on a date but doesn't have enough cash to impress her with. He steals and then needs to commit more crimes and bigger crimes to cover his tracks. Finally his walk on the wildside ends in murder. But is the guy dead or just knocked out?

Without giving away the ending a similar film is Detour which had a lot of trouble with the censors for its own ending. In my opinion braving the censors gives Detour more punch. But Quicksand is still an enjoyable Film Noir and one of my favourite Mickey Rooney films. We see Rooney in too many musicals and family films. Quicksand gives him a dark side.

Good crime noir story with a highly energetic(what's new?) Mickey Rooney in the lead role. He also narrated the film and tied together well all loose ends. Great Santa Monica Pier chase scene at the end with a well conditioned Rooney doing all his own stunts. Top camera-work in B&W, with all the light and shadows of great noir. Peter Lorre was his terrific evil, slimy self in a small role, and Jimmy Cagney's sister Jeanne was stiffly effective as Rooney's self-centered girlfriend.

Not a wasted second in the action, and it moves along at breakneck speed as Rooney plays this 40s-50's typical noir morality tale of how criminals typically go from the first petty crime all the way to the worst crimes and finally end up in prison, but always have nice girls waiting for them when they get out.

Interesting to note that almost all his crimes were witnessed, and had the cops on him almost before he finished committing them. Not quite the case in the real world as "nobody sees anything" today and most crimes go unsolved. Don't you wish all crimes were so easily solved as in this film? It would be a very different world than the one we have.