Violence

There's a corruption plot here, and in almost every movie with a corruption plot, it is the dogooder politician behind the corruption. I'm not giving any secrets here. This movie is markedly different for some reason. My suspicion is they either ran out of film, money or time and had to wrap it up.

With peter whitney as the joker (no it's not set in gotham city) and sheldon leonard (no, he's not telling anyone which elevator or railroad train to take), the stage is set for a great reveal at the end of mr x's identity (no it's not elon musk or pierre watkin), but then the story just ends and michael o'shea goes off with the cute muckraking reporter. Also featured in here, as a doctor, was john (no he's not telling the copyboy don't call me chief) hamilton, a star on early tv. The most important thing in this movie is it prepared us for a corrupt, much bankrupted businessman to make a lot of noise about cleaning out the swamp, so to speak, while corrupting it himself.

VIOLENCE (1947) is an offbeat crime film about a Los Angeles veterans organization, United Defenders, which is a front for racketeers and murderers.

Entertaining Noir ... films coming out of Hollywood that would later be dubbed film noir by French critics (and 1947 was a prime year for film noir).

Violence is a B-movie programmer . The film is a curious melding of postwar angst, mob drama, and amnesia.

It's almost a little too much plot for a 72-minute film. It's interesting enough and I enjoyed it, yet one senses the movie could have been better if the film was a bit more coherent .

A vague chronicle of a group run by ex-cons attempting to fleece veterans who at the time the film was made were having a difficult time readjusting to postwar US society. Violence, a movie that attempts to cash in on the fears and the tumult of a country trying to get back to work, and hoping to recover from too many years of war and depression.

Nancy Coleman stars as photojournalist Ann Dwire using the alias of Ann Mason, working undercover as a secretary to the organization's boss True Dawson (Emory Parnell) who reminds me a little of tough guy thespian Broderick Crawford.

Adorable Nancy Coleman (1912-2000) stars as an undercover reporter looking into a veteran's organization that promotes violence. She was active in the 40s and then switched to TV.

Coleman (HER SISTER'S SECRET) is an interesting actress and makes the film worth watching she is very wholesome and charming. VIOLENCE (1947) It's a delightfully noirish and a very obscure 1940's film . Dispite not being a top tier noir I recommend this one ! It is of great interest as an expression of murky political turmoil in the early US Cold War years. 7/10.

Reporter Ann Dwire is undercover in a neo-fascist group as the secretary to the leader, True Dawson. They are recruiting disgruntled veterans returning from the war. She is ready to escape to report her findings to her Chicago newspaper but group member Fred Stalk is suspicious. Her cab is being pursued and ends up in a crash. She is left with amnesia and everything else burnt up in the fire. She recalls her fake identity Ann Mason. She returns to her fake job and speaking in support of the movement.

The premise is good but the execution is weak. There is good violent plot but it falters on execution. Lead actress Nancy Coleman is fine. It's mostly in the weak production and direction. I do like the general premise but this is not good.

Much of the team that made Monogram's Decoy of the year before such a startling little thriller re-upped for the same studio's Violence: Director Jack Bernhard, co-scripter Stanley Rubin, composer Edward J. Kay, heavy Sheldon Leonard (the second-string Raymond Burr, who, like Burr, would find his fortune in television). Lightning, alas, failed to strike twice, so Violence remains a typically flawed Poverty-Row production.

In the basement of the Los Angeles headquarters of the United Defenders – a pseudo-populist scam organization to fleece angry veterans – a young recruit who stumbled onto the truth meets his unpleasant end. (This crypto-Fascist group has affinities with The Black Legion of a decade earlier.) Upstairs, however, the forced cheeriness prevails, with the head of this personality cult (`True' Dawson, played by Emory Parnell) bidding his loyal secretary (Nancy Coleman) goodbye as she leaves for a vacation to Chicago. Little does he suspect that Coleman is an investigative reporter working undercover on an exposé of the racket, which will hit the streets as soon as she's safe in the Windy City. Leonard, one of his lieutenants, does have his suspicions about, as well as unresolved feelings for, Coleman, but can't find the evidence, so off she goes.

In Chicago en route to her magazine's offices, Coleman's cab crashes trying to elude a mysterious pursuer (Milo O'Shea). Hospitalized, Coleman wakes to find herself in a state of amnesia (of the trickiest sort: She remembers things that are convenient to advancing the story but forgets everything else). Back on the coast, she has no memory of her journalistic scoop and so thinks herself a loyal soldier for the United Defenders; she also believes she's engaged to O'Shea, because he told her so. And the plot lumbers on, with the murdered man's widow showing up to find him, and an all-powerful `Mr. X' looming darkly behind the whole operation....

Violence is riddled with holes and implausibilities (of the type that, in today's Hollywood, would all but guarantee a blockbuster). Rather transparently, it draws on themes and issues that sparked the early years of the noir cycle: The dissatisfaction of returning veterans and post-war labor strife (and might the demagogue's name `True' be an echo of then-president Harry S Truman's?). But the topical references prove no more than gimmicks for a quick-and-dirty production that has little coherence or resonance.

The film is about a group which calls itself "The United Defenders". It's a pseudo-political group that has very vague goals and agenda for achieving it apart from mob violence. The group is run by some cynical men with no real political beliefs...just the belief that they can lead stupid veterans into creating a fascist-like organization in order to make the leaders rich. Ann works for the group but really is a reporter there to get the dirt on this hateful group.

So far, I liked the film. However, when Ann heads to Chicago to meet with her publisher, the movie gets a bit dumb. She's in an accident and has amnesia!!! I hate the amnesia bit...it's way overused in films and would make sense if Ann suffered a massive head injury...which she didn't! No head bandage...no obvious trauma of any kind...just movie amnesia!!! Despite this bad plot device, the film did remain interesting...mostly because the villains (led by Sheldon Leonard) were enjoyable to watch. But at heart, the film misses the mark despite being quite entertaining at times.