The Crooked Way

One measure of The Crooked Way's obscurity may be that the only copy I could track down was subtitled – in Hebrew. That obscurity is puzzling, because the movie is, if not a superior, certainly an above-average entry in the noir cycle. It boasts John Payne as its star, but before Phil Karlson groomed him into an archetypal noir protagonist. What's more, none other than John Alton was cinematographer, casting his customary shadowy spell; while he doesn't scale the dark peaks he did in collaboration with Anthony Mann, he makes French-born director Robert Florey's film look very good – very ominous – indeed.

But The Crooked Way stays eclipsed by a movie of three years earlier eerily close in theme and milieu, Somewhere in the Night, starring John Hodiak. Hodiak and Payne both play amnesiac veterans trying to reconstruct their troubling pasts in journeys through the underbelly of Los Angeles.

In The Crooked Way, Payne, having won a Silver Star but lost his memory, gets discharged from a veterans' hospital and heads `home;' that he hails from L.A. is all he knows about himself. But at Union Station, two police detectives meet him, calling him Eddie Riccardi (so far as he knows, he's Eddie Rice). Five years earlier, as it turns out, Payne worked for mob boss Sonny Tufts, whom he set up then fled to the Army; he was married to Ellen Drew, also connected to the syndicate. Ultimately, Payne finds himself hounded by the police and beaten by the mob, then framed for murder. He's running for his life and out of people he's told he can rely on....

Payne, with his brooding eyes and impassive visage, makes a more convincing vet and victim than Hodiak, but, apart from that, the story gets told conventionally. That raspy-voiced gnome Percy Helton scuttles around as one of Tufts' eye-and-ear operatives, and Drew gets some tough moments in strapless gowns (though inevitably, when her character softens, she goes bland). Still, it's a solid noir that deserves rehabilitation – if for no other reason than that it preserves Alton's precious photography.

Decent, if unexceptional noir. Amnesiac ex-GI (Payne) exits VA hospital to pursue his real identity, which soon involves him in LA underworld. Real star here, as others point out, is photographer Alton, who provides the production with a strong visual edge. Too bad that neither the script nor the performances rise to that same visual level. Payne is workman-like as the afflicted vet trying to escape his old life and start a new one. However, there's nothing dramatically distinctive about his presence. Note too how deglamorized Drew is in her role as Nina, which is unusual for that kind of gangland role.

The real problem, however, as others also point out, is Sonny Tufts' impersonation of a tough guy mastermind. It's just not his natural disposition, and he lacks the acting range to successfully fake it. Instead, we get a series of near laughable facial distortions meant to prove his tough guy intent. On the other hand, in the right kind of nice guy role, e.g. Easy Living {1949}, Tufts could be quite effective. Too bad we don't get more of Percy Helton's raspy Petey. He lends just the right kind of character color the movie sorely needs.

Likely, the film is too low-key for its own good. Not even the abrupt killing of the cop registers the way it should. We simply observe without being made to feel. Anyway, the movie remains a visual treat in b&w, even though the dramatics fail to work up a level of edge or impact that could make the results memorable. A routine noir, at best.

Amnesia is not the most original plot gimmick in film. From "Random Harvest" and "Spellbound," from "36 Hours" to "Mirage," from "Memento" to "The Bourne Identity," characters have wrestled with memory loss and struggled to find out who they really were. World War II veteran Eddie Rice has a piece of shrapnel lodged in his brain that has caused his loss of memory, and, once released from the hospital, Eddie heads to Los Angeles, where he hopes to find people who knew him in the past. Handsome John Payne is Eddie, the man in search of his identity in "The Crooked Way," a brilliantly photographed, but otherwise routine film noir. Adapted from a radio play, the derivative plot utilizes voice over to convey Eddie's thoughts and depends on improbable coincidences to bring characters together. Needless to say, Eddie quickly runs into his past, and what he finds plunges him into a murky underworld of gangsters, gunfights, and murder.

With his dark brooding looks, Payne is credible in the undemanding role, and he has solid support from Ellen Drew, the forgotten wife with a new life; Sonny Tufts, a tough gangster boss with a long memory; and Rhys Williams, a policeman who digs into Eddie's criminal past. However, the lazy plot and solid cast are enhanced by John Alton's masterful black-and-white cinematography, which evokes Martin Lewis etchings in its use of light and shadow. Deep black hallways and streets lead to glaring white lights, the slats of Venetian blinds throw bars of shadow across faces, heads are silhouetted while speaking, the lettering on a plate glass window casts words across an office wall, characters are lit from below, white-hot hanging lamps illuminate gaming tables. Alton's outstanding work demands to be studied for its composition, lighting, and focus. Although Alton won an Oscar for his color work on "An American in Paris," his images on any number of film noir and especially this one should have garnered him numerous nominations and wins. Alton's cinematography defines the best in film noir.

While the "Crooked Way" is often cliched and predictable, a solid cast and especially John Alton's images lift the film to essential viewing. John Payne fans should also be pleased, as well as aficionados of amnesia movies. Evidently, loss of memory is more prevalent among characters in Hollywood movies than among the general populace.

The story, about a returning war veteran with amnesia discovering his criminal past, is remarkably similar to SOMEWHERE IN THE NIGHT from a few years earlier. Plotwise, it's not nearly as compelling as its predecessor. The amnesia angle really isn't exploited well and what's left is a rather uninteresting gangster story with bland characters. Decent performances from Payne, Tufts and Drew, but only Percy Helton really stands out. However, this has to be one the best-looking noirs out there, thanks once again to the talents of John Alton. Incredible shocks of bright light amidst deep shadows, unusual framing, dramatic angles, gritty locations... the entire picture is simply gorgeous, textbook noir. It's a shame that such impressive visuals aren't attached to a more engaging plot, but it's still a delight to behold.

The Crooked Way an independent production released by United Artists finds John Payne in the role of an amnesiac who makes his way to Los Angeles with a different name and no memories of what he did before the war injuries. He got a silver star for service, but that tells him nothing of his past before World War II.

It turns out that he was a gangster who doublecrossed a confederate played by Sonny Tufts who took a prison rap for a couple of years in which time Payne left Los Angeles. Payne also finds the woman he was married to, Ellen Drew who pretty much repudiates him and who he was and now is. Of course that changes over the course of the film.

This film was Payne's introduction to the noir genre and it's all right, though not as good as later films like Kansas City Confidential and The Boss. Payne's career paralleled that of Dick Powell who had given up musicals for noir and action films a bit earlier.

The real revelation in The Crooked Way was Sonny Tufts who at Paramount in the Forties played leads that exuded a kind of goofy charm to them. He was outstanding in his part as the villain of The Crooked Way. He might have overacted a bit, but the part did call for it. He should have reinvented himself with this film, but his career would be petering out gradually during the Fifties.

The story has things wrapping up just a tad too neatly for Payne in the end, still Payne definitely showed he had a career in noir with The Crooked Way.