Dark City

While the most notable aspect of this film on paper maybe that it features the debut starring role of Charlton Heston, it actually has a lot more going for it, being a better than average noir thriller. The morality-tale drama revolves around a seedy little story of three, practiced if hardly chummy card-sharps, one of whom is nightclub manager Heston, who set up a travelling innocent for a fall, tricking him in a crooked game out of the $5000 he's bearing for a good cause. However when the victim hangs himself the next day in remorse at his loss and shame, the trio don't reckon on the man's avenging brother who hits town and starts to take retribution against them one by one.

In a sub-plot, Heston is also being pursued, although this time more agreeably, by sultry nightclub singer Lizabeth Scott while another notable background character is a supposedly "punchy" ex-boxer played by M.A.S.H.'s Harry Morgan, who acts as Heston's loyal, good-natured sidekick, although there's not much evidence provided as to his actual slowness, indeed he's one of the better judges of character in the movie.

Director William Dieterle ratchets up the tension nicely as three become two becomes one and Heston's last man standing, now humanised somewhat by meeting and slightly improbably romancing the dead man's widow and befriending her orphaned child, awaits his turn at the massive hands of the revenging sibling wearing the big black ring. The dialogue is sharp, the characterisations credible and I also liked the "Casablanca"-type, although more uplifting, ending.

Besides capably employing staple noir devices like shadows, darkness and dread, the movie is notable for the excellent songs given to Scott to perform, the most famous of which is the evergreen "That Old Black Magic" but also featuring the superb torch-song "Letter From A Lady In Love".

Heston leads the cast in already recognisably commanding manner and Scott, Morgan, Ed Begley and especially Jack Webb, later of "Dragnet", bring their characters to life in his wake.

All in all, an effective lesser known noir well worth watching.

Heston does a marvelous job is in his first star turn. Jack Webb, Harry Morgan, and Ed Begley lend impeccable supporting work. Don De Fore is re-teamed with Lizabeth Scott for the first time since You Came Along. Scott (Dead Reckoning, Strange Love of Martha Ivers, I Walk Alone, Stolen Face) is one of my all-time favorite femme fatales. Dieterle's direction is fast-paced and interesting throughout. Unfortunately, the whole turns out to be less than the sum of its parts.

The problem is in the inconsistent and unimaginative script. It's really a pedestrian tale of revenge with a miscast Mike Mazurki -- not a true film noir as it is normally billed. The parade of musical interludes is annoying. The chemistry between Scott and Heston doesn't work. And, the ending is a real letdown.

Chalk this one up as a well-acted and well-directed misfire.

This film is crime noir since Danny Haley, its lead played admirably by Charlton Heston, in his first major Hollywood starring role is running an illegal bookie joint. The film, as no one else seems to have noticed, is about a man who because his British wife left him after the war and he is disillusioned by the military-industrial complex's fostering of postwar injustice, has taken up "hustling" instead of trying to play by the Establishment's rules. All throughout the movie, people keep blaming Danny for untrue things, his crime being in giving up on an increasingly corrupt postmodernist national government--i.e. neither being an altruistic Democrat nor an overworking Republican. In the film, Danny's place is raided by honest police officer Dean Jagger. The raid leaves Danny with no source of income. A stranger, Don DeFore, strikes up a conversation in Danny's hangout; he ends up in a poker game with Danny's bookie friends Soldier (Harry Morgan), Barney (Ed Begley Sr.) and Augie (Jack Webb). DeFore loses 5000 dollars in a crooked game, pays with a cashier's check and hangs himself in his hotel room that night--some of the money was not his...But, soon after, Barney is found hanged, and the rope was just put around his neck to make the crime look like a suicide. The jumpy, coward Augie and Danny figure that they are going to be the next targets, since they learn Arthur has a psychopathic brother, Sidney. They fly to Los Angeles to seek out the man's widow and get a photo of the brother. Soldier did not participate in the card game. He goes to work in a Vegas casino run by his old-time boxing friend Swede (Walter Sande). This intriguing setup is then turned toward Danny's life-altering meeting with Arthur's gorgeous widow (Viveca Lindfors). He has avoided making a commitment to Lizbeth Scott, a lounge singer who is very much in love with him. But seeing how determined the honest Lindfors is to make a life for her son, he decides to try to get enough money in Vegas to pay the widow back and pair with Scott. The kicker in the deal is the crazed Sidney is still hunting him and Augie as well. Cinematography is luminous B/W by Victor Milner, and the art direction by Franz Bachelin and Hans Dreier complements the great William Dieterle's direction effectively by my lights. Franz Waxman provided serviceable music, Sam Comer and Emile Kuri did complex set decorations; and the female participants looked lovely partly thanks to Edith Head's costumes.Larry Marcus' story "No Escape" has been adapted here by Ketti Frings, with John Meredyth Lucas. The script's episodic elements prevent this movie from being recognized for the fascinating character study it is. It is about what happens to those who for whatever reason stop trying to fight for life in the world of normative values, whoever the opponent, and who enter the world of the collective--crime--for whatever reason. In this story about Danny, the man who escapes the "dark city" he had thought to hide from life in, Charlton Heston is very good for his age. Jack Webb, a powerful radio actor, here turns in what I regard as his best screen performance ever as the nasty and cowardly Augie., Ed Begley Sr. was one of Hopllywood's best dramatic actors, infusing a small part in this feature with his usual dynamic intelligence; and Harry Morgan as the brassy "Soldier" is charismatic and effective. Viveca Lindfors is very well cast I suggest as the suffering but courageous wife; Don Defore was very good at playing a man shallower than he appeared, and here he has a lot to work with. This film is the first since Ayn Rand's "Love Letters" to reunite DeFore and Lizbeth Scott. Scott had limitations in drama although she was adept at comedy, and here she looks lovely as the singer, Fran. Others in the cast who showed to advantage included Dean Jagger, Walter Sande, Walter Burke, and many lesser known persons. Mike Mazurki was miscast as DeFore crazed brother but does his powerful best as usual. This is a very seminal-transitional film, I claim, from a period when noir films, crime or otherwise, had been set in the underworld, to the period where the breakdown of U.S. society had begun to affect law-abiding folk. It is also one of the post-war angst films wherein the war to "make the world safe for democracy" had been revealed as leading to difficulties for returning servicemen. It just misses being very good indeed.

A talky Paramount crime drama in the vein of 'The Asphalt Jungle', set in New York but shot in Hollywood, as dour as the youthful Charlton Heston in his first Hollywood vehicle. Surrounded by producer Hal Wallis with a first rate cast (including the two future stars of 'Dragnet') and delivered with routine excellence by the seasoned William Dieterle, with a glamorous but soulful female opposite number in the shapely form of sequin-gowned torch singer Lizabeth Scott (and stalked through much of the film by Mike Mazurki the way Mike Hammer was by Dr. Soberin in 'Kiss Me Deadly').

Dark City is likely most notable as being Chuck Heston's film debut. But it's also worth seeing for then-supporting actor Jack Webb (actually quite good) teaming with Harry Morgan, some 16 years before they'd pair up in the color reincarnation of Dragnet 1966. It's also significant in the script acknowledging the ugly possibilities of returning to post-WWII society (albeit without the impact of the vaguely similar theme of 1932's I Am A Fugitive Of a Chain Gain and WWI, or the more recent The Best Years of Our Lives). With the talent involved I'd expected a noir classic... but Dark City solidly misses the mark. What's wrong? I can name 3 things: The subplot involving grieving widow Viveca Lindfors is all wrong and slows the picture down to a crawl (and frankly it makes Heston look creepy in the pursuit of her--- without giving away why). The suspense of the mystery homicidally-inclined brother just isn't there. And I personally hated the lip sync'd intrusion of Lizbeth Scott's songs (I found myself saying "why weren't these whittled down in the editing room?"). Director William Dieterle's career was inexplicably on a slide by 1950 and his work here could best be described as yeoman-like. There's absolutely nothing wrong with any of the performances... it's just the script needed about 20 pages tossed and the musical numbers axed.