Quicksand

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.

It is entirely true that Mickey Rooney was cast in many poor, meaningless films, and I include the entire Andy Hardy series in that category. However, he was cast with many good actors, and he learned his craft well. It's when you separate Mickey Rooney from Andy Hardy that you realize that he was a very good actor, despite the diminutive stature and the complete counterpoint to "good looks".

In "Quicksand", Rooney gives a solid, professional performance, aided by good writing and a fine supporting cast. Watching scenes with Rooney and Peter Lorre is a lesson in acting, for they both hold their ground and don't give an inch. Jean Cagney shows much of her big brother's creepy instigative powers as she puts Rooney through deeper and deeper trouble.

It's a good film, a "sleeper" and one to be seen and enjoyed.

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.

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 directed by Irving Pichel (The Most Dangerous Game/ Destination Moon) and written by Robert Smith. It stars Mickey Rooney, Jeanne Cagney, Barbara Bates & Peter Lorre. Lionel Lindon photographs it around Santa Monica, California, and Louis Gruenberg scores the music.

Auto mechanic Dan Brady (Rooney) fancies himself as a ladies man, so when he sets eyes on sultry looking blonde Vera Novak (Cagney), he just has to date her. Intending to put it back tomorrow, Dan borrows $20 from the till of the garage where he works, the money to be used for the date with Vera. However, with Vera comes baggage, not only in what she wants out of Dan, but in the form of her ex-boss Nick Dramoshag (Lorre), who has designs on Vera too. Pretty soon Dan finds that his life is getting out of control as he gets in deep with robbery and maybe even murder?.

Quicksand was received coldly back on its release, a generation of film goers had grown accustomed to Rooney lighting up the screen as Andy Hardy and turning in frothy performances in musicals. Here he goes against type, and the public wasn't ready for it, even tho he arguably gives one of his best career performances. As a film it's a very tight piece. The plot is in the classic noir tradition of having a male protagonist trapped in a downward spiral, no matter what he does, each decision he makes is a wrong one and only worsens his situation. That there's a blonde femme fatale (Cagney is sexy in a powerful way, with shifty glances telling so much) sat at his side as his life goes belly up; still further fuels the darker edges of the film noir feel. There's a devilishly bitter irony hanging over proceedings, too, that Dan could have escaped all this if he had not spurned the attentions of the more homely, but loyal, Helen (an adorable Bates). The film, and tone, is also boosted by Lorre turning in one of his sleazy sloth like performances, while a mention is warranted for Art Smith as Dan's boss, Oren Mackay, the kind of boss you could easily punch for fun.

We possibly could have done with some more noirish artistry from Lindon for his photography, but he does OK, with a parking lot/back alley pursuit well shot. While Gruenberg's score is right in tone, especially the theme tune piece, which has a distinctly Cape Fear edge to it. It would come as no surprise to me to find that Bernard Herrmann had watched and listened to Quicksand prior to scoring the Mitchum & Peck classic. Look out too for Red Nichols and His Five Pennies band during a club scene, it's a nice touch that adds a bit of period detail. Clocking in at nearly 80 minutes, Quicksand doesn't hang around, it's briskly paced and suspenseful into the bargain. Certainly it's minor film noir, but all things considered, it's one of the better B's from this most wonderful of genres. 7.5/10