Chicago Confidential

I'm really glad that crime movies of the B or lower grades are showing up. Hence the six stars. But this movie felt flat. It never drew me in.

It's one of those in which an unseen narrator tells us about the crime that was sweeping big cities and the police/government officials/fill in the blank who were wiping it out.

Brian Keith could be a fine noir hero but his performance feels uninspired. The movie boasts some great actresses of the tough-girl school. They too seem underused.

The narration is almost a self-parody. It is so stern and humorless it presages the announcer on "Laugh-in" and some later intentional funny movies.

I didn't buy this movie. Not sure why. But thanks for bringing it out of the vault, anyway. And keep 'em coming!

Chicago Confidential (1957)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Boring, low-budget crime drama about racketeers forcing their way into unions. In this case, a D.A. (Brian Keith) swears to bring them down by ends up locking away an innocent man (Dick Foran) and with the help of his girlfriend (Beverly Garland) they try to get the real killer. CHICAGO CONFIDENTIAL is trying hard to be dark, cool and serious but it pretty much fails on all three levels. To be honest though, this here really isn't any worse than the countless "B" crime pictures that were released around this time as they all feature the same limitations. Some of those are obviously the budget but I think a good director and cast can turn this into a benefit. That really doesn't happen here and what we're left with is just one clichéd scene after another and it all boils up to a climax that you'll see coming from a mile away. What made this film so hard to get through was the Dragnet-like voice overs that narrate the entire film. I always found this routine to be rather cheap and pathetic for a number of reasons but the biggest one is that it really tells the viewer that they're too stupid to understand what's going on. That's what happens the majority of the time but this film goes a step further by not even bothering to have the action in the film do anything and instead we're just told what should be happening with the narration. The plot of this film is so weak because it seems they didn't try to have anything happen in front of our eyes and instead we're told everything. Keith, Garland and Foran are fun to watch but even they can't save this film. Elisha Cook, Jr. plays a drunk who holds some key evidence.

The film shows the evils of unions, but it's no "On the Waterfront". It's more like a TV movie, probably because the film's director, Sydney Salkow, was busy making TV crime and western films at the time.

Dick Foran (the singing cowboy from the 30s) plays an honest Union President, and sexy Beverly Garland plays his girlfriend. Brian Keith gets top billing as an ambitious DA (this is his first starring role in a film) and there are plenty of competent character actors including Elisha Cook Jr. (the "gunsill" from Maltese Falcon), John Hamilton (Perry White from TV's Superman) and big Douglas Kennedy ("Steve Donovan, Western Marshall").

This isn't a terrible film, but when you think about what else came out in 1957 - "Bridge on the River Kwai", "Sayonara", "Three Faces of Eve", "Pal Joey", "Funny Face", "Witness for the Prosecution" - it's clearly weak.

A cast of familiar faces appear in Chicago Confidential, a 1957 B movie. The stars are Brian Keith, Beverly Garland, Dick Foran, Elisha Cook Jr., John Hamilton, and Phyllis Coates. The latter two stars were in the TV "Superman" in case you don't recognize their names.

The story is told with a narration, semidocumentary style. This type of film was popular for a time, but to me, it's very dry and too "Dragnet."

A union accountant who has been keeping two sets of books calls DA Jim Fremont (Keith) and announces he is bringing in proof that the mob has infiltrated the union and is stealing from it. As could have been predicted as he starts walking to the DA's house in the dark, briefcase and folders in hand, he doesn't make it.

The bad guys set up one of the good union guys, Artie Blaine (Foran) to take the fall for the murder, and they do a decent job of it, using a drunk (Elisha Cook, Jr.) who finds the murder weapon as a witness to go to the DA once they clean him up. Then they discredit Blaine's fiancée (Garland) on the witness stand. The noose tightens.

Fairly formulaic, with a couple of interesting things - one is an impressionist, and the other is the use of a machine that recognizes speech patterns.

I interviewed Beverly Garland some years ago, so I always try to watch her films. She was a vibrant, funny, wonderful lady with a million stories. It makes me sad that she's no longer with us, but at least we can enjoy her film and TV work. For me she's a bright spot in "Chicago Confidential."

The "Confidential" part was meant to piggy-back on the popular appeal of the lurid magazine of the same name, while the labor racketeering theme tied in with headline Congressional investigations of the day. However, despite the A-grade B-movie cast and some good script ideas, the movie plods along for some 73 minutes. It's a cheap-jack production all the way. What's needed to off-set the poor production values is some imagination, especially from uninspired director Sidney Salkow. A few daylight location shots, for example, would have helped relieve the succession of dreary studio sets. A stylish helmsman like Anthony Mann might have done something with the thick-ear material, but Salkow treats it as just another pay-day exercise. Too bad that Brian Keith's typical low-key style doesn't work here, coming across as merely wooden and lethargic. At the same time, cult figure Elisha Cook Jr. goes over the top as a wild-eyed drunk. Clearly, Salkow is no actor's director. But, you've got to hand it to that saucy little number Beverly Garland who treats her role with characteristic verve and dedication. Too bad, she wasn't in charge. My advice-- skip it, unless you're into ridiculous bar-girls who do nothing else but knock back whiskeys in typical strait-jacketed 50's fashion.