Dangerous to Know

Well, this film has a cast that is alright but it is not clear where the focus of the story is and you eventually realize it is about gang boss Akim Tamiroff (Recka) fancying Gail Patrick (Margaret). It takes a long time for this to develop into the film's main thrust. There are some gangster things going on and you just wait for the next seemingly random thing to happen. The ending makes no sense at all.

Tamiroff is a gangster musician who gets transported into his happy place whenever he hears certain classical pieces by famous composers. He even likes Procol Harum's "Whiter Shade of Pale" which he obsessively listens to at the beginning of the film. His lady assistant Anna May Wong (Lan Ying) has a strange role and because she looks Chinese, she is given some peculiar Chinese/Japanese sense of honour and code of behaviour that she follows through with. Why and why? She is wasted in this film.

I kept seeing ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair's face in Harvey Stephens (Easton) who plays the eager goody-goody bond salesman who is Patrick's boyfriend. This may have tainted my assessment of him as a grinning idiot.

This is about as good as a one hour B movie can get. While coming from the series of Paramount's Anna May Wong vehicles made in the late 30s, it rises above the straight formula nature of the vast majority of B movies with strong acting, various aspects of the art direction, and a final scene that is genuinely suspenseful. As usual, Wong visually dominates her scenes. The directing and editing play on that to the hilt.

For those into the subtle art of references slipped into the background, symbolism, use of numbers, etc, there is a lot to look for and see in this movie.

I don't know if this title refers to the Tamiroff character or to Anna May Wong. My vote would be for Wong, for we do not know what she will do after being dumped by Tamiroff. Tamiroff is surprising good in his role, and Wong is very good as well. Director Florey knows what he is doing in every scene, and gets the most out of his actors. The cinematography is atmospheric, and captures the feeling of the time period. A good film to catch late at night.

This is an old movie so if you don't like old black and white gangster movies you obviously won't get much out of this, especially since it is pretty much forgotten and not one of the famous or even better known ones of that genre. It's about a racketeer who tries to manipulate things so he can marry a wealthy family's daughter. It's a decent story with nice acting and enough twists and turns to keep things moving and interesting.

For me, this not a real, genuine, authentic film noir. A noir drama, yes, involving gangsters yes, but not a rough, tough crime drama as Robert Florey and Louis King used us to in the late thirties and early forties, starring Anthony Quinn, Lloyd Nolan, J Caroll Naish and Akim Tamiroff. Fast paced gangsters yarns for Paramount Pictures or Warner Bros. This one is excellent, but it is a romance, well acted and not long at all. Akim Tamiroff is awesome in a predictable scheme and character, and Tony Quinn as the stupid goon too. This is not my favourite, among the batch of those B movies directed by Bob Florey and Louis King, but it is good, saving a terrific twist, ironic ending.