Il club del diavolo

After a young man supposedly commits suicide after leaving a nightclub in New York, a rural lawyer named "Lynn Hollister" (John Wayne) travels from the same hometown as the victim and goes to the Big Apple to investigate. When he gets there he finds that clues leading to the truth are hard to come by and eventually they lead to a corrupt politician named "Tom Cameron" (Edward Ellis) who knows more than he admits. But rather than simply give up he decides to continue his investigation with the help of the politician's daughter "Sabra Cameron" (Frances Dee). What he doesn't know is that Sabra may not have the same intention of finding the killer as he does. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a typical John Wayne film which benefited from a good plot and a decent script. I was especially impressed with the scenes involving the nightclub called "the Inferno" which could have easily come from a movie filmed 20 or 30 years later. On the other hand, the one thing I didn't care for was the rather jumbled ending which I thought should have been more fully developed. Likewise, I would have preferred a bit more drama as well. Even so, it was a fairly decent movie for the most part and I have rated it accordingly. Average.

This John Wayne film is rarely seen and I was surprised to see it being aired on a local TV channel. Since I've seen just above all of Wayne's AVAILABLE films, I was excited to see this film. While it wasn't bad, it also was underwhelming since, at heart, it was just a cheap B- movie made just before John Wayne became a super-star.

When the film begins, a man is murdered. However, it's all quickly chalked up to suicide and it's all swept under the rug. What they didn't anticipate was that the dead guy had a bull-headed friend, Lynn (John Wayne) and he was intent on getting to the bottom of things. At first, the local political boss is able to make Wayne believe that there was no conspiracy and the man died of natural causes. Besides, the man's daughter, Sabra (Frances Dee) was cute and Lynn was obviously very taken with her. But, over time, Lynn starts to realize that there is more than meets the eye to all this...the local 'Progressive Party' is anything but! What's next? See the film.

This film is pretty much like most Bs--hastily written, full of plot problems and yet is entertaining. It's also featuring John Wayne as a caveman, of sorts--the sort of role folks liked back in the 40s but which will annoy many viewers with today's sensibilities. A film mostly for big-time Wayne fans and that's all--especially with the really, really dumb ending where the ultra-bad guy suddenly changes his spots!

One wonders how the script came to be written.

Wayne and the other performers do an OK job but as it is neither comedy, romantic thriller or anything else it is all rather disappointing.

One feels as if one of the threads had been pursued it could have been something worthwhile. It is nonetheless interesting to see a real turkey of a story made just before the USA became directly involved with the war. I wonder if the surrounding politics had something to do with trying to make a movie for all tastes but ending up with something that pleases no one.

Nonetheless it has historical value.

Lynn Hollister, a small-town lawyer, travels to the nearby big city on business connected with the death of his friend Johnny. (Yes, Lynn is a man despite the feminine-sounding Christian name. Were the scriptwriters trying to make a snide reference to the fact that John Wayne's birth name was "Marion"?) Hollister at first believes Johnny's death to have been an accident, but soon realises that Johnny was murdered. Further investigations reveal a web of corruption, criminality and election rigging connected to Boss Cameron, the leading light in city 's political machine.

That sounds like the plot of a gritty crime thriller, possibly made in the film noir style which was starting to become popular in 1941. It isn't. "A Man Betrayed", despite its theme, is more like a light romantic comedy than a crime drama. Hollister falls in love with Cameron's attractive daughter Sabra, and the film then concentrates as much on their resulting romance as on the suspense elements.

This film might just have worked if it had been made as a straightforward serious drama. One reviewer states that John Wayne is not at all believable as a lawyer, but he couldn't play a cowboy in every movie, and a tough crusading lawyer taking on the forces of organised crime would probably have been well within his compass. Where I do agree with that reviewer is when he says that Wayne was no Cary Grant impersonator. Romantic comedy just wasn't up his street. One of the weaknesses of the studio system is that actors could be required to play any part their bosses demanded of them, regardless of whether it was up their street or not, and as Wayne was one of the few major stars working for Republic Pictures they doubtless wanted to get as much mileage out of him as they could.

That said, not even Cary Grant himself could have made "A Man Betrayed" work as a comedy. That's not a reflection on his comic talents; it's a reflection on the total lack of amusing material in this film. I doubt if anyone, no matter how well developed their sense of humour might be, could find anything to laugh at in it. The film's light-hearted tone doesn't make it a successful comedy; it just prevents it from being taken seriously as anything else. This is one of those films that are neither fish nor flesh nor fowl nor good red herring. 3/10

I enjoyed watching this movie, but there is no use pretending that it has any particular merit. It is interesting to watch early John Wayne movies where he is not playing a cowboy and not fiddling with his revolver. The female lead, Frances Dee, was very interesting to watch, lively and attractive. She reminds me of Geena Davis when young as in EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY (1988, see my review). She stopped acting in 1954, aged 55, and had made 56 films by then. The story of this film is so unconvincing and implausible that it is not even worthwhile attempting to describe it. It is nonsense from beginning to end. The Hungarian émigré director John H. Auer directed the film. It is both easy to watch and easy to forget.