Dollari che scottano

"Private Hell 36" (1954), directed by Don Siegel, is tough little film noir starring a reliable cast of familiar faces for film buffs: Ida Lupino, Steve Cochran, Dean Jagger, Dorothy Malone and Howard Duff.

The plot isn't anything particularly special: two cops (Cochran and Duff) decide to take thousands of dollars from the suitcase of a dead counterfeiter and hid it in a trailer park. But then Cochran starts suffering with his conscience… The opening scene is the best when Steve Cochran stumbles onto a drug store robbery late night. Burnett Guffey's agile camera surveys the action with a cool calm and helps put everything into perspective. The jazz soundtrack composed by Leith Stevens purrs along nicely, as does Don Siegel's direction, which is far from his finest hour but still holds the viewer interested in the events portrayed. The acting, on the main, is good, especially Ida Lupino as a singer cop Howard Duff falls fall. This isn't a shining example of the film noir genre but it passes the time pleasantly enough.

This taut, low-key and highly effective B-movie film noir was an early example of a style that director Don Siegel came to perfect in his later films. Although dealing with robbery and murder it's at its most effective in the small scenes of domesticity between the central characters, a crooked cop, his partner and the women they are both involved with and there are good performances from Steve Cochran, Howard Duff, Ida Lupino and Dorothy Malone in these roles. (Lupino co-wrote the movie with producer Collier Young). Excitement is generated from not knowing exactly which way the characters might go and from the degree of complexity that both the players and writers invest them with. The denouement is a bit of let-down, however, with things tidied up too quickly and too neatly. Still, it's a commendable effort.

Strolling home one night, Los Angeles police detective Steve Cochran interrupts a robbery in progress at a drugstore. He fatally shoots one of the perps and books the other. A marked $50 bill in the loot came from $300-grand robbery-homicide in New York. Cochran and his partner Howard Duff trace the bill back to the pharmacist, the bartender who passed it to him, and Ida Lupino, coat-check girl and part-time singer at the bar. She claims a drunk tipped her with it one night after she sang him `Smoke Gets In Your Eyes' five times; the cops don't quite believe her, but it doesn't matter. Cochran is falling for her, even though his cop's salary won't snare her the diamond bracelets she's after.

Over the next week, they drag her to a racetrack where more of the marked cash is being uttered, in hopes that she'll spot her tipsy tipper. When she does, Cochran and Duff go off in hot pursuit. The getaway car hurtles down an embankment, killing the driver but leaving cash blowing around the ravine. Cochran pockets about $80-grand and turns over the rest, leaving Duff angry but not angry enough to break the inviolable code: Never rat out your partner. Cochran makes Duff an unwilling accomplice by giving him a duplicate key to a rented trailer where he's stashed the money; it's parked in slip #36. But then Cochran gets a phone call from a stranger who claims the cash is his and wants to make a deal....

Opening with an initial burst of two brutal robberies, director Don Siegel then slackens the pace but not the tension; he moves the story forward through character rather than incident. The square-rigger Duff tries to dissolve his guilt in alcohol, to the distress of his wife (Dorothy Malone, in too skimpy a role); Cochran and Lupino seesaw up and down, back and forth in their more volatile liaison. The fifth major player, Dean Jagger, as the detectives' canny superior, senses that their story doesn't quite add up.

Written by Lupino and her ex-husband Collier Young, the movie departs from the usual formula by not making current spouse Duff Lupino's love interest; perhaps in consequence, Duff loses the cocky, ingratiating mien he often adopts, while Cochran runs off with the meatier role. Private Hell 36 stays lean and hard-edged (with help from cinematographer Burnett Guffey); it's among the better offerings from the latter years of the noir cycle.

Private Hell 36 is a tale of two Los Angeles PD cops who get an assignment to track down money from a big bank robbery which is being laundered at the pari-mutual window at Hollywood Park. Howard Duff is a responsible family man with wife Dorothy Malone and an infant daughter. He's got the financial responsibilities that any middle class individual from the Eisenhower 50s has.

His partner is Steve Cochran a brooding loner who feels he's not gotten his just due from the job. Their boss is Captain Dean Jagger who gives them that assignment.

That assignment also comes with trailing singer Ida Lupino who is the only one who can finger the right bettor. She does and when they give chase the perpetrator dies and they're left with a whole lot of money and maybe, just maybe they ought to keep it themselves.

I'm not sure how any of us would have handled the issue. The police however have some strict guidelines because they get tempted in these situations a lot more often than you or I would be. Cochran goes over the edge and he's taking Duff with him.

Some of these situations were handled a dozen years later in the Glenn Ford film The Money Trap where he and Ricardo Montalban found themselves tempted the same way. If you're familiar with that film you know how it comes out and probably a bit better for one of the detectives than in The Money Trap.

Don Siegel got good performances out of his ensemble cast. See this one back to back with The Money Trap if possible.

Strangely paced but generally effective film noir with clever echoes of Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment", about an unprincipled cop (Steve Cochran) who tries to get his honest partner (Howard Duff) to go along with making off with $80,000 in stolen loot.

Co-written by twitchy, slinky actress Ida Lupino, who gives herself a juicy part, it moves along in fits and starts but has a kind of wobbly, dizzy energy that exerts a certain pull. Sort of like an ice skater that trips up a couple times in the middle of her routine, but gamely sees it through to the end.

I've seen Steve Cochran now in three films ("Tomorrow is Another Day", and "I, Mobster" being the others) and it's clear that he was an actor in command of his craft. He had a very sly, sturdy appeal; he always seems to be laying back, calculating the odds, sizing up the other guy (or girl), figuring his chances. Watching his and Lupino's verbal chess match after they first meet and he is questioning her about what she knows, is pretty close to acting heaven.

It all leads up to a nifty, suitably stark finish, and an arresting closing shot.