I ragni della metropoli

The opening and closing images of this movie, directed by Ted Tetzlaff, fall firmly in the tradition of evocative noir staging and shooting. Too bad the bulk of the movie falls far short of that promise. Victor Mature, an operative in a gambling syndicate bossed by duplicitous William Bendix, eludes a rap but finds himself about to be deported. Squeakily wholesome Terry Moore, who works expediting such cases, falls for Mature (she's the primary female presence in the film, which cries out for a darker, more ambiguous woman). For long stretches it's unclear whether the script is about the inequalities of the immigration laws or about the dangers of organized gambling. A much grittier treatment of the same subject, from the same era, is The Lady Gambles, starring the First Lady of Film Noir, Barbara Stanwyck.

Victor Mature is the protagonist here, an Italian-born American gangster with a long record of offenses, with several commitments to jail and so on but also with a good war record, getting involved with William Bendix as the chief gangster here in cases of murder. Standing trial he is shown not to be an American citizen, his father somehow neglected to get his family papers In order, so he is sentenced to be deported back to Italy, a country he has never seen, but the judge gives him a chance of proving himself to be a worthy American. There are a lot of interesting insights here into the immigration work, where Terry Moore appears as a leading benefactress guiding immigrants into the country, and the best scenes are with these stranded, humiliated exiles who have lost their country. It's a fascinating combination of social drama, noir, crime and documentary with Victor Mature excellent in his role, learning one final hard lesson.

As a previous commentator in this forum pointed out, this film has a very promising opening. One expects a tense and gritty film noir. However, the film soon drifts into a standard social drama about immigration laws and has little to do with crime or gambling until the end. With the excellent opening many people who watched this film were probably expecting something very different and were like me, disappointed.

It's oddly named because this movie really has nothing to do with a gambling house.

Gambler Marc Fury (Victor Mature) opens the film by staggering into his apartment, drops of blood marking his path, and collapsing on the floor after phoning a doc who will ask no questions. The doc patches him up while he tells what happened. He got caught in the crossfire between some guy and gambling house owner Joe Farrow (William Bendix), who actually shot the other guy dead.

Farrow makes a deal with Marc where Marc takes the blame for the killing, but pleads self defense, and in return Farrow will pay Mature $50,000 and provide Marc with his own attorney as counsel. Marc is cleared, but Farrow has no intention - or ability for that matter - of paying Marc the money. So he tips off the feds to something that even Marc doesn't know - Marc's Italian parents were never naturalized and thus Marc, born in Italy but brought to America as a toddler, is not a citizen. This makes him eligible for deportation. As a guy with a long criminal record, it doesn't look good for him.

This sends the movie into another direction entirely which detracts from the original noir flavor, but still is rather interesting - the plight of immigrants from recently war-torn Europe, how people take advantage, and the people here in America who help them, and in particular one attractive social worker and immigrant aide (Terry Moore) that brings up a romantic angle between two very unlikely people - herself and Marc. The deportation angle also allows hardened cynical Marc to realize what being an American means to him.

I ended up liking this more than I thought I would for lots of reasons - Mature tends to be a ham actor, the obvious age difference between Moore and Mature, and the immigrants shown being depicted as just too wide-eyed and naive for me to buy into it. And yet it works. I'd mildly recommend it, just realize this is not your proto-typical noir of the era.

Victor Mature was a tough and solid leading man hero in many films, but in Gambling House he lets William Bendix make a chump out of him. In fact he gets into a real jackpot with the Immigration authorities.

This story hit home with me because I knew someone who was in just such a bind as Mature was in this film. He was born in Canada of Puerto Rican parents and he was undocumented until he was an adult. For him it was cumbersome process to get citizenship and he was ill equipped to deal with it. But that's another story.

The story of Charles 'Lucky' Luciano was in everyone's mind back then so the story here resonated with the American audiences. Luciano got himself deported to Italy as did a few other foreign born gangsters back then. This was no idle threat.

Mature takes a murder rap for Bendix and pleads self defense and Bendix agrees to a $50,000.00 payment and Mature takes his IOU. Just like Alan Ladd who gets burned with hot money after a contract in This Gun For Hire, Mature gets ratted out to immigration.

When Mature by dint of circumstances is forced to make contact with various hopeful immigrants the film takes an abrupt turn into social drama from noir. Helping him find a social conscience is rich do-gooder socialite Terry Moore.

The end is taken from one of Mature's much better films, Kiss Of Death without the dramatic impact it had in that one. William Bendix was never bad in any film, but he's sadly wasted in one of RKO's lesser noir films.