I Was Framed

TCM showed the two movies back-to-back this afternoon. For the first fifteen minutes or so, up through the end of the courtroom scene, the two scripts are virtually identical, even as to gestures as well as dialog. Diverged radically after that.

As others have noted, the scenes with the daughter are nauseating. Reduced the rating by at least one point.

This COULD have been a nice tight - if poorly acted - little Grade B/C film noir piece if someone had had the brains not to devote a solid 20-30 minutes to Patty Hale, whose poetry/song/supposed-light-comedy stints brought me to the point of nausea. This entire film looks to be nothing more than a vehicle for her. How very very sad.

I also found it unexpectedly funny re: the wife having her baby, although she was slim as a green bean in all her immediate before birth shots. I can only guess that it may have had something to do with the censors at that time.

But still - nothing ruins this little flick more than little Patty Hale.

Investigative reporter Ken Marshall is on the trail of crooked politician Gaines who is running for governor. After a series of articles, he is kidnapped and forced into a staged drunk driving incident which kills 3 people. He is sent to prison but quickly manages to escape.

This is a redo of "Each Dawn I Die" starring James Cagney. The first part is almost exactly the same which includes reusing the same car crash footage. The rest is completely different. None of it is an improvement. First, Cagney can't be replaced. Second, I'm not sure about the rewrite. I don't think I've ever encountered a redo. Maybe Rob Zombie redoing Halloween. I just can't believe the story. It turns an interesting prison drama into a dull non-dramatic life. I don't know the point of it all. The first part is a copy and the most notable about the rest is an overacting little girl.

Reporter gets framed for murder and sent to prison. Then some stuff happens. This started out as a promising little B with a nice cast and some action. Then things slow to a standstill for a long while before an abrupt but somewhat exciting climax. I've seen this compared to Each Dawn I Die, probably my favorite prison movie and definitely my favorite James Cagney movie. The only comparison is in the opening framejob. Everything else is different. Each Dawn I Die is superior in every way. This is a fairly dull picture. It does have some thrilling moments at the beginning, as well as some interesting "that wouldn't fly today" elements like a doctor refusing payment and a creepy murderous-looking vagrant being allowed into a house by a pretty woman who then proceeds to make him breakfast! Oh and there's a precocious little Shirley Temple wannabe who will rot your teeth with every line she says.

According to IMDb, "I Was Framed" is a remake of the 1939 John Garfield films "Dust Be My Destiny". However, if you read the summary of the Garfield film, it pretty has nothing to do with "I Was Framed". I also saw the Garfield film and although a bit of the plot is the same, I cannot see that one is a remake of the other at all. However, for the life of me, I KNOW that "I Was Framed" is a remake (or some film is a remake of it), as I recognized so much of the film--especially the scene where the reporter is set up for a drunk driving arrest. I KNOW I've seen it...but what film?! If you know, let me know--I just know is it NOT "Dust Be My Destiny".

The film is about a reporter who doggedly pursues criminals who are high officials. However, these folks are very powerful and very dangerous and Ken (Tod Andrews) is bound to get the worst of it. Yet he continues his one-man crusade until eventually the mob IS able to get him out of the way by framing him for a crime and getting him sent to jail. He makes his escape midway through the movie--and at this point the film fizzles. Instead of quickly working to prove his innocence, most of the rest of the film is a dull account of he and his wife hiding from the law...only to find out in the end that the cops caught the real criminal behind the drunk driving setup some time ago--but they couldn't find Ken to tell him until then! Huh?!

The bottom line is that the film has some very good elements and is slick--since it's a B-movie from Warner Brothers. But it also is unsatisfying and the plot seems to meander--like it needs to be rewritten. Worth skipping but not terrible either.