Violência

The movie has veterans of WWII being recruited to be part of a group that will use violence to accomplish the goals of bigger men. A young go-getter female reporter infiltrates it. Very early plot twist: on the way back to Chicago to file her stories, she gets in a motor vehicle accident, her typed-out stories are burned up in the car fire, and she gets amnesia. Dun-dun-duhhh....

Nancy Coleman is convincing as the reporter who is distressed about her loss of memory, although she rubs her temple too many times. Steve Fuller, who surely must have got his start as Kirk Douglas's stand-in, is a convincing male lead here, but he's clearly in support of Coleman.

It's gritty, adult fare for 1947. It might not be splattered-blood Bonnie & Clyde violence but sometimes implied violence is actually more dramatic.

At one of the rallies - these are all recently released WWII vets, remember - one guy stands up and gives a highly unlikely w0kified speech right out of 2024 about how "hate and violence alone won't solve any of our problems." He is quickly ushered out.

There are some unlikely plot twists that rely on characters making very bad decisions or things that happen a bit too conveniently to keep the running time tight and the sh00ting schedule on budget.

But it's an entertaining way to spend 90 minutes just the same.

There's enough meat to this plot that good writers with a respectable budget could churn out an excellent first season of a short-run prestige-cable show. Of course, the reporter would be a bl3ck tr2ns-g3nd3r and the underground club would all wear red baseball caps.

Which brings me to Eddie Muller's presentation of this movie on April 7, 2024. He suggested that movies such as Violence might have "inspired the House Un-American Activities Committee to launch investigations into 'purported' (here he gives an ironic hand wave) communist influences in Hollywood." It's well established by now that Hollywood (and Washington) were completely infiltrated by commies, as they are today. One's credibility takes a big hit to pretend otherwise. I expect better from Muller.

Don't go w0ke, TCM. Cause you know what rhymes with w0ke.

There's a corruption plot here, and in almost every movie with a corruption plot, it is the dogooder politician behind the corruption. I'm not giving any secrets here. This movie is markedly different for some reason. My suspicion is they either ran out of film, money or time and had to wrap it up.

With peter whitney as the joker (no it's not set in gotham city) and sheldon leonard (no, he's not telling anyone which elevator or railroad train to take), the stage is set for a great reveal at the end of mr x's identity (no it's not elon musk or pierre watkin), but then the story just ends and michael o'shea goes off with the cute muckraking reporter. Also featured in here, as a doctor, was john (no he's not telling the copyboy don't call me chief) hamilton, a star on early tv. The most important thing in this movie is it prepared us for a corrupt, much bankrupted businessman to make a lot of noise about cleaning out the swamp, so to speak, while corrupting it himself.

From 1947, Violence stars Nancy Coleman, Michael O'Shea, Sheldon Leonard, and Emory Parnell.

Coleman is Ann Mason, a reporter working undercover as a secretary for United Defenders, a fascist group using veterans by taking their money and encouraging them to be violent over issues such as housing and jobs.

Veterans had problems readjusting to society after World War II, and in this and another film I saw recently, their disenfranchisement made them a target for both communist and fascist groups.

Nancy is gathering evidence for her editor in Chicago, but on a trip there, she's in a car accident and develops amnesia. She meets a man, Steve (Michael O'Shea) who claims they are engaged.

Little by little, Ann remembers she works for the Defenders but not that she's undercover. Steve returns to Los Angeles with her and goes to work for the organization.

Ann begins to believe Steve is working against the Defenders and informs her boss. Trouble follows.

Cliche-ridden noir with Coleman constantly touching her head when she's trying to remember. And we all know what brings a memory back - another hit on the head.

Well, Ann falls and hits her head. A woman staying with her, whose husband was murdered by the Defenders, puts a dry handkerchief over her forehead. Big help.

You knew that charming, lively Michael O'Shea could never be evil. Sheldon Leonard was your typical meanie.

Interesting for what was going on in the US at the time, but not great.

(1947) Violence CRIME DRAMA

Co-produced and directed by Jack Bernhard that has two men beating up a guy name Joe Donahue (Jimmy Clark) for some information before he is killed and murdered. All this ruckus was happening down inside a basement, and it appears that Fred Stalk (Sheldon Leonard) gives out orders while the person who does all the beatings his name is "Joker'(Peter Whitney), both of them are working for a wannabe politician, True Dawson (Emory Parnell) as he has just finished speaking on front of a group of war veterans. As they are interacting with the secretary, Ann Mason (Nancy Coleman) before True Dawson come out and takes him into a private office. We then find out that the guy both Fred and Joker had just murdered, Troy Donahue apparently used to work for the True Dawson campaign until he did some investigating of his own. And that Tony was able to uncover some incriminating dirt on the candidate True Dawson, the reason why he was murdered so that this info cannot get out. And during them discussing matters, is when Ann the secretary walks in to discuss her departure to visit friends in Chicago. We find out later by the time we see her at her apartment that she too is also investigating True Dawson's shady past for a magazine called "View" for an editor, Ralph Borden (Pierre Watkin).

Things takes a turn for the worse as soon as Ann comes off from the Chicago airport and she notices someone following her and she asks the driver to lose him. And gets into an accident that causes her to lose her memory wondering her purpose to visit Chicago in the first place. We are then introduced to another person, claiming to be her fiance who happens to be a war veteran himself, Steve Fuller (Michael O'Shea). And upon Ann return back to LA with Steve at her side, she very slowly begins to recount what happened as well as her purpose including her role as a secretary. And it is not long, Steve is doing some sleuthing himself, he does this by discovering a letter addressed with Joe Donahue's name on it. And of course, he also associates himself with Fred and his brute Joker after working for the True Dawson campaign called the "United Defenders". It becomes complicated when Joe Donahue's wife, Sally Donahue (Cay Forester) shows up looking for her husband and Ann gets involves her self in her husband's disappearance.

With a short running time of an hour and 12 minutes, this movie is not bad if not for the predictable scenes their is a happy ending.

Much of the team that made Monogram's Decoy of the year before such a startling little thriller re-upped for the same studio's Violence: Director Jack Bernhard, co-scripter Stanley Rubin, composer Edward J. Kay, heavy Sheldon Leonard (the second-string Raymond Burr, who, like Burr, would find his fortune in television). Lightning, alas, failed to strike twice, so Violence remains a typically flawed Poverty-Row production.

In the basement of the Los Angeles headquarters of the United Defenders – a pseudo-populist scam organization to fleece angry veterans – a young recruit who stumbled onto the truth meets his unpleasant end. (This crypto-Fascist group has affinities with The Black Legion of a decade earlier.) Upstairs, however, the forced cheeriness prevails, with the head of this personality cult (`True' Dawson, played by Emory Parnell) bidding his loyal secretary (Nancy Coleman) goodbye as she leaves for a vacation to Chicago. Little does he suspect that Coleman is an investigative reporter working undercover on an exposé of the racket, which will hit the streets as soon as she's safe in the Windy City. Leonard, one of his lieutenants, does have his suspicions about, as well as unresolved feelings for, Coleman, but can't find the evidence, so off she goes.

In Chicago en route to her magazine's offices, Coleman's cab crashes trying to elude a mysterious pursuer (Milo O'Shea). Hospitalized, Coleman wakes to find herself in a state of amnesia (of the trickiest sort: She remembers things that are convenient to advancing the story but forgets everything else). Back on the coast, she has no memory of her journalistic scoop and so thinks herself a loyal soldier for the United Defenders; she also believes she's engaged to O'Shea, because he told her so. And the plot lumbers on, with the murdered man's widow showing up to find him, and an all-powerful `Mr. X' looming darkly behind the whole operation....

Violence is riddled with holes and implausibilities (of the type that, in today's Hollywood, would all but guarantee a blockbuster). Rather transparently, it draws on themes and issues that sparked the early years of the noir cycle: The dissatisfaction of returning veterans and post-war labor strife (and might the demagogue's name `True' be an echo of then-president Harry S Truman's?). But the topical references prove no more than gimmicks for a quick-and-dirty production that has little coherence or resonance.