Dinheiro é Armadilha

The Money Trap for me has the distinction of being one of the last B features I ever saw on the big screen as part of a double bill. It is a film way past its prime as a noir picture.

Noir as a genre essentially died little by little as more televisions were in American homes. The kind of stories that noir does best were now being shown on television every night. Movies were getting bigger and splashier to compete with TV and films like the Money Trap were just not being made for theaters any more. Watching it yesterday on TCM, I was struck by the ludicrousness of a letter box version for a black and white noir.

By the way, in 1965 television was about to go full color and black and white feature films were getting rarer each year.

But even as a noir film, The Money Trap has no people you really care about. Glenn Ford is married to a wealthy woman and lives in a lifestyle beyond his cop's salary. But then wife Elke Sommer gets a letter saying her late Daddy's stock won't be paying any dividends. Well golly gee, we should all have such problems.

It never occurs to Glenn Ford to tell Elke to tone down her extravagant ways, maybe even move out of that luxurious home they have to something more modest. Ford's kind of into the good life also.

During a homicide investigation involving a wealthy doctor played by Joseph Cotten who allegedly surprised a burglar in his home, Ford and partner Ricardo Montalban suspect something dicey. Before expiring in the ambulance, the burglar gives Ford the safe combination.

Now knowing something is amiss here. Ford and Montalban decide on a robbery. Of course the doctor is smarter than the both of them put together. The whole thing ends in one bloody mess and the viewer doesn't really care.

A few years later The Money Trap would have been strictly a made for TV feature if it got made at all. Probably MGM was busy trying to get rid of long time contractual obligations to Ford and Montalban. Both of them have sure done better work.

But the saddest thing of all is that this is the last feature film partnership of Glenn Ford and Rita Hayworth. Rita's the best thing in this film, playing a very worn out forty something ex-girlfriend of Ford's and widow of the burglar Cotten shot. A great acting job and not anything a former reigning sex goddess ever did before.

But it ain't enough to save The Money Trap.

Glenn Ford and Ricardo Montalban are good policemen gone bad who fall into "The Money Trap," a 1965 noir directed by Burt Kennedy. Ford plays Joe Baron, married to beautiful Lisa (Elke Sommer) who is no longer getting dividends from her father's company. Downsizing and some yard sales would seem to be in order, but instead, Joe has his eye on a mob doctor's (Joseph Cotten) safe that's filled with money. Montalban, as his partner Pete, wants in. One man has already been killed cracking the safe, and there are some surprises in store.

This film is just okay, kind of depressing, but it's notable for the performance of Rita Hayworth as the widow of the dead burglar. She looks pretty used up as her character should, but she's still a stunning woman with true star charisma and great chemistry with Ford, her old co-star. And, as someone else mentioned, how many 50-year-old women playing character roles get to shack up with the lead in a movie? Well, if anyone could, it's Rita.

Ford was an appealing star without a huge range; this character could have been mined for more depth, but he's fine in the role. Montalban is very good as his money-obsessed partner.

Worth it for Rita.

For this Post-Noir, which didn't seem aware that Film Noirs had ended, It takes former THE BIG HEAT actor Glenn Ford to make what could be an average, by-the-numbers programmer an intriguing glimpse into a planned heist of a crooked doctor's mansion wall-safe...

A man who, in Ford's opinion, murdered a thief that broke in... Part of the ingredients that makes THE MONEY TRAP a nice little page-turner with a touch of mystery, despite knowing whodunit from the get-go... Although it's never quite clear why the cops, including Ford's desperate partner Ricardo Montalban, would take such a risk, other than a payoff, each scene flows into the next in an eclectic hybrid of Noir and Soapy Melodrama...

The latter involving Ford's trophy wife, who is second billed over his once-famous GILDA co-starlet Rita Hayworth as a waitress sharing a past with the veteran cop, and she's a widow to the dead thief...

Too bad sexy blonde Elke Sommer doesn't veer into edgy moll or nefarious dame territory, or something other than a reason to provoke the main character into crossing the line: she's basically a plot-point with a perfect body. Meanwhile, Hayworth and Ford share a few scenes that could have been played by anyone; yet it's nice seeing both of them together in this B&W time-filler that's worth an idyllic afternoon viewing...

And safe seat gentleman Joseph Cotten's henchman Tom Reese is the most intriguing throughout. With a face looking like it'd been through a blender with a crocodile, he alone provides the real threat since, after all, the criminals here are the law.

The noir cycle had run its course by the early 60s, but a few stragglers made it through the gates before the 70s changed the way movies were made and viewed. The Money Trap is one of them, and could have been made, in terms of technique and sensibility, in 1956 rather than a decade later. (Digression: this was a time when a series of European "bombshells," most of whom seem to have learned their lines phonetically, starred in big-budget movies, in Hollywood's dizzy anticipation of multiculturalism. Here we have to endure Elke Sommer whose eyes all but cross in her attempt to pronounce English). The theme is the rot at the core of the American Dream (Norman Mailer's novel of that title appeared in 1966, too). Glenn Ford plays a police detective goaded by Sommer to a higher standard of living than his salary permits. He allows himself to be lured into the company of some very shady characters, chief among whom is Joseph Cotten, and starts his descent down the primrose path. Best part of the movie is the return of Rita Hayworth (Ford and she first paired, unforgettably, in Gilda 20 years earlier), as a blowsy waitress with whom Ford once.... Well, you get the picture. When he asks her how she's been, she grudgingly responds, "I've been around."

Few Hollywoodian stars made an opposite couple so longevous as the stunning beauty Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford in LADY IN QUESTION, GILDA, CARMEN, AFFAIR IN TRINIDAD and THE MONEY TRAP was the final act on spending a night together, a sort of farewell for good, this late Noir has an auspicious premise whereby the veteran LA cop Ford gets involved with a wealthy heiress the platinum blonde Elke Sommer living at a flamboyant house in Bunker Hill area.

Often sponsoring expensive night party which his meager salary can't afford, meanwhile investigating a safe's robbery of half million dollar at Mansion of a high-class doctor Joseph Cotten, therefore it came in handy due the worried Ford in dire straits with his splurger wife he oversees became a corrupt cop also scorned by his crook partner Montalban.

For unknown reasons it has hardly beaten by the critics and IMDB's members neither, in other hand I found it rather interesting upon my humble knowledges of Noir American cinema, mainly by the heavenly vision of paradise of the Nordic eye-candy in sexy outfits, even an already aged Rita has still a flaming sexy-appeal worthwhile a look anyhow, in time finally it will be release officially in ultimate restored version.

Thanks for reading.

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First watch: 2005 / How many: 3 / Source: Cable TV-DVD / Rating: 7.5.