L'Heure du crime

This glamorous post-war crime story has a protagonist who carefully walks that fine line between cops and crooks. In fact--that seems to be almost a requirement in the best noir flicks. Dick Powell is Johnny O'Clock, a smooth operator with an eye for getting himself the best of whatever's going around. Is he selfish down to the core, or is there a lingering speck of humanity in there somewhere? O'Clock is a partner in a swank gambling house, and when the hat-check girl is found murdered, he gets involved with crooked cops and more crooked criminals. A great supporting cast and nice 'behind the scenes at the casino' feel add to the fun. Powell played a similar role in Murder My Sweet, but his Phillip Marlowe was more the wise-cracking smart-Alec, while Johnny O'Clock is decidedly more shady. A real treat.

One gets the impression from watching JOHNNY O'CLOCK that the whole idea of the film is to give DICK POWELL a tough screen presence--the kind that suited Alan Ladd in his early films. He's a cool man surrounded by a bunch of surly characters out to get him. He's good with a punch and a punch line, but all the while he leaves you feeling this story is too slow-paced and a bit rambling to become a tight thriller such as MURDER, MY SWEET.

Everyone in the cast does their job nimbly, with LEE J. COBB chewing away at this cigar to make sure he steals every other scene, and ELLEN DREW and EVELYN KEYES doing well in contrasting femme leads. The sets have a noir look with excellent B&W photography, but the trouble is the script which is not compelling enough to draw a viewer into the story about a murdered hatcheck girl (NINA FOCH) and the search for her killer.

All the elements of film noir are there but Robert Rossen's direction cannot tie them together with a tight enough grip. Nevertheless, worth a watch if you're a fan of this genre.

A well acted, above average film noir from the late 1940's, "Johnny O'Clock" stars Dick Powell as the title character. His "juvenile" roles in such films as "42nd Street" long behind him, Powell's Johnny is a tough gambling-house operator, who is involved with a mobster named Guido and a crooked cop named Blayden. When Lee J. Cobb as Inspector Koch arrives to investigate the murder of a gambler, the plot thickens. A vulnerable Nina Foch plays a hat-check girl in Johnny's establishment, who is involved with Blayden. However, Blayden disappears, and Foch evidently commits suicide. Convinced of Blayden's involvement, both Koch and Foch's sister, played by Evelyn Keyes, pursue the missing cop. A blood-stained coat fished from the water, an expensive engraved watch, a bright new Mexican coin; the clues surface along with the betrayal and duplicity in Robert Rossen's taut screenplay, which was adapted from a story by Milton Holmes.

The sharp tough dialog is delivered by pros, with Powell, Cobb, and Keyes especially good. However, lovely Ellen Drew is a standout as Nelle, the alcoholic moll, who is Guido's wife, but harbors a history with and a persistent yen for Johnny; watching her expressions, even when silently in the background, is a lesson in film acting. Film buffs will spot a young Jeff Chandler as Turk, one of Guido's boys, in a small uncredited part. Nicely directed by Robert Rossen, the film features shadowy black and white photography by Burnett Guffey and a good score by George Duning. While not film noir of the first caliber, "Johnny O'CLock" is nevertheless an entertaining entry in the genre, and watching Powell during his tough-guy period is always a pleasure.

A bit too jokily entertaining when it should be entertainingly disturbing, this first film from Robert Rossen is a fairly good noir that ultimately disappoints, both with its hopeful if not exactly happy ending (noir, by definition, should be on the bleak side throughout) and by there being a hole in the screen where an interesting relationship between the title character and Nancy Hobson should be. This later flaw is due partly to Evelyn Keyes' limitations as an actress and partly by Rossen's as a screenwriter, namely that the guy cannot write romantic dialogue without its sounding like a parody of itself. Where he is on firmer ground, both as writer and director, is with his supporting players. Lee J Cobb's fatherly cop, Thomas Gomez's vain, self loathing, jealous mob boss, Ellen Drew's venal moll and John Kellog's resentful body man with a homoerotic interest in Johnny all come vividly alive through Rossen's crisp, clever dialogue and the skills of the above actors. As for Dick Powell he shows once again that the farther he got from the song and dance stuff the better his performance. Give it a B minus.

Eddie Muller on TCM really talked "Johnny O'Clock" up for being both dripping in noir conventions and impossibly hard to follow. I didn't actually find either of those things to be true. It's a solid film for noir fans, but there a bazillion other noirs that I've both liked more and thought had more atmosphere.

I do like Dick Powell and Evelyn Keyes a lot, though, so the film has both of those actors going for it.

Grade: B.