Au royaume des crapules

Loosely based on the Kefauver hearings investigating organized crime, Hoodlum Empire has a good cast that includes Brian Donlevy, Claire Trevor, Forrest Tucker, John Russell, and Luther Adler. Directed by Joseph Kane. Because it was produced by Herbert Yates at Republic, his wife, Vera Hruba Ralston has a role.

The committee, led by Senator Stevens (Donlevy) has served subpoenas on members of an organization run by Nick Mancani (Adler). They cannot at the moment find Mancani to serve him, but they do subpoena Charley Pignatalli (Tucker) and Joe Gray (Russell).

Stephens and Gray have a history as they served together in World War II. At the time, Joe was a racketeer and in love with Connie Williams (Trevor).

However, Joe meets Marte (Ralston) in France and decides to go straight. He breaks up with Connie, who then becomes involved with Nick, though she never stopped loving Joe. Joe promises Mancani he will never expose him or aspects of his business.

Joe and Marte marry and have two children. Joe becomes a legitimate businessman. What he doesn't know is that Mancani has set Joe up, putting his name on several rackets.

Senator Stevens doesn't believe Joe when he claims to have been framed. The Army Chaplin, Father Simon Andrews (Grant Withers) knows the truth and wants it to be told. Meanwhile, the Mancani group is nervous that Joe will tell what he knows.

Fine performances, but there is nothing exceptional about this film. It has way too many flashbacks. For Republic, this is an ambitious production.

Good but not great.

John Russell was in the rackets, working for his uncle, Luther Adler, and Claire Trevor was his girl. Army service in the Second World War changed him, and he wants to go straight and marry French girl Vera Ralston. But the mob is expanding its grip and they come to the small city where he, his wife and two children live. So is a U.S. Congressional hearing under the control of Senator Brian Donleavy, Russell's former commanding officer.

This is an ambitious movie for Republic Pictures and director Joseph Kane, about a thinly disguised Kefauver Commission, and mobsters like Forrest Tucker. Although it has the violence of an exploitation picture, it's more in the lines of an expose film. It's also edited with frequent flashbacks that makes the story tough to follow at times, and despite the Italian names of the mobsters, the actors are anything but Italian in appearance or behavior. Even so, it's an honest effort, a lot like the 'small guy fights the crooks' movies that the independents turned out in the 1930s, but with superior production values and actors.

It is the 1950's and the US Government is coming down hard on organised crime, going after the top men in order to cut off the head and kill the snake. Their current target is one Nicky Mansani, the elusive mob boss who has so far managed to stay away from his own senate hearing. As the statements and testimonies come in, the main event is one Joe Gray – who has turned state's evidence against his former mob colleagues, having come back from WWII as a hero and a new man. However, the others aim to prevent Joe from testifying and even set him up for prosecution.

With a title that sounded dark and foreboding and offered the suggestion of a dark crime pulp thriller, I set the video and figured I'd give it a go. However the opening credits suggest a standard period genre film with no frills, an image that the film sadly maintains with the majority of its material. The actual story is a good idea but it is delivered in such a totally flat and unengaging manner that it is really hard to get involved with the film. The flashback structure is difficult to pull off so it is no surprise that the film struggles, but no excuse for being such a mess in regards narrative. The flashbacks are not tense or urgent enough – they needed to be tight, telling and convincing; instead they were often slow, boring and irrelevant. The bits that do work well are lost in a load of scenes that add little to the film and any possible tension is really sucked out of it. As the story goes on it becomes a bit clearer as to its focus and direction but I only really got into it by making an effort and stayed with it despite the delivery – not because of it.

The tone of the film is very melodramatic as opposed to tough and noir-ish and this too is a problem. The dialogue matches this tone and it is too soapy to really suit the subject matter. With the story weakened by the flashback structure and the dialogue being all a bit too melodramatic and earnest, the actors do not have a great deal to work with other than stereotypical cardboard roles from the genre. Russell is far too square and rigid; he never convinces as a former wise-guy and is far to clean-cut and boring as a reformed character. Ralston's character is totally unnecessary and without her the film could have lost most of the WW2 flashback; she is rather bland and added nothing to the film. Withers played blind by being as stiff as a board – sadly he did this in his delivery and not just his posture. Adler is OK but not convincing as a big boss; Tucker is better and more fitting the genre even if it is a by-the-numbers character. Claire Trevor is underused but a good moll and the always-interesting Donlevy was given a solid role in support (I like him – and not just because he is from Northern Ireland!)

Overall this film had potential but it blows it in the delivery. The melodramatic and morally simplistic tone feeds through the script and damages the whole film. The flashback structure is difficult to pull off at the best of times and it falls flat here, producing scenes that are dull, disjointed and unengaging, robbing the subject matter of the dark tone and tight pace that it really needed. The cast are mostly wooden and stiff, with even the OK ones failing to bring much life to this film. Not really worth seeing and I understand now why so few people have seen it.

I do not know enough about Joseph Kane, other than he served the Republic Studios for much of his career and directed countless Roy Rogers and Gene Autry Westerns, all of them support features in the 1930s and 1940s.

In HOODLUM EMPIRE, he uses flashbacks and a number of characters to tell the tale of Joe Grey, believably played by the towering John Russell, a former criminal who serves in the US Army in Europe and in the process makes friends of his unit's men, including Brian Donlevy, who plays an untypically good man in the role of Senator Bill Stephens, a crusader against all kinds of illegal trade, right down to slot machines.

Luther Adler steals the show as Nick Nancani, the hoodlum placing those slot machines in all restaurants and clubs in town - Central City, no less - under the name of... Joe Grey, who has decided to cut ties with crime and refuses to have one-armed bandits in his restaurant.

Claire Trevor also does well as the not too pure damsel in love with Grey, as does Vera Ralston as Grey's much purer French wife (her US English accent miraculously unscathed), and together with Rev Simon Andrews (righteously played by Grant Withers) they rescue Grey from the slot machine trap set by Uncle Nancani, to make it look like he had no part in his own shady business empire.

Truth to tell, the script suffers from some unevenness, and the flashbacks do not dovetail credibly, but HOODLUM EMPIRE nonetheless deserves watching. The B&W cinematography is good enough to belie the meager budget. 7/10.

Joe Gray, a former gangster who became a hero in World War Two, leads a respectable life until he is called to testify before a grand jury looking into racketeer activity. Of course his former mob cronies, one of whom is his uncle, do not want him to testify and threaten his family. This would have been a good thriller if it did not have the overlong flashback sequences. The flashback to World War Two is overlong, pointless, and looks cheap. Luther Adler and Brian Donlevy give good performances. Even Forrest Tucker is O.K. But John Russell as Joe Gray is stiff and dull. His performance is an embarrassment.